Creative Writing

Choose Your Own Creative Writing Adventure

Creative writing can be an outlet for personal expression, a hobby, an entertainment medium, a way to make a living or a combination of all three. Creative writing can take many forms – books, screenplays, poetry and prose, short stories – the possibilities are endless and there is almost always guaranteed to be an audience for any type of creative writing an author can pen.

Personal Expression

Creative writing begins for most people at a very young age, from mere scribbles to clumsy poetry to short stories in a school assignment. It is a way to take what is inside and put it in a word form that communicates meaning to an audience. Many people write in journals and then later on refer to those journals when seeking ideas for professional works because, often, creative writing mirrors real life feelings, memories and experiences.

Creative writing can also reflect the dreams and imaginations of the creative works author. From fantasy and magic to science fiction and more, creative writing has an appeal that will reach people with similar thoughts and ideas. Books are perhaps the most well-known form of creative writing, however, many potential books never reach publication, but rather stay trapped in notebooks and folders, never to reach an audience, which may be the author’s intent. Thus, creative writing has only the meaning an author chooses to put into it.

Instruction

While it is often believed that creative writing is an inborn talent, that is not necessarily so. Certain forms of creative writing demand a specific pace and style and these elements can be taught by other, successful creative writers or teachers who have mastered the art of the written word. Although having a natural propensity for writing will help, it does not necessarily guarantee success when creative writing is pursued as an occupation. Technical ability also counts for a large part of increasing an author’s chances for success.

Entertainment Value

Creative writing takes on many forms. Poetry is a well-known form of creative writing and one of the oldest. This may include songs, prose, haiku, ballads and even stories set in poetical form, among others. Screenplays in and of themselves are a form of creative writing, although many are based on books. The tangible value of being able to organize one’s thoughts into an accepted and publishable form cannot be emphasized enough, as there are certain genres of creative writing that demand the excellence of instruction, such as screenplays.

Although science fiction is a marketable form of creative writing, works are more readily accepted when they reflect genuine human emotions and experiences. William Shakespeare was known not for the originality of his stories, but his ability to write them in a way that appeals to every person at the most basic levels – love, hatred, and jealousy.

Not all creative writing is intended for public consumption, however, and an author may be content to simply put away the works and keep them as a private memoir or show them to a select group of people. Creative writing is, at its very basic foundation, a personal expression and that means that any form the author chooses to give to it is the correct one for what the author intended.