Creative writing, known to many as literature, is the process of creating content. Being creative is the ability to create content, to imagine. It is also seen as production and imaginative, as well as “characterized by expression and originality.” This means creative writing is expressing ideas and emotions through artistic writing.
For many generations, people have been using creative writing to pass information and entertain. The primary goal of creative writing is to entertain and share emotions, more that information. Since all written works go through a creative process, one can say that all of them are creative pieces. It is true; however, informative writing has distinctive variations with creative writing, especially in terms of delivery and purpose.
Creative writing involves the creation of events, scenes, and characters. It can lead to the creation of whole new different worlds. That is why fiction is one of the major forms of the creative world. In fiction, anything is possible. As long as it leads the reader to suspense, it has achieved its goal of entertaining, informing, and evoking a specific emotion. It is a way through which authors pass their ideas about a particular state, condition, or environment by creating content around it.
The simplest definition of fiction is invented stories. They are make-believe stories based on actual or imaginative events. Fiction writing can range from short stories to fables, vignettes, plays, and novels. The writer may base their stories on people or situations they met in real life. However, the characters in the story and the experiences they go through are not real. Characters in such works can be anything; human beings, animals, and even objects. It is all about making readers believe these things can do staff that otherwise are not possible in real life.
Fiction is one of the most significant forms of creative writing. It is a written form that describes, explains, and even sometimes informs about certain things indirectly. A writer has to be very imaginative and go beyond their normal thinking to expound on an idea. The best references for such works begin with personal commitment, hard work, and unquestionable writing skills. Anyone can be a writer, but very few can make it as great fiction writers. Screenplays and novels like science fiction take a long time and great imagination to create. Note, however, that even fiction work should have a goal, and it needs to convince the reader that what they are looking at is a possibility, also if it is not.
To write great fiction stories, there are certain elements one must be aware of. Consider the following.
Creative writing begins with planning for the people, animals, of objects that will feature in and be the story. As they go through, readers will start identifying with the characters from what they say, think, or how they act. According to E.M Forster, one of the best selling English Novelists, a style can be either flat or round. Flat characters are those that only play supportive roles in the story. They don’t have any vital part, but a few with a little description of them. A flat character can also be a stock character, a stereotypical figure that a reader can easily recognize. For instance, readers will never fail to acknowledge a mad scientist or an even evil aunt.
That means round characters are the major characters of the story. They are round because they often play the lead roles, and the story revolves around them. They are considered complex, dimensional, and well-developed. The story is about them. The reader will see them developing or changing as they go through specific experiences.
In a discussion, readers and writers can also describe characters as static of developing. Static characters are those that stay the same throughout the story. If the story started with them as children, they would remain so until the end. Developing characters, majorly round characters, grow with the story. The change can be small or large, but it will be noticed through their experiences.
Writers need to be very careful when selecting characters, especially those from outside their roles. It is vital to carry out comprehensive research before picking what to do with the characters. It should also be true for actors with illnesses.
Where and when does the story take place? Answering this sets the environment for fiction stories. Setting includes immediate surroundings of the characters ( like probes in a scene), the time of day, weather conditions, time of the yeas, historical period, and a geographical location. The setting can also stand in as the main challenge characters must face, like a tornado or flood. As a writer, it is important you write about familiar places of things you have well researched on.
Every story must be delivered in an orderly manner. The plot describes such an order. It usually follows a specific structure known as Freytag’s Pyramid. This structure is identified by a German playwright, Gustav Freytag, from the 1800s. The pyramid has five categories; Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. These parts explain the whole story in the shortest words.
There must be a struggle between two entities in a fiction story. Every story has the main character (protagonist) and the different character (antagonist). The two are adversaries, and the protagonist struggles through a situation set by the antagonist. There are six kinds of conflicts:
- Character against character
- Character against nature
- Character against society/culture
- Character against machine/technology
- Character against him/herself
The first-person and third-person point-of-views are the two significant points of view uses in stories. The first-person means the character will narrate the stories themselves. It uses “I,” bringing the reader in closer contact with the story. In the third-person point of view, the character is not the narrator. It gives the narrator the ability to be various characters because they are talking about someone or something else.
Many people confuse the theme with the plot of the story. The theme is major the moral of the story. It can be a general universal meaning understood by readers of all types. Some of the common themes include love, circle of life, hate, prejudice, and greed, among others.
1043 Words
Mar 31, 2020
3 Pages