In the last post, Janet Lawler shared how she was finding success by looking beyond the screenwriting craft and exploring her ability as a playwright and novelist — for me, this is a perfect example of why screenwriters should look beyond the confines of screenwriting.

Exploring your ability as a writer is crucial to your growth as an aspiring writer — it enables you to experiment and learn from other mediums, which might even spark a passion you didn’t know you had. For me, this type of exploration lead to my passion for short stories, which in turn nudged me into writing my own short stories and developing a new website for writers of all types (coming soon). It was also one of the main ideas behind A Pinch of Poetry for a Dash of Description and even Screenwriters! If You Want to Write a Screenplay, Write a Book.

The idea behind exploring other forms of writing isn’t so much about searching for what type of writer you want to be or what form you’d like to work in, but rather what happens in other forms, what you can do that you can’t with screenplays, and what’s been done — remember what Picasso said: “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” Exploring other mediums is the best place to take his advice and run with it.

What forms of writing are you exploring?

Whether you’ve been exploring the world of writing or if you’re planning on learning more about a particular form of writing, I’d like to know what you’re exploring.

Post what you’re exploring below in the comments section and share why.