Elements of creative writing
I've been hosting creative writing workshops for more than a decade and I've manage to distill some useful information n the process. See what you think.
The purpose of fiction to create an emotional journey in the reader, with highs and lows, delights and fears, and ultimately a sense of satisfaction – a restoration of the emotional balance.
There are three stages to creative writing.
1. The first stage is creative. This is the stage when we write directly from the heart. If your purpose is personal therapy rather than story telling, that’s where the process can stop. But if we want to get published, we have to remember that when we are telling a story it is not our own emotional journey that is important but the emotional journey we can generate in the reader.
2. The second stage is reading your own work. After we have produced our work, we have to detach ourselves from our work and read it as if it was written by someone else. (We have the skill to do this – whatever genre of fiction we like, we can tell the difference between a good book and a bad one.) When we do the reading we have to remember to be a reader, and not a critic. The reader is on the side of the story – the project – and just wants it to be a good as possible. The critic wants to bring you personally down and tell you are a failure. The critic is a psychological nuisance, not useful to the creative process. But the cool-headed objective reader is essential.
3. The third stage is rewriting. Now we knock the product into shape. We re-engage with the work, but in a more conscious way – like an artist with a roughly hewn lump of rock, to polish and hone first so we can see what we meant, and secondly so that other people can see what we meant. (The writer’s job is to make themselves understood. The reader has no duty to understand the writer. The writer is not paying them. The reader is paying the writer.)
When we are writing a story, we need:
Character. Character comes first. Without a good character, with clear desires and needs and motivations, you cannot have conflict, and conflict is essential to all drama.
Plot. The plot is generated by conflict – the character had to overcome a series of obstacles and arrive at an emotionally satisfactory resolution of story. (Emotionally satisfactory doesn’t have to mean happy).
Point of View. This is the window on to your tale, and needs to be consistent. The POV you choose will make all the difference to how your story turns out. Imagine the story of Eden told from the point of view of the snake. Or from the point of view of Eve.
Showing and telling. You might have been told always to show and never to tell. This is not strictly correct. Every story has to be delivered in a mixture of telling (which is straight narrative) and showing, which involves description and dialogue.
Style. The only strict rule of style is that our words have to be useful, in terms of moving the story along or revealing character. Ideally, they should also be ornamental. The worst literary style is where we have ornament without usefulness. Simple is good, but think of the simplicity of good poetry rather than the simplicity of journalism. To help your reader ‘see’, use specific not general words (‘silver birch’ not ‘tree’; ‘sparrow’ not ‘bird’).
Every writer has to master the basic essentials, just as every architect needs a roof and a front door on their house, however elaborate and unusual the structure. In good fiction, the essential rules look like natural developments in the story. This leads us to think the best fiction is good because is avoids the rules – but this is an illusion. It is merely that good writers conceal the structure more successfully.
The purpose of fiction to create an emotional journey in the reader, with highs and lows, delights and fears, and ultimately a sense of satisfaction – a restoration of the emotional balance.
There are three stages to creative writing.
1. The first stage is creative. This is the stage when we write directly from the heart. If your purpose is personal therapy rather than story telling, that’s where the process can stop. But if we want to get published, we have to remember that when we are telling a story it is not our own emotional journey that is important but the emotional journey we can generate in the reader.
2. The second stage is reading your own work. After we have produced our work, we have to detach ourselves from our work and read it as if it was written by someone else. (We have the skill to do this – whatever genre of fiction we like, we can tell the difference between a good book and a bad one.) When we do the reading we have to remember to be a reader, and not a critic. The reader is on the side of the story – the project – and just wants it to be a good as possible. The critic wants to bring you personally down and tell you are a failure. The critic is a psychological nuisance, not useful to the creative process. But the cool-headed objective reader is essential.
3. The third stage is rewriting. Now we knock the product into shape. We re-engage with the work, but in a more conscious way – like an artist with a roughly hewn lump of rock, to polish and hone first so we can see what we meant, and secondly so that other people can see what we meant. (The writer’s job is to make themselves understood. The reader has no duty to understand the writer. The writer is not paying them. The reader is paying the writer.)
When we are writing a story, we need:
Character. Character comes first. Without a good character, with clear desires and needs and motivations, you cannot have conflict, and conflict is essential to all drama.
Plot. The plot is generated by conflict – the character had to overcome a series of obstacles and arrive at an emotionally satisfactory resolution of story. (Emotionally satisfactory doesn’t have to mean happy).
Point of View. This is the window on to your tale, and needs to be consistent. The POV you choose will make all the difference to how your story turns out. Imagine the story of Eden told from the point of view of the snake. Or from the point of view of Eve.
Showing and telling. You might have been told always to show and never to tell. This is not strictly correct. Every story has to be delivered in a mixture of telling (which is straight narrative) and showing, which involves description and dialogue.
Style. The only strict rule of style is that our words have to be useful, in terms of moving the story along or revealing character. Ideally, they should also be ornamental. The worst literary style is where we have ornament without usefulness. Simple is good, but think of the simplicity of good poetry rather than the simplicity of journalism. To help your reader ‘see’, use specific not general words (‘silver birch’ not ‘tree’; ‘sparrow’ not ‘bird’).
Every writer has to master the basic essentials, just as every architect needs a roof and a front door on their house, however elaborate and unusual the structure. In good fiction, the essential rules look like natural developments in the story. This leads us to think the best fiction is good because is avoids the rules – but this is an illusion. It is merely that good writers conceal the structure more successfully.
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