I am a writer of many things with forms ranging from script, poetry and prose. For me, each different project comes with its own unique style. I predominantly write horror fiction and eco-critical poetry – both differ greatly from each other. For this project specifically, I focused on the raw emotions that I was feeling at the time of writing it.
With Beyond The Walls’ 2025 edition, the focus is the mind. This opens a lot of doors for writing – it can be as direct as mental health, or as abstract as mind control or the imagination itself. Each of these topics can come with their own unique challenges. One method I find useful when writing about the mind is to lean into my own experiences and feelings as this can help the piece seem more authentic.
That being said, do not submit something to a submissions call that you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone outside your writing space. It can take a lot of trial and error whilst exploring heavy topics such as the mind, so keep on writing until you think it feels right. Recently, I have used my poetry as an outlet for grief and finding life after death. It took a lot of attempts at writing about that experience before I was able to write something I felt tackled it in a way that I felt I could share, in the hopes that other people could relate to it.
This is my poem Stairwell:
How well are you doing?
Stair-well.
Stairs go up and down
and spiral
and yet are stationary.
I’m doing stair-well.
I look out of the window,
sitting midway down the stairwell
and watch the sun going down.
I look at all the other apartment blocks,
some containing people I know
some full of strangers I may never meet
and I say to myself
“we all have a different definition
as to what it means when the sun goes down.”
Right now,
I am seeing it as a closing chapter
to a book I did not want to end.
And yet it was a drama!
Full of twists and turns,
ups and downs
like each and every stairwell in the city.
You’d never know the stories
that have passed up and down every stairwell,
in every step.
From people’s heads to people’s phones
to people’s books in people’s arms,
what hands such books were held,
who’s hands those hands were held in
and how that book did close.
I use poetry to discuss heavier topics in a digestible size for my audience as it allows me to focus on my word choice to describe raw feelings. Through this, I can get to the heart of the topic I am discussing. This differs from my story writing where I am having to drop hints about my characters, before revealing more about them as the plot progresses. In writing short stories and novellas, I am able to write in a way that my characters can discuss their inner thoughts and feelings, whilst remaining separate from their world. Perspective also allows me to explain the character’s thought process in different ways. Whilst writing script, I am able to use the character’s actions to hint towards what they might be thinking as well as building up the plot to have them confess their thought process at pivotal points of the play.
When writing my current novella “Collectable memories”, I write from first person perspective to try and make my main character’s thoughts the focus as she is overcoming challenges relating to her workplace that may or may not be haunted. I feel that using a first person narrator allows my readers to put themselves in her shoes and experience the same fear as she does. This is why I find writing in first person beneficial when writing about the mind.
The best advice for finding your personal writing style is to know the voice that you are wanting to write from. What is it that you or your characters are wanting to say? This voice can change from piece to piece depending on the subject matter. The best thing you can do is play around with different genres, forms and POVs until you find what works best for your piece.
– Faye Simpson
This blog post is in collaboration with the 2025 Beyond the Walls Anthology. The cohort behind the anthology are constantly producing high quality work in the run up to the final publication. You can find similar blog pieces in collaboration with the anthology here on the Where Ideas Grow blog. You can also listen to their podcast episodes on Spotify and find updates on the anthology on their social media platforms, all linked below.