Creative Primer

What is Creative Writing? A Key Piece of the Writer’s Toolbox

Brooks Manley

As we delve into the world of writing, it becomes apparent that not all writing is the same. One form that stands out due to its unique approach and focus on imagination is creative writing. This section will explore the question, “ what is creative writing ” and highlight its key characteristics.

Definition of Creative Writing

Creative writing is a form of writing that extends beyond the bounds of regular professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature. It is characterized by its emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or poetic techniques to express ideas in an original and imaginative way.

Creative writing can take on various forms such as poetry, novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, and more. It’s a way for writers to express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a creative, often symbolic, way. It’s about using the power of words to transport readers into a world created by the writer.

Key Characteristics of Creative Writing

Creative writing is marked by several defining characteristics, each working to create a distinct form of expression:

1. Imagination and Creativity: Creative writing is all about harnessing one’s creativity and imagination to create an engaging and compelling piece of work. It allows writers to explore different scenarios, characters, and worlds that may not exist in reality.

2. Emotional Engagement: Creative writing often evokes strong emotions in the reader. It aims to make the reader feel something — whether it’s happiness, sorrow, excitement, or fear.

3. Originality: Creative writing values originality. It’s about presenting familiar things in new ways or exploring ideas that are less conventional.

4. Use of Literary Devices: Creative writing frequently employs literary devices such as metaphors, similes, personification, and others to enrich the text and convey meanings in a more subtle, layered manner.

5. Focus on Aesthetics: The beauty of language and the way words flow together is important in creative writing. The aim is to create a piece that’s not just interesting to read, but also beautiful to hear when read aloud.

Remember, creative writing is not just about producing a work of art. It’s also a means of self-expression and a way to share one’s perspective with the world. Whether you’re considering it as a hobby or contemplating a career in it, understanding the nature and characteristics of creative writing can help you hone your skills and create more engaging pieces. For more insights into creative writing, check out our articles on creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree and is a degree in creative writing worth it .

Styles of Creative Writing

To fully understand creative writing , one must be aware of the various styles involved. Creative writing explores a multitude of genres, each with its own unique characteristics and techniques. The styles we’ll explore in this section are poetry , short stories , novels , screenplays , and plays .

Poetry is a form of creative writing that uses expressive language to evoke emotions and ideas. Poets often employ rhythm, rhyme, and other poetic devices to create pieces that are deeply personal and impactful. Poems can vary greatly in length, style, and subject matter, making this a versatile and dynamic form of creative writing.

Short Stories

Short stories are another common style of creative writing. These are brief narratives that typically revolve around a single event or idea. Despite their length, short stories can provide a powerful punch, using precise language and tight narrative structures to convey a complete story in a limited space.

Novels represent a longer form of narrative creative writing. They usually involve complex plots, multiple characters, and various themes. Writing a novel requires a significant investment of time and effort; however, the result can be a rich and immersive reading experience.

Screenplays

Screenplays are written works intended for the screen, be it television, film, or online platforms. They require a specific format, incorporating dialogue and visual descriptions to guide the production process. Screenwriters must also consider the practical aspects of filmmaking, making this an intricate and specialized form of creative writing. For those interested in this style, understanding creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree can provide useful insights.

Writing for the theater is another specialized form of creative writing. Plays, like screenplays, combine dialogue and action, but they also require an understanding of the unique dynamics of the theatrical stage. Playwrights must think about the live audience and the physical space of the theater when crafting their works.

Each of these styles offers unique opportunities for creativity and expression. Whether you’re drawn to the concise power of poetry, the detailed storytelling of novels, or the visual language of screenplays and plays, there’s a form of creative writing that will suit your artistic voice. The key is to explore, experiment, and find the style that resonates with you. For those looking to spark their creativity, our article on creative writing prompts offers a wealth of ideas to get you started.

Importance of Creative Writing

Understanding what is creative writing involves recognizing its value and significance. Engaging in creative writing can provide numerous benefits, including developing creativity and imagination , enhancing communication skills , and exploring emotions and ideas .

Developing Creativity and Imagination

Creative writing serves as a fertile ground for nurturing creativity and imagination. It encourages individuals to think outside the box, explore different perspectives, and create unique and original content. This can lead to improved problem-solving skills and a broader worldview, both of which can be beneficial in various aspects of life.

Through creative writing, one can build entire worlds, create characters, and weave complex narratives, all of which are products of a creative mind and vivid imagination. This can be especially beneficial for those seeking creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

Enhancing Communication Skills

Creative writing can also play a crucial role in honing communication skills. It demands clarity, precision, and a strong command of language. This helps to improve vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, making it easier to express thoughts and ideas effectively.

Moreover, creative writing encourages empathy as writers often need to portray a variety of characters from different backgrounds and perspectives. This can lead to a better understanding of people and improved interpersonal communication skills.

Exploring Emotions and Ideas

One of the most profound aspects of creative writing is its ability to provide a safe space for exploring emotions and ideas. It serves as an outlet for thoughts and feelings, allowing writers to express themselves in ways that might not be possible in everyday conversation.

Writing can be therapeutic, helping individuals process complex emotions, navigate difficult life events, and gain insight into their own experiences and perceptions. It can also be a means of self-discovery, helping writers to understand themselves and the world around them better.

In conclusion, the importance of creative writing extends beyond the realm of literature and academia. It fosters creativity, enhances communication skills, and provides a platform for self-expression and exploration. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting out, the benefits of creative writing are vast and varied. For those interested in developing their creative writing skills, check out our articles on creative writing prompts and how to teach creative writing . If you’re considering a career in this field, you might find our article on is a degree in creative writing worth it helpful.

Steps to Start Creative Writing

Creative writing can seem daunting to beginners, but with the right approach, anyone can start their journey into this creative field. Here are some steps to help you start with creative writing .

Finding Inspiration

The first step in creative writing is finding inspiration . Inspiration can come from anywhere and anything. Observe the world around you, listen to conversations, explore different cultures, and delve into various topics of interest.

