CREATIVE WRITING

Welcome to this lecture headed “CREATIVE WRITING”. We will be discussing all about creative writing. Enjoy your lecture.

Creating Writing is any writing that is above the limits of standard professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, characteristically known by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the utilization of literary tropes or with assorted traditions of poetry and poetics.

As a result of the sloppiness of the definition, it is likely for writing like feature stories to be measured as creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, due to the fact that the content of features is specially focused on narrative and character development.

Both fictional and non-fictional writings fall into this category. For example: novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the scholarly setting, creative writing is basically alienated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an innovative style, as opposed to using a mock-up of already existing categories like crime or horror.

Writing for the screen and stage-screenwriting and play writing – are frequently taught discretely, but also fit under the creative writing category.

Creative writing can strictly be taken as any writing of original composition. In this sense, creative writing is a more modern and process-oriented name for what has been conventionally known as literature, including the variety of its types.

Language to define creative writing

Marksberry notes:

“Witty and LaBrant…[say creative writing] is a work of art of any type of writing at any time above all in the service of such requirements as:

the requirement for keeping records of noteworthy experience,

the requirement of sharing experience with an interested group, and

the requirement for free individual expression which contributes to mental and physical health.”

Creative writing in academia

Unlike its academic equivalent of writing classes that teach students to compose work based on the rules of the language, creative writing is believed to focus on students’ self-expression.  

While creative writing as an educational subject is frequently available at a few stages during ones education or maybe the most sophisticated form of creative writing as an educational course in the university.

Following an adaptation of university education in the post-war era, creative writing has increasingly gained prominence in the university setting.

In the UK, the first formal creative writing program was established as a Master of Arts degree at the University of East Anglia in 1970 by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson. With the beginning of formal creative writing programs:

“For the first time in the sad and charming history of literature, for the first time in the glorious and dreadful history of the world, the writer was welcome in the academic place. If the mind could be honored there, why not the imagination?”

Programs of study

Creative Writing programs are basically available to writers from the high school level all the way through graduate school/university and adult education.

Conventionally these programs are connected with the English departments in the particular schools, but this idea has been challenged in modern time as more creative writing programs have gyrated into their own department.

Most Creative Writing degrees for undergraduates in college are Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees (BFA).

A few continue to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the terminal degree in the field.

At one time uncommon, PhD. programs are turning into more rampant in the field, as more writers try to bridge the gap between academic study and artistic hobby.

Creative writers classically choose an emphasis in either fiction or poetry, and they normally begin with short stories or simple poems.

They then make a schedule based on this emphasis including literature classes, education classes and workshop classes to reinforce their skills and techniques.

Although they have their own programs of study in the fields of film and theatre, screenwriting and playwriting have turn more popular in creative writing programs, since creative writing programs try to work more intimately with film and theatre programs in addition to English programs.

Creative writing students are encouraged to be involved in extracurricular writing-based activities, like publishing clubs, school-based literary magazines or newspapers, writing contests, writing colonies or conventions, and extensive education classes.

Creative writing as well takes place outside of formal university or school institutions.

In some countries like New Zealand, creative writing courses at NZIBS are well-liked because they are home-study (worldwide) to diploma level.

In 2015 an extra service was added at NZIBS whereby creative writers obtain help to put their stories on Amazon.com Therefore, earning royalties can be the result of the study programme.

Creative writing in the classroom setting

Creative writing is normally taught in a workshop format instead of in seminar style. In workshops students normally submit original work for peer assessment.

Students as well format a writing method through the process of writing and re-writing.

Argument in academia

Creative writing is taken by a few academics (mostly in the USA) to be an extension of the English discipline, although it is taught around the world in a lot of languages.

The English discipline is conventionally seen as the critical study of literary forms, not the creation of literary forms.

A few academics view creative writing as a challenge to this tradition. In the UK and Australia, USA and the rest of the world, creative writing is taken as a discipline in its own right, not a subsidiary of any other discipline.

“To say that the creative has no part in education is to argue that a university is not universal.”

Those who support creative writing programs either as section or detached from the English discipline, argue for the academic worth of the creative writing practice. They argue that creative writing sharpens the students’ abilities to plainly articulate their thoughts.

