- What is creative writing?
Creative writing is a form of writing that emphasizes originality, imagination, and self-expression. Unlike academic or technical writing, which focuses on conveying factual information or instructions, creative writing allows the writer to explore ideas, emotions, and stories in an artistic and often unconventional way.
- What points to consider while writing creatively?
Here are some notes I jotted down as I completed my free course at open university in level 1 of creative writing.
The main elements to focus on as a write are:
1) Characters
2) Setting
3) Scene / Plot
4) Protagonist and antagonist
- A conflict/opposite change in character's personality can lead you to a story's plot
- Create a character from scratch, give him passion and create a person, alive human
- Autobiographical approach/Fission approach: Author projects himself in some manner with the person he's creating, in terms of personality, looks or even background plot.
- Biological approach: Use people around you or you've seen or been with as an inspiration to your fictional characters
- Traits from one person and conflicts from other create a beautiful blended personality
- Summarizing a character can be executed in two ways, FPP by the character himself or TPP by the narrator or another character from the story.
- Apperance of a character can tell or deceive readers about or from him. It shows external features and movements. Instead of dramatic, keep appearance detailed.
- A character portrait straight which is unique can be difficult to craft. One way around is metaphorical description. Other is narrate him clinging to the arrangements in his surroundings, portraying him. Such as a dressing table with no comb, an eau de parfum from france, moustache scizzor, beard oil bottle, wiped clean as new mirror, can outline a nearly bald middle-aged gentleman.
- Set a scene were a character is in series of motions, living a plot. Include voice, appearance and action to make a scene alive.
- You cannot establish a background in a scene without stalling it. Imagine a photo not a video.
- Setting --> Character --> Plot
- Setting can be from real world or imaginary
- To describe a setting, imagine its apt photo and jot down even the most minute details in it.
- Don't use any overtly sentiment language. Let the details speak for themselves.
- A protagonist or an antagonist doesn't have to be objective. It can be abstract. Such as winter, sunshine, an animal.
- To avoid going deep in the surroundings and focus on a character, defamiliarize his immediate surroundings
- Special effects add to the realism and engagement of the readers. Like in movies, shadows, lighting, props, abstract clues such as visual details, sounds, smell, can depict a certain tone or theme of the story, the similar can be described in words.
- A setting can enhance or build the tone of a story. Stormy night, dark forest, morning at a beach, an evening bus journey watching the sunset.
- One can use verbs, adjectives and adverbs to drive a reader towards a certain mood.
- Descriptions of special effects doesn't have to be always long. One can keep them, short, to the point, yet effective.
- Foreshadowing is an art of steering a reader's expectations with the help of setting. It should not be subtle. It has to be a bit complex, perhaps metaphorical or sarcastic.
- Until you are not implying a repeated action, mention the time of the day when the action or plot is taking place in when introducing the setting. In the evening/ morning/ night/ midnight are some generic examples. Creativity here is your part. Go with dusk, crepuscule, darkness, dew drops on leaves and other adjectives you can substitute.
- You can end a story by describing a resulted setting. It creates a lingering effect on readers. For example details from an abandoned battlefield where soldiers but none having guns are clearing bodies from grey mud with blood ponds, rusted tripmines, wet ammunition boxes; denoting that the war is over. Similarly, a detective about to light his cigar, leaves his armchair abruptly without saying anything, rushes towards the bedside table of the bedroom upstairs, hints realisation of a clue, can be a wonderful ending for the first book of your murder mystery series.
- Adhering to the principle of show, not tell, present people by delineating their environment.