Reading widely can also be a significant source of inspiration. Read different types of books, articles, and blogs. Discover what resonates with you and sparks your imagination.

For structured creative prompts, visit our list of creative writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing.

Planning Your Piece

Once you have an idea, the next step is to plan your piece . Start by outlining the main points, characters, settings, and plot. This can serve as a roadmap to guide your writing process.

Remember, a plan doesn’t have to be rigid. It’s a flexible guideline that can be adjusted as you delve deeper into your writing. The primary purpose is to provide direction and prevent writer’s block.

Writing Your First Draft

After planning your piece, you can start writing your first draft . This is where you give life to your ideas and breathe life into your characters.

Don’t worry about making it perfect in the first go. The first draft is about getting your ideas down on paper. You can always refine and polish your work later.

And if you don’t have a great place to write that first draft, consider a journal for writing .

Editing and Revising Your Work

The final step in the creative writing process is editing and revising your work . This is where you fine-tune your piece, correct grammatical errors, and improve sentence structure and flow.

Editing is also an opportunity to enhance your storytelling. You can add more descriptive details, develop your characters further, and make sure your plot is engaging and coherent.

Remember, writing is a craft that improves with practice. Don’t be discouraged if your first few pieces don’t meet your expectations. Keep writing, keep learning, and most importantly, enjoy the creative process.

For more insights on creative writing, check out our articles on how to teach creative writing or creative writing activities for kids.

Tips to Improve Creative Writing Skills

Understanding what is creative writing is the first step. But how can one improve their creative writing skills? Here are some tips that can help.

Reading Widely

Reading is a vital part of becoming a better writer. By immersing oneself in a variety of genres, styles, and authors, one can gain a richer understanding of language and storytelling techniques. Different authors have unique voices and methods of telling stories, which can serve as inspiration for your own work. So, read widely and frequently!

Practicing Regularly

Like any skill, creative writing improves with practice. Consistently writing — whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly — helps develop your writing style and voice. Using creative writing prompts can be a fun way to stimulate your imagination and get the words flowing.

Attending Writing Workshops and Courses

Formal education such as workshops and courses can offer structured learning and expert guidance. These can provide invaluable insights into the world of creative writing, from understanding plot development to character creation. If you’re wondering is a degree in creative writing worth it, these classes can also give you a taste of what studying creative writing at a higher level might look like.

Joining Writing Groups and Communities

Being part of a writing community can provide motivation, constructive feedback, and a sense of camaraderie. These groups often hold regular meetings where members share their work and give each other feedback. Plus, it’s a great way to connect with others who share your passion for writing.

Seeking Feedback on Your Work

Feedback is a crucial part of improving as a writer. It offers a fresh perspective on your work, highlighting areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Whether it’s from a writing group, a mentor, or even friends and family, constructive criticism can help refine your writing.

Remember, becoming a proficient writer takes time and patience. So, don’t be discouraged by initial challenges. Keep writing, keep learning, and most importantly, keep enjoying the process. Who knows, your passion for creative writing might even lead to creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree . Happy writing!

Brooks Manley

Brooks Manley

article on creative writing

Creative Primer  is a resource on all things journaling, creativity, and productivity. We’ll help you produce better ideas, get more done, and live a more effective life.

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Creative Writing 101: Everything You Need to Get Started

Lindsay Kramer

Creative writing: You can take classes in it, you can earn a degree in it, but the only things you really need to do it are your creative thinking and writing tools. Creative writing is the act of putting your imagination on a page. It’s artistic expression in words; it’s writing without the constraints that come with other kinds of writing like persuasive or expository. 

Write with originality Grammarly helps you refine your word choice Write with Grammarly

What is creative writing?

Creative writing is writing meant to evoke emotion in a reader by communicating a theme. In storytelling (including literature, movies, graphic novels, creative nonfiction, and many video games), the theme is the central meaning the work communicates. 

Take the movie (and the novel upon which it’s based) Jaws , for instance. The story is about a shark that terrorizes a beach community and the men tasked with killing the shark. But the film’s themes include humanity’s desire to control nature, tradition vs. innovation, and how potential profit can drive people in power to make dangerous, even fatal, decisions. 

A theme isn’t the only factor that defines creative writing. Here are other components usually found in creative writing:

  • Connecting, or at least attempting to connect, with the reader’s emotions
  • Writing from a specific point of view
  • A narrative structure can be complex or simple and serves to shape how the reader interacts with the content.
  • Using imaginative and/or descriptive language

Creative writing typically uses literary devices like metaphors and foreshadowing to build a narrative and express the theme, but this isn’t a requirement. Neither is dialogue, though you’ll find it used in most works of fiction. Creative writing doesn’t have to be fictional, either. Dramatized presentations of true stories, memoirs, and observational humor pieces are all types of creative writing. 

What isn’t creative writing?

In contrast, research papers aren’t creative writing. Neither are analytical essays, persuasive essays , or other kinds of academic writing . Similarly, personal and professional communications aren’t considered creative writing—so your emails, social media posts, and official company statements are all firmly in the realm of non-creative writing. These kinds of writing convey messages, but they don’t express themes. Their goals are to inform and educate, and in some cases collect information from, readers. But even though they can evoke emotion in readers, that isn’t their primary goal. 

But what about things like blog posts? Or personal essays? These are broad categories, and specific pieces in these categories can be considered creative writing if they meet the criteria listed above. This blog post, for example, is not a piece of creative writing as it aims to inform, but a blog post that walks its reader through a first-person narrative of an event could be deemed creative writing. 

Types of creative writing

Creative writing comes in many forms. These are the most common:

Novels originated in the eighteenth century . Today, when people think of books, most think of novels. 

A novel is a fictional story that’s generally told in 60,000 to 100,000 words, though they can be as short as 40,000 words or go beyond 100,000. 

Stories that are too short to be novels, but can’t accurately be called short stories, are often referred to as novellas. Generally, a story between 10,000 and 40,000 words is considered a novella. You might also run into the term “ novelette ,” which is used to refer to stories that clock in between 7,500 and 19,000 words. 

