What is creative writing?

Some people consider that writing as a gift. This can be both right and wrong in terms. Some people are born with their talent, some others start and built their own capabilities. The idea of attention and inspiration came from inside our memory bank and later on created a form of beauty, more interesting and skillful one.

The question arose: is there a more beautiful, more abundant, more holistic lateral scene to stimulate the creative brain to use all its potential to learn? That aspiration of learning the art and craft of creative writing is the main purpose of education. The creative writing skills of novelists, dramatists, and playwrights create the best plays, novels, articles, fiction, drama and nonfiction in the world.

Creative writing techniques

Follow other writers in your niche:

By reading the work of your fellow writers in your writing niche, you get SMARTER; and, as a result, you write better. How does this work? First, reading the work of fellow writers shows you ways in which your fellow writers write that you would not have discovered in your own reading, and in their writing you will find matters in the world that you would also like to write about.

Let your imagination run wild:

After all, writing fiction is creative by definition, so let your horses run – open the paddock, gallop in a placeless universe, with no rhyme or reason, with no fences or villains. Let your characters engage in a dialogue in a speech of your own making. Why not? Paul Frommer fashioned the leadership language of the Na’vi, the native inhabitants of the planet Pandora of News Corporation’s film Avatar (2009). The Navi’s language was invented for the film.

Get to know yourself as a writer:

Good writers all have a distinctive voice of their own, but as a beginner you’re welcome to use other writers as a starting point. The key is to maintain a distinct style, be consistent, and define the niche or genre you want to master as an expert (for graphic novels these would mostly include fiction, but also possibly non-fiction like autobiography).

Why do you want to publish your work? Ask yourself:

You compose merely because you are in love with your composition. Composing is your first and exclusive true lover. For you your reader is the one who gets the sight of that composition and shields your creativity. That you show your creative facet to your reader for his sake makes publishing a kind of deceiving a COMPOSITION (ie, your MASTERPIECE) to an ADDRESSEE (ie, your reader). It has not only the purpose of featuring your talent for your reader’s sake. You also need to feel the reader’s taste so as to write him a composition.

Engage your reader from start to finish:

You must have them hanging on to the story at that very first moment, or you won’t keep them hanging on through the rest of it. If the first four pages are dull, a reader can’t read past page four.

Essential Elements of Creative Writing

Many features come together in creative writing to make the reader react, and you – the writer – must guard them deliberately. They are:

Action: Something has to happen in a creative-writing exercise for a reason, or characters’ actions should arise out of motivations, points of view and previous choices. Your protagonist’s arising actions must always ‘send them’ somewhere in relation to the plot events. Your characters’ goals affect who they are, forcing them to morph as events bring out new versions of themselves in your story. An action scene might be the route you take with your story, in which case your character must make a series of telling choices in quick succession.

Character: Characterisation in literature involves bringing a character to life, giving them a real personality, depth and motivations that will see them through the story. Good characters are individual and rounded. They must be endowed with real qualities such as appearance, personality and biography that convey them to the reader but, in addition to ‘being’, characters must also ‘do’ in response to the situation facing them – in other words, ‘motivations’ should inform how characters act and make decisions, which in turn determine the shape of the narrative that unfolds.

1. Conflict. Conflict is what ‘turns’ your story. If there’s nothing at stake, then there’s nothing to gain by choice, and from the audience perspective nothing much to care about. If you always ‘treat’ your protagonists well, your book will be awfully flat in terms of tension. Inventive conflict in a novel is when who your main character is (their essential need) is at odds with something within and/or without that prevents her getting it. The structure of the journey your characters will take is shaped by the central conflict.

Dialogue: Good dialogue does a million things, from defining your character’s voice to revealing more about their speech patterns, to giving important information without that infamous expository voice. Realistic dialogue also serves to expose the inner emotions that make characters tick.

Genre: Some authors might rail against thinking about their work as ‘genre fiction’. However, genre, that is, categorising and sorting creative works, is still ubiquitous in the publishing industry as well as in production studies and the study of literature more generally. Genre fiction usually refers to romance, mystery, thriller, horror, fantasy and children’s fiction. (Note that nonfiction falls into categories as well, such as science, philosophy, memoir, gardening, animals, etc.) Popular genre fiction relies on templates, character archetypes and tropes to draw in readers, and while the best examples use them in exciting and creative ways, readers know what kind of story they are going into. Genre fiction has more mainstream mass appeal than literary fiction. Literary fiction often will not have a clean-and-tidy plot structure, and it will be full of embedded symbolism or allegory.

Pacing: whether the story feels fast or slow for the reader. Length of a scene, and how slowly you, the writer, dole out information, can influence pacing – descriptions generally slow things down, while dialogue and action speed moves up (though slowing the pace of action at key points to build suspense can also be effective).