They additionally argue that creative writing as well requires an in-depth study of fictional terms and mechanisms in order to make them applicable to the writer’s own work to promote development.

These critical analysis skills are additionally used in other literary study outside the creative writing field.

Indeed the process of creative writing, the crafting of a deliberate and innovative piece, is taken by a few to be experience in creative problem solving.

It is as well believed by a few in the academic world that the term “creative writing” can include “creative reading” which is the reading of something not naturally understood to be a creative piece as though it were creative.

This extended concept additionally addresses the idea of “found” materials being of literary value under a recently allotted meaning. Examples of this might be product assembly directions being taken as “found poetry.”

Irrespective of the large number of academic creative writing programs all over the world, a lot of people argue that creative writing cannot be taught. 

Louis Menand explores the issue in an article for the New Yorker in which he quotes Kay Boyle, the director of creative writing program at San Francisco State for sixteen years, who said, “all creative-writing programs ought to be abolished by law.”

One author argued in a Modern Scholar course on creative writing that occasionally authors borrow character traits from real people, but that in the creative process, authors change these characters into exceptional creations with the use of their imaginations:

I think that writing, like love and war, is not completely 100% high-pitched clean moral act. Our job as writers is to incarcerate the truth about life. We refract it via a fictional lens and put it on the page so that it becomes truth on the page.

Creative writing is any form of writing which is written with the creativity of mind: fiction writing, poetry writing, and creative nonfiction writing and so on. The aim is to convey something, which can be feelings, thoughts, or emotions.

Instead of merely giving information or inciting the reader to make an action valuable to the writer, creative writing is written to amuse or educate someone, to spread consciousness about something or someone, or to basically express one’s thoughts.

There are two forms of creative writing:

Good creating writing

Bad Creative writing

Bad creative writing cannot impress the reader. You wouldn’t want to do that, would you? Therefore, it is essential as a novelist, a poet, a short-story writer, an essayist, a biographer or as an aspiring writer to perfect your craft.

When you write great fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, astonishing things can happen. Readers can’t put it down. The work you wrote becomes a smash hit. It becomes legendary. But you have to reach to that level… first.

The best way to increase your proficiency in creative writing is to write, write spontaneously, but it doesn’t just mean write whatever you want. There are specific things you must know first… it assists to begin with the right foot.

You must know:

how to write introduction to Creative Writing

Steps to writing a good Creative Writing

Know the difference between Creative Writing against technical Writing

The Elements of Stories

Poetry

You must know common mistakes Made by Creative Writers

Tips to help beginners write good creative piece

Do a few short exercises to stretch your writing muscles

Many new creative writers discover that doing the washing up or weeding the garden quickly looks appealing compared to the effort of sitting down and putting words onto the page.

Force yourself to get through these early doubts, and it actually will get easier. Try to get into the habit of writing on a day to day basis even if it’s just for ten minutes.If you’re stuck for ideas, take a notebook all over the place and write down your observations.

You’ll obtain a few great lines of dialogue by keeping your ears open on the bus or in cafes, and a strange phrase may be prompted by something you see or smell.Find out the time of day when you’re mostly creative 

For the majority of writers, this is first thing in the morning – before all the demands of the day push around for attention.

Others write well late at night, after the rest of the family has gone to bed. Don’t be afraid to try out different times!Don’t agonize over getting it right.

All writers need to revise and edit their work. It’s unusual that a story, scene or even a sentence comes out flawlessly the first time.

Once you’ve finished the first draft, leave the piece for a few days – then come back to it fresh, with a red pen in hand.

If you know there are problems with your story but can’t pinpoint them; ask another writer to read through it and offer feedback.

Every now and then, writers can end up feeling that their writing is a task, something that “must” be done, or something to put off over for as long as possible.

If your stratagem appears wildly far-fetched, your characters bore you to tears and you’re convinced that a five-year old with a crayon could write better prose, give yourself a break.

Begin an entirely fresh project, something which is simply for fun. Write a poem or a 60-word “mini saga”. Merely finishing a small piece can assist if you’re bogged down in a longer story.

Thanks for reaching to this point marking the end of this lecture.

Your Lecture Master:

Mst. Ugonwanne Joshua