Short stories

Short stories are fictional stories that fall generally between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Like novels, they tell complete stories and have at least one character, some sort of conflict, and at least one theme. 

When a story is less than 1,000 words, it’s categorized as a work of flash fiction.

Poetry can be hard to define because as a genre, it’s so open-ended. A poem doesn’t have to be any specific length. It doesn’t have to rhyme. There are many different kinds of poems from cultures all over the world, like sonnets, haikus, sestinas, blank verse, limericks, and free verse. 

The rules of poetry are generally flexible . . . unless you’re writing a specific type of poem, like a haiku , that has specific rules around the number of lines or structure. But while a poem isn’t required to conform to a specific length or formatting, or use perfect grammar , it does need to evoke its reader’s emotions, come from a specific point of view, and express a theme. 

And when you set a poem to music, you’ve got a song. 

Plays, TV scripts, and screenplays

Plays are meant to be performed on stage. Screenplays are meant to be made into films, and TV scripts are meant to be made into television programs. Scripts for videos produced for other platforms fit into this category as well. 

Plays, TV scripts, and screenplays have a lot in common with novels and short stories. They tell stories that evoke emotion and express themes. The difference is that they’re meant to be performed rather than read and as such, they tend to rely much more on dialogue because they don’t have the luxury of lengthy descriptive passages. But scriptwriters have more than just dialogue to work with; writing a play or script also involves writing stage or scene directions.

Each type of script has its own specific formatting requirements. 

Creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction covers all the kinds of creative writing that aren’t fiction. Here are some examples:

  • Personal essays: A personal essay is a true story told through a narrative framework. Often, recollections of events are interspersed with insights about those events and your personal interpretations and feelings about them in this kind of essay. 
  • Literary journalism: Think of literary journalism as journalism enhanced by creative writing techniques. These are the kinds of stories often published in outlets like The New Yorker and Salon. Literary journalism pieces report on factual events but do so in a way that makes them feel like personal essays and short stories. 
  • Memoirs: Memoirs are to personal essays what novels are to short stories. In other words, a memoir is a book-length collection of personal memories, often centering around a specific story, that often works opinions, epiphanies, and emotional insights into the narrative. 
  • Autobiographies: An autobiography is a book you write about yourself and your life. Often, autobiographies highlight key events and may focus on one particular aspect of the author’s life, like her role as a tech innovator or his career as a professional athlete. Autobiographies are often similar in style to memoirs, but instead of being a collection of memories anchored to specific events, they tend to tell the author’s entire life story in a linear narrative. 
  • Humor writing: Humor writing comes in many forms, like standup comedy routines, political cartoons, and humorous essays. 
  • Lyric essays: In a lyric essay, the writer breaks conventional grammar and stylistic rules when writing about a concept, event, place, or feeling. In this way, lyric essays are like essay-length poems. The reason they’re considered essays, and not long poems, is that they generally provide more direct analysis of the subject matter than a poem would. 

Tips for writing creatively

Give yourself time and space for creative writing.

It’s hard to write a poem during your lunch break or work on your memoir between calls. Don’t make writing more difficult for yourself by trying to squeeze it into your day. Instead, block off time to focus solely on creative writing, ideally in a distraction-free environment like your bedroom or a coffee shop. 

>>Read More: How to Create Your Very Own Writing Retreat

Get to know yourself as a writer

The more you write, the more in tune you’ll become with your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. You’ll identify the kinds of characters, scenes, language, and pieces you like writing best and determine where you struggle the most. Understanding what kind of writer you are can help you decide which kinds of projects to pursue. 

Challenge yourself 

Once you know which kinds of writing you struggle with, do those kinds of writing. If you only focus on what you’re good at, you’ll never grow as a writer. Challenge yourself to write in a different genre or try a completely new type of writing. For example, if you’re a short story writer, give poetry or personal essays a try. 

Need help getting started? Give one (or all!) of these 20 fun writing prompts a try .

Learn from other writers

There are lots of resources out there about creative writing. Read and watch them. If there’s a particular writer whose work you enjoy, seek out interviews with them and personal essays they’ve written about their creative processes. 

>>Read More: How to Be a Master Storyteller—Tips from 5 Experts 

Don’t limit yourself to big-name writers, either. Get involved in online forums, social media groups, and if possible, in-person groups for creative writers. By doing this, you’re positioning yourself to learn from writers from all different walks of life . . . and help other writers, too. 

I wrote something. Where do I go from here?

Give yourself a pat on the back: You did it! You finished a piece of creative writing—something many attempt, but not quite as many achieve. 

What comes next is up to you. You can share it with your friends and family, but you don’t have to. You can post it online or bring it to an in-person writing group for constructive critique. You can even submit it to a literary journal or an agent to potentially have it published, but if you decide to take this route, we recommend working with an editor first to make it as polished as possible. 

Some writers are initially hesitant to share their work with others because they’re afraid their work will be stolen. Although this is a possibility, keep in mind that you automatically hold the copyright for any piece you write. If you’d like, you can apply for copyright protection to give yourself additional legal protection against plagiarizers, but this is by no means a requirement. 

Write with originality

Grammarly can’t help you be more creative, but we can help you hone your writing so your creativity shines as brightly as possible. Once you’ve written your piece, Grammarly can catch any mistakes you made and suggest strong word choices that accurately express your message. 

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A Look Into Creative Writing | Oxford Summer Courses

Exploring the magic of creative writing with oxford summer courses.

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Defining Creative Writing

Creative writing , as taught at Oxford Summer Courses, is the process of crafting original and imaginative works of literature, poetry, prose, or scripts. It transcends conventional writing, encouraging individuals to explore language, structure, and narrative. Whether it's a heartfelt poem, a captivating short story, or a thought-provoking novel, creative writing allows us to communicate our unique perspectives and experiences with the world.

