creative writing techniques

creative writing techniques

Creative Writing Techniques

1. Introduction

Another part of the section explains the importance of having creativity especially for individuals involved in a design or art-related profession. This is mainly due to the highly competitive nature of this kind of profession that they need to do something different from others to show their capabilities and quality of work. High creativity will also enable designers or artists to do work with high self-satisfaction, having the ability to express an abstract idea and avoiding complicated situations.

In the next part of the section is basically the start of what the essay is all about. The writer had chosen the topic to explain techniques for enhancing creative thinking. The essay’s main goal is to help individuals improve and enhance their creative ability in thinking that will eventually lead to a new discovery and achieving the type of creativity that they want. The essay will provide a lot of techniques in which the writer narrowed down from various journal articles and by discussion from a few creative experts.

In section 1, the writer of the essay focused on the formal definition of what a creative technique is and what consists creativity. The essay outlines that there are three types of creativity in the processes of developing new ideas namely, humorous, typical and special creative ability. He also defined in using cognitive terms that creativity is a mental process involved in the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concept.

2. Developing Characters

– Another exercise is to figure out what kind of childhood your character had and a logical reason for them being the way they are. People are largely influenced by their childhood, and the schoolboy with a drunken father would grow up differently from the schoolboy with a loving family. This happens to be an underlying theme in literature, good versus bad parenting (e.g. The Wasp Factory).

– Try to define your character’s basic aim. There should be some sort of underlying purpose or goal. This is a good way to define the character’s personality. For example, a person who seeks power is likely to be manipulative and somewhat dishonest (e.g. Macbeth). A person who seeks only to do the right thing and be the best person they can be might give themselves a state of moral perfection (e.g. Chronicle of a Death Foretold).

Character development is as much work as planning and writing other aspects of your plot. Characters, as the vehicle for the plot and the reader, must be compelling. They must have your reader’s interest. A good way to help in this process of development is spending some time accessing the psychology of your characters. A good place to start is to do some of the following exercises:

3. Crafting Engaging Plots

The beginning of a story is what will make or break the rest of the story. It must grip the reader and make them want to read on. The characters’ current situation is always off balance, with everyday life being disrupted by some form of call to action. The call to action is an event out of the ordinary that makes the character act to achieve a goal. Every good story involves conflict and the call to action sets the conflict in motion. This is what is known as the inciting incident.

Crafting engaging plots is done through a solid understanding of what makes up the anatomy of a story. A story has a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is the line that defines where the characters were before the story starts. The end is much the opposite; it is the line that defines where the characters end up after the story has concluded. These are the two most important lines in a story. Everything between them is considered the middle.

People enjoy a good story, but few really have an understanding of the elements that work together to create a memorable tale. A plot is a chain of cause-and-effect events that happen to the characters. It is the most important element in a story, holding the entire story together. It is like a rope, if one strand is cut, then the whole thing falls apart.

4. Creating Vivid Settings

Always attempt to place characters in environments that will illuminate them. All too often students construct arbitrary settings merely to fulfill an assignment: a high school prom, a sports event, a university campus, even a science fiction convention. However, setting that is contrived or convenient is usually generic and unconvincing. Try to get characters into environments that will bring out their true nature. On occasion, this may mean that you construct a setting specifically to illuminate character: a villain in desperate straits may move from a palatial home to a slum, a dedicated teacher may do better work with delinquent children in a private home than in the public school system. Usually, however, the writer should be exploiting environments that are intrinsic to the scene to be played. Revise your concept of setting occasionally. The mood you wish to evoke in a scene can best be accomplished through the weather. This is a device employed quite often by movie makers who can very quickly and economically suggest a change of mood through rain, sun, mist, etc. The writer can do the same by selecting the appropriate weather. A further aspect of setting that should not be overlooked is the population of the setting with convincing secondary characters. This task was quite necessary for Tolkien once the hobbits had left the Shire, but it is one often shirked by writers. Setting, as it has already been said, is best revealed through the behavior of the character and interaction between character and environment. By devising secondary characters who are at home in the setting and having them interact with your protagonist, you can often reveal setting quite naturally.

5. Enhancing Writing Style

1. Measure on different styles of prose. 2. Is your purpose to write clearly and efficiently? Read your work out loud to ensure that you are making sense and getting to the point. Listen to the flow of the words and the types of sentences you have used. Explore the impact of varying sentence units using coordination and subordination. Are you getting your point across in a few words? Or are you discovering more to it than you first thought? Using more complex sentences can draw a reader further into your argument or discussion. In doing so, consider the balance of sentence types in developing a paragraph. Do not bombard a reader with long complex sentences or succumb to an easier path of simple verb at the beginning sentences. Variety is the key. 3. Do you want to paint a picture with your words? If you see your writing as an artistic process, then stating the facts may not always be enough. While it is important for any writing to have the facts to support arguments, the manner in which you can put this information across may determine whether or not the reader fully comprehends the point you are trying to make. If it is a complex issue, employing an analogy to illustrate it can prove invaluable for both you and the reader. So consider all the tools available to make your writing more vivid and interesting. This may also involve aiming your writing at being more persuasive, a tactic used in law courts throughout the world. Use structured arguments and sell your case. While this may not be for everyone, there is always an opportunity to present an alternative viewpoint in our critical analysis based essays. So why not make your reader think that little bit harder?