creative writing help

creative writing help

Creative Writing Tips and Techniques

1. Introduction to Creative Writing

In defining creative writing, the first thing that comes to mind is a host of new generation of authors who have looked beyond conventional borders of thought and through radical re-definition, attained an unprecedented depth of meaning. But before we go on to that, any form of writing that expresses a writer’s thoughts, emotions, or ideas in an imaginative and poetic way is called creative writing.

For every teacher who despairs of one day seeing his children pen an intelligent essay, there is another who applauds a hundred new generations of ‘creative writing’ exercises created to engender the love of the written word. No matter what discipline you are involved in, the ability to put your thoughts to paper in a persuasive and/or inspiring manner will serve as an immeasurable asset.

It is no great secret that much of the world’s artistic and intellectual legacy has evolved out of the embrace of the creative process. From the invention of the wheel to the construction of the Coca-Cola empire, creative writing has been a vital component in nearly every sector of human development.

1. Introduction to Creative Writing

Creative Writing Tips and Techniques

2. Developing Characters and Settings

Characters are an extremely important part of fiction. Since stories require conflict, and conflict is resolved by characters, characters are the driving force of the story. You should spend time creating, examining, and understanding your characters. In short stories, it is not essential to create a character web, but the more complex your characters are, the more engaging the story will be. Creating a character web before you start writing often helps. Think of each character’s personality, likes and dislikes, hobbies, families, and background. This will reveal the person behind the character. What does this person want above all other things? This is the driving force of the character and is usually tied to the resolution of the story. Remember that challenge and conflict are essential to storytelling, and this is the only way to change the current circumstances to more desirable ones. Create a list of possible conflicts for each character and what this might reveal about their personality. The circumstances surrounding the conflict dictate the need to change. An engaging character is one that evolves to meet the needs of their changed circumstances. A character that doesn’t change is a static character and is not engaging. For example, if Jane is dumped by Jim, she will go through an emotional and possibly irrational stage to win him back. This is because being dumped is a challenge to Jane’s confidence in herself and in her relationship with Jim. An irrational character will do things that are more interesting. What if Jane skipped the irrational stage and tried to win him back by using logic? This might lead her to do something like join the military to prove that she’s good wife material for Jim, and he will react negatively by being overprotective of her. This provides both conflicting internal and external forces for Jane. The internal conflict will cause Jane to periodically question her decision and to see how Jim reacts, and many interesting and possibly humorous situations can arise from Jane secretly playing on Jim’s overprotectiveness.

3. Crafting Engaging Plots

Avoid any coincidences that do not have a clear cause. There’s nothing more disappointing for a reader than the end of a long chase, when the quarry escapes due to some un-prophesised turn of fate. Although real life can often be random, fiction must be entirely the opposite. Every effect has to have a cause; else there is no logical progression and the story will not be satisfying.

Make life difficult for your protagonist. Conflict is what makes a story live and breathe. It keeps the reader interested and often helps to articulate themes more effectively. Essentially, the protagonist should meet obstacles on the way to gaining his goal. Those obstacles may be external or internal. Both are equally effective, and often a story will have both at work.

Write from the ending. If you have some idea of the climax of your story, you will be better able to build up to it. If you can also see a clear ending, or resolution, this will give you a good indication of where to stop, or start working backwards.

Well-constructed plots are a crucial part of effective storytelling. They should hook the reader from the start and not let them go until the final word. Here are a few tips to help you write more compelling plots.

4. Enhancing Writing Style and Voice

A person’s style of writing is a reflection of his persona. To change his style would be damaging to his self-concept. Improving it is a task worth undertaking. Clarity is the all-important key to good writing. A scribe may use a thesaurus to discover an arcane adjective to adorn a simple sentence. But the sentence that isn’t vivid isn’t worth adorning. A major downfall to clarity is verbosity. The overuse of adverbs and adjectives is the method in which writers become verbose. The instance of an adverb or adjective is not always bad, but it is best when they are used as adorning words to a particularly ugly bare word that follows. True improvement to a sentence can be made by changing an adverb or adjective and bare word to a single word that expresses the same idea. Metaphors, similes, personifications, and analogies are often indicative of good style. But they should not be overused. A piece of writing dominated by tropes is as unpleasant as one devoid of them. A writer must avoid cliché when using tropes; hence, it is sometimes better to fashion a new trope than to use an old one. While the moderation and proper use of language conventions is an important aspect of improving style, language conventions will not be the main focus of this essay.

Style is necessary in any writing endeavor. Fiction, poetry, drama, and any creative non-fiction can be improved by a writer’s style. Style, to many people, is putting on a fake appearance. People sometimes change their personal styles to fit a new trend. In this same sense, a writer may change the “appearance” of his writing to fit a rhetorical trend. This is not the style that I am addressing; I define style as the expression of a writer’s persona. Now, nobody has to agree that a persona can be expressed through writing. But, to the writer whose persona is to create and share great writings with the world, every word written is a reflection of who he is.

5. Editing and Revising Your Work

Revising a story or poem can be more difficult than an essay, as structural changes can have huge implications on the underlying ideas. You might find it useful to rewrite a story in a slightly different way, focusing on a particular aspect of wording or character development. This then can be compared to the first version, and you can choose the best parts from each. Often it is useful to get peer review of work, and it can be beneficial to hear aloud what has been written.

Sometimes it is a good idea to evaluate each sentence and its importance to the whole work. Could some sentences be combined for more nuance, or split to add the development of an idea? Removing sentences can often be as valuable as adding them. All the time be on the lookout for better word choice. A thesaurus can be useful to find a word that more precisely expresses an idea, but be careful as using a word wrongly can lead to confusion.

If you have worked on a computer, it is easy to move sections of text around before you begin an alternate way of promoting or demoting ideas to different parts of the plan. You might try doing this with a pen and a highlighter to see how the essay or story could be improved.

Few writers produce a perfect piece of work in their first draft. So it’s usually important to do some revising, rethinking, cutting, and adding. It is useful to leave your work for a while and then reread it. Try to read your work from the reader’s point of view. Is it easy to read? Are the ideas developed in a logical order? What impression does the writing give? Although there is no single ‘right’ way to revise, the following are some of the things you might do.