The Magic of Imagination

Creative Writing is a catalyst that sparks our creativity and empowers us to breathe life into our ideas on the page. With Oxford Summer Courses, aspiring writers aged 16-24 can embark on an extraordinary journey of creative expression and growth. Immerse yourself in the captivating realms of Oxford and Cambridge as you explore our inspiring creative writing programs. Teleport readers to distant lands, realms of fantasy and creation, introduce them to captivating characters, and craft new worlds through the transformative art of storytelling. Discover more about our creative writing course here . Unleash your imagination and unlock the writer within.

What Are the Different Types of Creative Writing?

Creative Writing comes in many forms, encompassing a range of genres and styles. There are lots of different types of Creative Writing, which can be categorised as fiction or non-fiction. Some of the most popular being:

  • Biographies
  • Fiction: novels, novellas, short stories, etc.
  • Poetry and Spoken word
  • Playwriting/Scriptwriting
  • Personal essays

At Oxford Summer Courses, students have the opportunity to delve into these various types of Creative Writing during the Summer School.

The Benefits of Creative Writing with Oxford Summer Courses

Engaging in Creative Writing with Oxford Summer Courses offers numerous benefits beyond self-expression. By joining our dedicated Creative Writing summer school programme, you would:

  • Foster self-discovery and gain a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and personal experiences.
  • Improve your communication skills, honing your ability to express yourself effectively and engage readers through refined language and storytelling abilities.
  • Enhance empathy by exploring diverse perspectives and stepping into the shoes of different characters, broadening your understanding of the world around you.
  • Gain new skills for further education or work, expanding your repertoire of writing techniques and abilities to enhance your academic or professional pursuits.
  • Nurture your creativity, encouraging you to think outside the box, embrace unconventional ideas, and challenge the status quo, fostering a life-long mindset of innovation and originality.

Embracing the Journey

To embark on a journey of creative writing, embrace curiosity, take risks, and surrender to the flow of imagination. Write regularly, read widely, embrace feedback from tutors and peers at Oxford Summer Courses. Begin to experiment with styles and genres, and stay persistent in your course of action. The path of creative writing requires dedication, practice, and an open mind. Join us as we provide tips to help you start your creative writing journey and unleash your full creative potential under the guidance of industry professionals.

Creative Writing is a remarkable voyage that invites us to unleash our imagination, share our stories, and inspire others. It offers countless personal and professional benefits, nurturing self-expression, empathy, and creativity. So, grab a pen, open your mind, and embark on this enchanting journey of creative writing with Oxford Summer Courses. Let your words paint a vivid tapestry that captivates hearts and minds under the guidance of experienced tutors from Oxford and Cambridge. Join us as we explore the magic of creative writing and discover the transformative power it holds within through the renowned Oxford Summer Courses summer school.

Ready to study Creative Writing? Apply now to Oxford Summer Courses and join a community of motivated learners from around the world. Apply here .

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 Toni Morrison in 1979.

Top 10 books about creative writing

From linguistics to essays by Zadie Smith and Toni Morrison, poet Anthony Anaxagorou recommends some ‘lateral’ ways in to a demanding craft

T he poet Rita Dove was once asked what makes poetry successful. She went on to illuminate three key areas: First, the heart of the writer; the things they wish to say – their politics and overarching sensibilities. Second, their tools: how they work language to organise and position words. And the third, the love a person must have for books: “To read, read, read.”

When I started mapping out How to Write It , I wanted to focus on the aspects of writing development that took in both theoretical and interpersonal aspects. No writer lives in a vacuum, their job is an endless task of paying attention.

How do I get myself an agent? What’s the best way to approach a publisher? Should I self-publish? There is never one way to assuage the concerns of those looking to make a career out of writing. Many labour tirelessly for decades on manuscripts that never make it to print. The UK on average publishes around 185,000 new titles per year, ranking us the third largest publishing market in the world, yet the number of aspiring writers is substantially greater.

Writers writing about writing can become a supercilious endeavour; I’m more interested in the process of making work and the writer’s perspectives that substantiate the framework.

There’s no single authority, anything is possible. All that’s required are some words and an idea – which makes the art of writing enticing but also difficult and daunting. The books listed below, diverse in their central arguments and genres, guide us towards more interesting and lateral ways to think about what we want to say, and ultimately, how we choose to say it.

1. The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner An intellectual meditation on the cultural function of poetry. Less idealistic than other poetry criticism, Lerner puts forward a richly layered case for the reasons writers and readers alike turn to poetry, probing into why it’s often misconceived as elitist or tedious, and asks that we reconsider the value we place on the art form today.

2. Find Your Voice by Angie Thomas One of the hardest things about creative writing is developing a voice and not compromising your vision for the sake of public appeal. Thomas offers sharp advice to those wrestling with novels or Young Adult fiction. She writes with appealing honesty, taking in everything from writer’s block to deciding what a final draft should look like. The book also comes interspersed with prompts and writing exercises alongside other tips and suggestions to help airlift writers out of the mud.

3. Linguistics: Why It Matters by Geoffrey K Pullum If language is in a constant state of flux, and rules governing sentence construction, meaning and logic are always at a point of contention, what then can conventional modes of language and linguistics tell us about ourselves, our cultures and our relationship to the material world? Pullum addresses a number of philosophical questions through the scientific study of human languages – their grammars, clauses and limitations. An approachable, fascinating resource for those interested in the mechanics of words.

4. Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle The collected lectures of poet and professor Mary Ruefle present us with an erudite inquiry into some of the major aspects of a writer’s mind and craft. Ruefle possesses an uncanny ability to excavate broad and complex subjects with such unforced and original lucidity that you come away feeling as if you’ve acquired an entirely new perspective from only a few pages. Themes range from sentimentality in poetry, to fear, beginnings and – a topic she returns to throughout the book – wonder. “A poem is a finished work of the mind, it is not the work of a finished mind.”

Zadie Smith.

