Some people are poets, some are playwrights. But does it make sense to perfect one form of creative writing regardless of content?
I met with somebody recently that was telling me about a fellow writer that they'd been in touch with. My anonymous companion seemed horrified to discover that one of their peers seemed unable to stick to one medium, flitting between plays and poetry and prose with no concern for improving the quality of their writing in any of those disciplines. I nodded and said nothing, surprised to learn that this had drawn such extreme derision and wondering if I myself was not guilty of that same crime.
The truth is: Yes, I am.
Can you translate the message?
So do I completely disagree with the above? Not necessarily.
It's true that the same character, plot and setting can mean vastly different things when presented to the audience in an altered order, never mind what it means to change the entire way these ideas are experienced. Translating these messages is a skill in itself and there's an Oscar in it for you if you can make it look like child's play, just as long as you can deal with the irony of winning an award for a typically invisible effort.
But there are always intricacies to be found with any story and provided that those experiences can be communicated in the most engaging way possible, what does it matter that you wrote a poem last week, or a screenplay a year ago?
Where does your weakness lie?
If you have a purpose for communicating your story in the medium you chose then demonstrating that (without explaining it) should provide additional nuance to your piece. Our expertise is, after all, limited partly by the forms we dare to try.
There are also ways that you can experiment with different writing mediums to target specific areas of your skill to improve. I discovered this entirely by accident when, after a plot-heavy character-light first novel, my second feature length project turned out to be a theatrical play, naturally forcing me to reconsider epic length and shallow dialogue.
Explore and learn
Practice makes perfect and in spite of what people may think that adage also applies to creative writing. But confining yourself to a single medium regardless of the stories you're creating could make it more difficult to learn from your mistakes, just as copying down your novel into a word-for-word screenplay won't bring limp characters to life. There may not be a key to creative writing, but narratives can be enabled in myriad ways.
That exploration doesn't begin by ruling any considerations out.
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