Creative writing

Creative writing displays imagination and often evokes emotions in readers. Creative writing may be fictional with a setting, characters, and a plot. Common forms of creative writing are novels, novellas, poetry, plays, and short stories. Feature stories, biographies, and memoirs may also be considered creative writing because they carefully craft a narrative and characters, even though these characters may be real people. However, persuasive essays, academic writing, news articles, professional communications, and blogs are never considered creative writing. Emails, social media posts, and personal communications also fall outside the bounds of creative writing.   

Background

While creative writing may differ in form and structure, it employs at least some of these elements: characters, dialogue, conflict, plot, climax, resolution, setting, theme, and tone. Characters are people or animals that a writer uses to establish a conflict and convey a theme. The words that the characters speak are called dialogue and are usually enclosed in quotation marks, as in “I did what I thought was best.”  

Conflict refers to a challenge that a character or characters face and will or will not overcome. An example of a character facing a conflict is one who has lived through a war and now has to combat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Another example is a story set in the future when the characters must overcome the effects of climate change.

Plot refers to the sequence of events in a story. In J. D. Salinger’s famous novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Holden Caulfield is expelled from his college preparatory high school. Holden struggles to accept the adult world because he perceives adults as being phony. He wanders through New York City, meeting characters who represent everything he hates about the world. He grieves for his younger brother, Allie, and visits his little sister, Phoebe. After he gets into a physical fight with his old roommate, he visits his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini. When the teacher behaves inappropriately, Holden returns home.

The climax of a novel occurs when the protagonist confronts the conflict. Holden’s visit with Phoebe is the climax of The Catcher in the Rye. When he tells her that he is going to run away, she packs her bags, but he will not let her come with him. He takes her to the zoo instead and winds up in tears as he watches her on the carousel. He realizes that it is time for him to be responsible and accountable for his behavior. The resolution is the result of the climax. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s returning home is the resolution.   

The setting refers to where and when a story takes place, such as in a small town in modern times. In a historical novel, the setting may be a place that existed hundreds of years ago. The famous author Jane Austen’s novels take place in England at the turn of the nineteenth century.  

The theme of a story refers to its underlying message or central idea. For example, survival is a common theme in dystopian literature. This type of literature takes place at a terrible time, such as after a plague has wiped out most of humankind. Coming-of-age is also a common theme. Creative writing with this theme focuses on a protagonist becoming an adult.

Tone refers to the author’s attitude toward a subject. For example, Robert Frost’s tone in his 1923 poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is thoughtful and calm, as in these lines:

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.    

The tone of Shakespeare’s play King Lear (1608) is angry and hopeless. Lear decides to step down from the throne and divide the kingdom among his three daughters. When his beloved daughters betray him, he becomes enraged and eventually goes insane

Overview

Novels, short stories, poetry, and plays are common types of creative writing. Novels are books that are fictional, or imaginary. A novel is essentially a long story with characters, a plot, a conflict or several conflicts, a climax, a resolution, and a theme. While many novels are about eighty thousand words, some are two hundred thousand words or longer. Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel War and Peace (1867) is more than five hundred thousand words. While variations exist in the length of novels, they must be at least forty thousand words, or about two hundred pages, to be considered a novel; otherwise, it is a novella.

Novels are of different genres, or types. Science fiction, horror, fantasy, romance, mysteries, historical fiction, and realistic fiction are genres, along with many others. The famous author Stephen King has written novels in the genres of science fiction and psychological thrillers. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins is an example of dystopian fiction.

Short stories are similar to novels in that they have characters, a plot, a conflict, a climax, a resolution, and a theme. However, short stories are much shorter, usually between five thousand and ten thousand words. Famous short stories include “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson; “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe; and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. A story with fewer than one thousand words is called flash fiction.

Poems are typically written in verse form in which words are used creatively to create an impression or a meaning. In general, poems are much shorter than other types of creative writing and are more abstract. Poetry may rhyme and break into stanzas of a certain length. Poems usually follow a rhythm or pattern. However, poetry does not have to have either of these characteristics, although some types of poetry have rules. For example, haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that has three lines with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five in the third line.   

Most poems use figurative language such as metaphors, similes, and personification. A metaphor uses one thing to symbolize another without using the words “like” or “as.” “Love is a rose” is a metaphor. A simile is also a comparison but uses the words “like” or “as.” “Love is like a rose” is a simile. Personification is giving human qualities to something that is not human. In these lines from William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807), the narrator personifies daffodils:

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

A play is creative writing that is meant to be performed in front of an audience. It has characters and dialogue. Most plays are divided into acts and scenes. An act is a large part of a play, while scenes are small parts within an act. Like novels, plays are divided into genres such as tragedies and comedies.   

Bibliography

Bean, Laura. “How Creative Writing Can Increase Students’ Resilience.” Greater Good Magazine, 30 Oct. 2018, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how‗creative‗writing‗can‗increase‗students‗resilience. Accessed 24 May 2024.

Bell, Julia, and Paul Magrs, editors. The Creative Writing Coursebook: 40 Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction and Poetry. Macmillan UK. 2019/

Frank, Sandra Dickson. Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing. Writer’s Digest Books, 1982.  

Garisch, Dawn. “Creative Writing Can Help Improve One’s Health: A South African Study Shows How.” The Conversation, 14 Dec. 2023, theconversation.com/creative-writing-can-help-improve-ones-health-a-south-african-study-shows-how-219132. Accessed 24 May 2024.

Kramer, Lindsay. “Creative Writing 101: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started.” Grammarly, 27 July 2021, www.grammarly.com/blog/creative-writing/. Accessed 24 May 2024.

Woolf, Virginia. The Art of Fiction—A Collection of Essays. Read & Co., 2012.