5. Feel Free by Zadie Smith These astute and topical essays dating from 2010 to 2017 demonstrate Smith’s forensic ability to navigate and unpack everything from Brexit to Justin Bieber. Dissecting high philosophical works then bringing the focus back on to her own practice as a fiction writer, her essay The I Who Is Not Me sees Smith extrapolate on how autobiography shapes novel writing, and elucidates her approach to thinking around British society’s tenuous and often binary perspectives on race, class and ethnicity.

6. Threads by Sandeep Parmar, Nisha Ramayya and Bhanu Kapil Who occupies the “I” in poetry? When poets write, are they personally embodying their speakers or are they intended to be emblematic of something larger and more complex? Is the “I” assumed to be immutable or is it more porous? These are the questions posited in Threads, which illuminates the function of the lyric “I” in relation to whiteness, maleness and Britishness. Its short but acute essays interrogate whiteness’s hegemony in literature and language, revealing how writers from outside the dominant paradigm are often made to reckon with the positions and perspectives they write from.

7. Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison An urgent set of essays and lectures from the late Nobel prize winner that collates her most discerning musings around citizenship, race and art, as well as offering invaluable insight into the craft of writing. She reflects on revisions made to her most famous novel, Beloved, while also reflecting on the ways vernaculars can shape new stories. One of my favourite aphorisms written by Morrison sits on my desk and declares: “As writers, what we do is remember. And to remember this world is to create it.”

8. On Poetry by Jonathan Davidson Poetry can be thought of as something arduous or an exercise in analysis, existing either within small artistic enclaves or secondary school classrooms. One of the many strengths of Davidson’s writing is how he makes poetry feel intimate and personal, neither dry or remote. His approach to thinking around ways that certain poems affect us is well measured without being exclusive. A timely and resourceful book for writers interested in how poems go on to live with us throughout our lives.

9. Essays by Lydia Davis From flash fiction to stories, Davis is recognised as one of the preeminent writers of short-form fiction. In these essays, spanning several decades, she tracks much of her writing process and her relationship to experimentalism, form and the ways language can work when pushed to its outer limits. How we read into lines is something Davis returns to, as is the idea of risk and brevity within micro-fiction.

10. Essayism by Brian Dillon Dillon summarises the essay as an “experiment in attention”. This dynamic and robust consideration of the form sheds light on how and why certain essays have changed the cultural and political landscape, from the end of the Middle Ages to the present time. A sharp and curious disquisition on one of the more popular yet challenging writing enterprises.

How to Write It by Anthony Anaxagorou is published by Merky Books. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com .

  • Creative writing
  • Toni Morrison
  • Zadie Smith
  • Lydia Davis

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  • Published: 23 September 2015

Creative writing: A world of pure imagination

  • Roberta Kwok 1  

Nature volume  525 ,  pages 553–555 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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The creative process of writing science-inspired fiction can be rewarding — and the untapped niche is rich in opportunities for originality.

When Steve Caplan was a graduate student in the late 1990s, he accidentally inhaled a toxic chemical in his immunology laboratory, and had to spend ten days at home to recover. With little to do, he began to write a novel — he loved reading and had published some short stories, but hadn't yet had the time or mental space to produce longer work. He pounded out most of a rough draft about a scientist struggling to get tenure and coping with childhood memories of a parent with bipolar disorder.

article on creative writing

After going back to work, Caplan — now a cell biologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha — spent months revising the manuscript at night and on weekends. His initial attempts to sell the novel to a publisher failed, but in 2009, he decided to pursue the self-publishing route. Caplan produced print and electronic versions of his novel using the Amazon services CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, and publicized the work by doing readings at bookshops and libraries. He collaborated with his university's public-relations office on a press release, and showed a slide of the book at the end of his seminars. The novel, called Matter Over Mind (Steve Caplan, 2010), has sold more than 2,000 copies so far, netting roughly US$7,000. He has since written two more novels, which he published through small presses, and is now working on a fourth.

For many scientists who spend their days cranking out papers and grant proposals, writing fiction may seem like the last thing they would want to do. But some researchers with a love of literature have made time to pursue the craft — and have found it creatively rewarding. Science offers plenty of rich material, whether it is the drama of overwintering at a polar research station or the futuristic thrill of genetically engineering live organisms. “You're sitting on a gold mine of really interesting stories,” says Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London and founder of LabLit.com , a website about portrayals of scientific research in fiction and other media.

A tantalizing niche

When done well, science-related fiction can help to expose the public to the scientific process, humanize researchers and inspire readers to learn about topics they might otherwise ignore. Such nuanced depictions of science in fiction are relatively rare. LabLit.com has catalogued about 200 examples of novels, such as Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior (HarperCollins, 2012) and Ian McEwan's Solar (Random House, 2010), that feature realistic scientists as characters. Stories about scientists are well outnumbered by those about, for example, doctors or artists. Even science fiction tends to lack portrayals of the actual scientific process, says Alastair Reynolds, a science-fiction author near Cardiff, UK, who left a career in astronomy to write full-time.

The shortage of works with accurate depictions of science means that researchers who write fiction have a good opportunity to be original — a task that would challenge an aspiring crime or romance writer. “It's sort of untrampled ground,” says Rohn. Many researchers are familiar with fieldwork sites and unusual settings that other writers might not have at their fingertips. In her novel The Falling Sky (Freight Books, 2013), Pippa Goldschmidt, an astronomer turned fiction writer in Edinburgh, UK, writes about a young astronomer who wanders into a telescope dome on a Chilean mountaintop and is nearly injured when the operator moves the instrument.

article on creative writing

Sources of plot inspiration abound in science. Reynolds reads research news and papers voraciously for intriguing elements that can be parlayed into fiction. One time, he found a study about huge flocks of starlings in which the authors used high-tech equipment to track individual birds. He incorporated the idea into a science-fiction story, but made the fictional technology so advanced that it could track the birds' eye movements.