Plot: A plot is the sequence of events that becomes a story. A plot occurs because of a call to action—an inciting incident—that causes the highest-stakes character to accept a goal or a mission. Conflict and tension are provided to make the plot into a narrative arc. Those are five elements to the bedrock of writing a plot, and each element performs a specific task: inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Point of view: In story-writing, this term is used to describe the eye, or the narrative voice through which the story is told. When you write a story, you have to decide who tells the story and to whom the story is told. The story may be told by a character within the story or by a position outside of the story seeing and knowing all of the characters but not being one of the characters. There are three primary points of view: first person, second person, third person.

Scene: an organic unit of a story, a scene is a time/space within that larger narrative. Scenes are the essence of stories. Most stories are composed of a series of scenes that change in time and setting and move their narratives. Every now and then, (a) short story (even a long narrative) will be made up of a single scene. A good scene has tension and conflict and moves the story forward.

Setting: The setting in literature is the time physical environment) in a narrative. The setting can be a specific part of the Earth with a known address, a specific time period in human history, or a fictional or imaginary location or world, or an invented future. Other examples would then be: Modern day; or an unspecified time and place, like in the future.

Style: style is how an author speaks to you through words. An author comes up with a style by what voice, or personality and tone, she applies to her text as a whole. The writing style for one author will likely vary, however, based on the type of writing she does and her audience. A children’s-book author, for instance, will have quite a different style than a memoirist.

Tension: Part and parcel of pacing and exposition, tension can be among characters, or as a theme, or a structural element. Building narrative tension at a basic level is a question of keeping a reader’s heart in her throat. Such suspense requires stakes, and if you don’t have stakes, you can’t say you’ve got a story. Whether you’re writing a novel or a short story, stakes is what will keep the reader turning pages.

Theme: Writing is an art, but it’s also a business, and while a writer wants to create an engaging story, there has to A theme is the main idea that a story conveys. Imagine a fictional story has a narrative that unfolds in the future where humans have been enslaved by robots that create and perform entertainment for us in our homes. Maybe the central idea that the story would convey is a statement about human nature relative to technology. This would be the theme the author would hope the audience might look for in the story.

8 Tips for Creative Writers

Try them out and your creativity – and your writing – should flow more freely.

1. Write, always. If you have an idea, write it down, no matter how bad it is. Even bad ideas can help to spark good ones, and you never know what might trigger the next good idea later. Keep a pad of paper with you or download a notes app on your personal device so you can keep track of them.

2. Redrafting: The first draft of any piece of work is rarely the best. You might have the luxury of changing what you are writing about, but if not, you should not be scared that you must keep everything you have written down and that it does not matter that you do not like it: Sometimes, you have to redraft, or even write again from the beginning, getting rid of the fluff, cutting what doesn’t work, or what seems out of place. Storytelling and worldbuilding take time and teasing, and there is no way you will arrive at the perfect version unless you keep redrafting it.

3. Take a position. Fiction writing almost always has a point to make. A narrative devoid of purpose will seem to flail, and readers will wonder what the point is you’re trying to make, and they won’t care about it, so why should they care about your story? Use your own voice to tell the kind of story your readers or audience will respond to and engage with in a way that will be memorable to them.

4. Figure out your audience. Decide: is this just for the creative writing students in my class, or is it for a general audience? Are you an academic writer trying to cross over into the young adult market? Audiences usually don’t read across developmental and cultural boundaries, so if you can find your niche or narrow audience, your story can be defined and freed to explore in beneficial ways.

5. Read, read, read! It’s difficult to pick up on the nuances of creative writing when you have nothing to base it on. Since time immemorial, famous writers have written incredible examples of masterful creative work that all aspiring creative writers should read. Read popular works by the masters in a variety of styles to find out where your interest might lie.

6. Keep writing. Many beginners feel intimidated or embarrassed by their writing and by their imagination. With freewriting, creative writing exercises, writing prompts and practice you will become a better writer.

7. Be part of a writing workshop. Writing classes and writing groups put you in contact with fellow writers who can all help – critique and comment on – your creative writing process through details such as story and character arcs, world-building, and word choice whether you are working on your first book or you are an advanced writer suffering from writer’s block, a writer’s group will put your mind at ease and get that creative juices flowing again.

8. Use literary devices. Essential elements of great writing, literary devices will help you write descriptively, and work to excite magic to your scenes. Metaphors and similes and other figurative language help to create images and build pictures with language that can enhance your creativity and make you a more dynamic writer. Alliterations, consonance, assonance, and other devices will help to make the sounds of your words stronger and more powerful.