Other What helps you think outside the box?

[LiquidLight]

Sometimes I find myself feeling like I'm writing the same things over and over again, sometimes in different ways but not differently, if that makes sense. What helps you think outside the box and keep your writing fresh? I know expanding my vocabulary would help, which is a constant work in progress. But anything else?

 

[BXSCUIT]

To me personally, I find a variety of different methods a good way to expand my imagination and writing skills. Sometimes I miss when I was a child who can write bad-grammar, 50-chapters fanfiction on the spot because I could think of 50 million different scenes in a snap.

Looking at art, whether fantasy, or just character design is a good practice for me.
I like to think to myself, "What brought the character to this situation?" if the art is, for example, a piece about the character surrounded by light and hands and darkness, or even if they're melting with half their face torn off. I look at character art, and think, "What personality does this design tell me? Why are they dressed like that? Would they fit in genre X? Would they match with Y character art that I found earlier before? How would they interact? What would they do if they were in this poorly-made-up-on-the-spot scenario that I could immediately think of?" Try to think of outside of the box things, like what would character art of a princess do if she was found wandering in the hot desert by a gang of beserkers?
Reading short stories, webtoons, watching movies, PLAYING VIDEO-GAMES (a big one for me personally) and other of the like help too. Although time-consuming, it's a fine time-pass to wonder 'Hmm? This game about XYZ makes me want to write about ABC!'
I like to go on Wattpad and Quotev sometimes, find badly-written works, and think 'what if THIS happened instead, in my own words? Or practice rewriting them into my own version (without posting it of course as it is for my own training). Poems help too. Sometimes half-assing a gut-wrenching death scene with two characters who are forbidden lovers helps more than simply thinking about it.

Prompts too. You can never go wrong with prompts, specifically ROLEPLAY prompts or short stories you find in Youtube's comment section under a post-apocalyptic or 'dining with a vampire' ambience playlist. Things like that. People write stories ANYWHERE. ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ
Discussing with friends 'What's the worst trope ever and how do you dare me to write it better?' or other such discussions are a way too. I ask my friends 'What do you think X author could've done better?' and then the convo branches out from there!

Sometimes, writing the clichest of cliches work too.

Roleplaying is usually the way to go for me too aha. I like to be thrown off by my partner's response, and it certainly does inspire some interesting stories to write!

Perhaps not all may work, but these are usually what FORCE me to think past the curtain and see if there's anything surprising or not-so-obvious hanging about. Hope this was helpful! o(〃＾▽＾〃)o