Scientists also can draw ideas from the past. Goldschmidt was inspired by an anecdote about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer: during an unhappy period in the 1920s while studying abroad, Oppenheimer left a poisoned apple for his tutor. The details are sketchy, but Goldschmidt wanted to imagine what might have transpired. “No historical figure is ever completely understood,” she says. “There's always gaps in their lives, and fiction can inhabit those gaps.” The result was a short story entitled 'The Equation for an Apple', a fictionalized account of Oppenheimer's life leading up to the act.

Scientist–writers can also generate ideas by doing something they are already used to — sitting around and imagining scenarios, notes Andy Weir, a novelist in Mountain View, California. His novel The Martian (Crown, 2014) explores what might happen if a crewed Mars mission goes awry and one person is left behind on the red planet. The story follows the lone astronaut's trials as he tries to grow enough food for himself and to make contact with Earth.

Fiction-writing classes offered through adult-education programmes or at creative-writing centres can help authors to transfer an idea onto the page. These courses provide basic tips, such as how to construct compelling characters, build tension and handle shifts between past and present. Participants often critique each other's manuscripts, giving scientists a chance to get feedback from non-technical readers.

Reading widely and critically helps, too. Reynolds learnt to write fiction by studying the differences between his writing and that of successful authors. To work out how to rotate between different characters' points of view, he read James Ellroy's crime novel L.A. Confidential (Mysterious Press, 1990). And writers can learn how to structure dialogue from masters such as Jane Austen, he says.

Opening act

Short stories are a good starting point because newbies can quickly practise the basics, explore story ideas and learn from their mistakes. But, Goldschmidt notes, “there's no point in writing short stories if you don't like reading them”. Scientists who want motivation to complete a longer work might consider participating in National Novel Writing Month, an international programme held every November that encourages writers of all levels to produce a 50,000-word manuscript (see nanowrimo.org ). Researchers can also find support through collaboration with professional writers on works of fiction (see 'Meeting of the minds').

boxed-text Researcher–writers should keep in mind that education is not the main purpose of fiction. Technical details should be included only if the reader needs them to understand the story, not simply because the author finds them fascinating. For The Martian , Weir went to great lengths to ensure accuracy, and even performed orbital-dynamics calculations. But he left out how he came up with certain numbers, such as the mass that had to be removed from the ship to achieve escape velocity.

When technical information is necessary, writers should try to deliver it in a way that sounds natural. “People don't tell each other a whole bunch of information about particle physics when they're having breakfast together,” says Goldschmidt. Instead, she tries to make the science an organic part of the character's personal journey. In the Oppenheimer story, the physicist thinks about an experiment that he is trying to replicate, but the details are woven into his emotional turmoil at failing to complete it.

Humour can help to lighten the tone. The Martian 's protagonist is a smart-aleck, and his jokes break up the expository text. In one section, he says that if he were exposed to damaging solar radiation, he would “get so much cancer, the cancer would have cancer”.

The path to press

Many outlets accept short-story submissions. LabLit.com often publishes fiction by scientists, although it does not pay them because it is a volunteer effort. Nature runs an 850- to 950-word science-fiction story each week (see nature.com/futures ). The website Duotrope.com offers a searchable database of literary journals and other fiction markets around the world, and writers can peruse newsstands for sci-fi magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact .

For longer works, small presses are a more-realistic option than major publishers, and many do not require writers to have agents. Tasneem Zehra Husain, a theoretical physicist and writer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a novel that revisits physics breakthroughs throughout history from the perspectives of fictional characters. Through an acquaintance, she connected with the publisher Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which released her book Only the Longest Threads last year. To find small presses, scientists can look for companies that have published similar books. Alternatively, authors could self-publish using a service such as Lulu.

Many literary journals do not pay at all, and Reynolds estimates that science-fiction magazines have paid him an average of only US$200–300 per story. But the contacts that Reynolds made through short-story publishing led to a book deal, and he published four novels while working as an astronomer. By the time he quit science to become a full-time writer, he was making about $60,000–$75,000 per year from book sales.

The write balance

Few scientists can expect to make a living — or earn much — from their fiction. But money often isn't the main motivation. Caplan, for his part, wanted to bring attention to the challenges faced by the family members of people with bipolar disorder (challenges he himself has experienced) and to provide entertainment for scientists. He also finds that writing fiction clears his head, in the same way that playing a sport might do for others (see Nature 523 , 117–119; 2015). “It's almost like a form of meditation,” says Caplan. “It just keeps me sane.” And there are other rewards. Scientists have a chance to reach people who might not read a non-fiction science book or visit a natural-history museum — but who might read a love story about ecologists in an exotic field location. And readers might be inspired to look up the science once they've finished.

Scientists have a chance to reach people who might not read a non-fiction science book or visit a museum.

There can also be a cross-training effect. Rohn thinks that her fiction has helped her to get more grants; reviewers have commented that her proposals are beautifully written. The craft of telling a story applies to scientific papers as well; in hers, for example, she lays out the phenomenon that her team noticed, the questions it raised and what they did to try to answer those questions. “Everybody wants to hear a story,” she says.

Finding the time to write is a challenge. Some scientists squeeze it in on evenings and weekends. Husain wrote her book while working part-time, and says that she could not have done so with a full-time job because the novel required extensive historical research.

Scientist–authors also risk having their fiction perceived as a distraction by promotion committees. Husain worried that her novel might affect her career prospects. But she has received positive feedback on the book from other physicists, including prominent researchers whose fields are described in her book.

For researchers who delve into fiction writing, the act of creating a world, characters and stories can be intensely rewarding. When the writing is flowing, says Rohn, “it's like being caught up in the best book you've ever read”.

Box 1: Meeting of the minds

Scientists who are too daunted or busy to write fiction can pair up with a professional writer. Comma Press in Manchester, UK, for example, has published four short-story anthologies — a fifth comes out this October — as part of its 'Science-into-Fiction' series. Each scientist suggests a few research items or emerging technologies for inspiration, and a writer chooses one to develop into fiction. The researcher provides technical guidance, reviews the draft and writes an afterword explaining the science in detail.

The partnership is satisfying because scientists see their work portrayed in a real-world context, and the writer can raise social or ethical implications that the researcher may not have considered, says Ra Page, who founded Comma Press. One scientist studied how nanotechnology could improve body armour, which could have military applications. The writer penned 'Without a Shell', a tale of a futuristic society in which children at an elite school have 'smart' uniforms that heal their injuries, while kids at a poor school do not. Comma Press included the work in its 2009 anthology, When It Changed . An upcoming collection will focus on fabrication technology, such as 3D printers; interested researchers can contact Page to take part.

Scientists also can offer to answer questions from fiction writers through the Science and Entertainment Exchange, run by the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. For instance, a novelist might want to know what types of equipment a researcher would carry in the field. Scientists can call 844-NEEDSCI (toll-free in the United States) to volunteer (see go.nature.com/e6juh9 for more).

Researchers can also partner with faculty members in their universities' creative-writing departments, suggests Page. Authors do not need experience writing about science, but it helps if they have been commissioned to write about specific topics before. When collaborating, “allow the writer to make silly suggestions”, says Page. An idea that at first seems impossible may be plausible after further thought.

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Kwok, R. Creative writing: A world of pure imagination. Nature 525 , 553–555 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7570-553a

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Published : 23 September 2015

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How creative writing can increase students’ resilience, students can find strength and community in sharing their stories through writing..

Many of my seventh-grade students do not arrive at school ready to learn. Their families often face financial hardship and live in cramped quarters, which makes it difficult to focus on homework. The responsibility for cooking and taking care of younger siblings while parents work often falls on these twelve year olds’ small shoulders. Domestic violence and abuse are also not uncommon.

To help traumatized students overcome their personal and academic challenges, one of our first jobs as teachers is to build a sense of community. We need to communicate that we care and that we welcome them into the classroom just as they are. One of the best ways I’ve found to connect with my students, while also nurturing their reading and writing skills, is through creative writing.

For the past three years, I’ve invited students in my English Language Development (ELD) classes to observe their thoughts, sit with their emotions, and offer themselves and each other compassion through writing and sharing about their struggles. Creating a safe, respectful environment in which students’ stories matter invites the disengaged, the hopeless, and the numb to open up. Students realize that nobody is perfect and nobody’s life is perfect. In this kind of classroom community, they can take the necessary risks in order to learn, and they become more resilient when they stumble.

Fostering a growth mindset

article on creative writing

One of the ways students can boost their academic performance and develop resilience is by building a growth mindset. Carol Dweck, Stanford University professor of psychology and author of the book Mindset , explains that people with a growth mindset focus on learning from mistakes and welcoming challenges rather than thinking they’re doomed to be dumb or unskillful. A growth mindset goes hand in hand with self-compassion: recognizing that everyone struggles and treating ourselves with kindness when we trip up.

One exercise I find very useful is to have students write a story about a time when they persevered when faced with a challenge—in class, sports, or a relationship. Some of the themes students explore include finally solving math problems, learning how to defend themselves, or having difficult conversations with parents.

I primed the pump by telling my students about something I struggled with—feeling left behind in staff meetings as my colleagues clicked their way through various computer applications. I confided that PowerPoint and Google Slides—tools (one might assume) that any teacher worth a paperweight has mastered—still eluded me. By admitting my deficiency to my students, asking for their help, and choosing to see the opportunity to remedy it every day in the classroom, I aimed to level the playing field with them. They may have been reading three or four grade levels behind, but they could slap a PowerPoint presentation together in their sleep.

For students, sharing their own stories of bravery, resilience, and determination brings these qualities to the forefront of their minds and helps solidify the belief that underlies a growth mindset: I can improve and grow . We know from research in neuroplasticity that when students take baby steps to achieve a goal and take pride in their accomplishments, they change their brains, growing new neural networks and fortifying existing ones. Neurons in the brain release the feel-good chemical dopamine, which plays a major role in motivating behavior toward rewards.

After writing about a few different personal topics, students choose one they want to publish on the bulletin boards at the back of the classroom. They learn to include the juicy details of their stories (who, what, when, where, why, and how), and they get help from their peers, who ask follow-up questions to prompt them to include more information. This peer editing builds their resilience in more ways than one—they make connections with each other by learning about each other’s lives, and they feel empowered by lending a hand.

In my experience, students are motivated to do this assignment because it helps them feel that their personal stories and emotions truly matter, despite how their other academics are going. One student named Alejandro chose to reflect on basketball and the persistence and time it took him to learn:

Hoops By Alejandro Gonzalez Being good takes time. One time my sister took me to a park and I saw people playing basketball. I noticed how good they were and decided I wanted to be like them. Still I told my sister that basketball looked hard and that I thought I couldn’t do it. She said,“You could do it if you tried. You’ll get the hang of it.” My dad bought me a backboard and hoop to play with. I was really happy, but the ball wasn’t making it in. Every time I got home from school, I would go straight to the backyard to play. I did that almost every day until little by little I was getting the hang of it. I also played with my friends. Every day after lunch we would meet at the basketball court to have a game. … I learned that you need to be patient and to practice a lot to get the hang of things. With a little bit of practice, patience, and hard work, anything is possible.

Originally, Alejandro wasn’t sure why he was in school and often lacked the motivation to learn. But writing about something he was passionate about and recalling the steps that led to his success reminded him of the determination and perseverance he had demonstrated in the past, nurturing a positive view of himself. It gave him a renewed sense of investment in learning English and eventually helped him succeed in his ELD class, as well.

Maintaining a hopeful outlook

Another way to build resilience in the face of external challenges is to shore up our inner reserves of hope —and I’ve found that poetry can serve as inspiration for this.

For the writing portion of the lesson, I invite students to “get inside” poems by replicating the underlying structure and trying their hand at writing their own verses. I create poem templates, where students fill in relevant blanks with their own ideas. 

One poem I like to share is “So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shihab Nye. Its lines “Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house / and now live over a quarry of noise and dust / cannot make you unhappy” remind us that, despite the unpleasant events that occur in our lives, it’s our choice whether to allow them to interfere with our happiness. The speaker, who “love[s] even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens, and scratched records,” has a persistently sunny outlook.

It’s unrealistic for students who hear gunshots at night to be bubbling over with happiness the next morning. Still, the routine of the school day and the sense of community—jokes with friends, a shared bag of hot chips for breakfast, and a creative outlet—do bolster these kids. They have an unmistakable drive to keep going, a life force that may even burn brighter because they take nothing for granted—not even the breath in their bodies, life itself. 

Itzayana was one of those students who, due to the adversity in her life, seemed too old for her years. She rarely smiled and started the school year with a defiant approach to me and school in general, cursing frequently in the classroom. Itzayana’s version of “So Much Happiness” hinted at some of the challenges I had suspected she had in her home life:

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. Even the fact that you once heard your family laughing and now hear them yelling at each other cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of tamales and horchata and love even scrubbing the floor, washing dishes, and cleaning your room. Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, help people in need, help your family, and take care of yourself.   —Itzayana C.

Her ending lines, “Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, / help people in need, help your family, and take care of yourself,” showed her growing awareness of the need for self-care as she continued to support her family and others around her. This is a clear sign of her developing resilience.

Poetry is packed with emotion, and writing their own poems allows students to grapple with their own often-turbulent inner lives. One student commented on the process, saying, “By writing poems, I’ve learned to be calm and patient, especially when I get mad about something dumb.” Another student showed pride in having her writing published; she reflected, “I feel good because other kids can use it for calming down when they’re angry.”

To ease students into the creative process, sometimes we also write poems together as a class. We brainstorm lines to include, inviting the silly as well as the poignant and creating something that represents our community.

Practicing kindness

Besides offering my students new ways of thinking about themselves, I also invite them to take kind actions toward themselves and others.

In the music video for “Give a Little Love” by Noah and the Whale, one young African American boy—who witnesses bullying at school and neglect in his neighborhood —decides to take positive action and whitewash a wall of graffiti. Throughout the video, people witness others’ random acts of kindness, and then go on to do their own bit.

“My love is my whole being / And I’ve shared what I could,” the lyrics say—a reminder that our actions speak louder than our words and do have an incredible impact. The final refrain in the song—“Well if you are (what you love) / And you do (what you love) /...What you share with the world is what it keeps of you”—urges the students to contribute in a positive way to the classroom, the school campus, and their larger community.

After watching the video, I ask students to reflect upon what kind of community they would like to be part of and what makes them feel safe at school. They write their answers—for example, not being laughed at by their peers and being listened to—on Post-it notes. These notes are used to create classroom rules. This activity sends a message early on that we are co-creating our communal experience together. Students also write their own versions of the lyrics, reflecting on different things you can give and receive—like kindness, peace, love, and ice cream.

Reaping the benefits

To see how creative writing impacts students, I invite them to rate their resilience through a self-compassion survey at the start of the school year and again in the spring. Last year, two-thirds of students surveyed increased in self-compassion; Alejandro grew his self-compassion by 20 percent. The program seems to work at developing their reading and writing skills, as well: At the middle of the school year, 40 percent of my students moved up to the next level of ELD, compared to 20 percent the previous year. 

As a teacher, my goal is to meet students where they’re at and learn about their whole lives. Through creative writing activities, we create a community of compassionate and expressive learners who bear witness to the impact of trauma in each others’ experiences and together build resilience.

As a symbol of community and strength, I had a poster in my classroom of a boat at sea with hundreds of refugees standing shoulder to shoulder looking skyward. It’s a hauntingly beautiful image of our ability to risk it all for a better life, as many of my ELD students do. Recognizing our common humanity and being able to share about our struggles not only leads to some beautiful writing, but also some brave hearts.

About the Author

{author}

Laura Bean, M.F.A. , executive director of Mindful Literacy, consults with school communities to implement mindfulness and creative writing programs. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and presented a mindful writing workshop at Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference in San Diego in 2016.

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This Is Your Brain on Writing

By Carl Zimmer

  • June 20, 2014

A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd. But if you could peer inside their heads, you might see some striking similarities in how their brains were churning.

That’s one of the implications of new research on the neuroscience of creative writing. For the first time, neuroscientists have used fMRI scanners to track the brain activity of both experienced and novice writers as they sat down — or, in this case, lay down — to turn out a piece of fiction.

The researchers, led by Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany, observed a broad network of regions in the brain working together as people produced their stories. But there were notable differences between the two groups of subjects. The inner workings of the professionally trained writers in the bunch, the scientists argue, showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports.

The research is drawing strong reactions. Some experts praise it as an important advance in understanding writing and creativity, while others criticize the research as too crude to reveal anything meaningful about the mysteries of literature or inspiration.

Dr. Lotze has long been intrigued by artistic expression. In previous studies, he has observed the brains of piano players and opera singers, using fMRI scanners to pinpoint regions that become unusually active in the brain.

Needless to say, that can be challenging when a subject is singing an aria. Scanners are a lot like 19th-century cameras: They can take very sharp pictures, if their subject remains still. To get accurate data, Dr. Lotze has developed software that can take into account fluctuations caused by breathing or head movements.

For creative writing, he faced a similar challenge. In previous studies, scientists had observed people doing only small tasks like thinking up a plot in their heads.

Dr. Lotze wanted to scan people while they were actually writing. But he couldn’t give his subjects a keyboard to write with, because the magnetic field generated by the scanner would have hurled it across the room.

So Dr. Lotze ended up making a custom-built writing desk, clipping a piece of paper to a wedge-shaped block as his subjects reclined. They could rest their writing arm on the desk and scribble on the page. A system of mirrors let them see what they were writing while their head remained cocooned inside the scanner.

To begin, Dr. Lotze asked 28 volunteers to simply copy some text, giving him a baseline reading of their brain activity during writing.

Next, he showed his volunteers a few lines from a short story and asked them to continue it in their own words. The volunteers could brainstorm for a minute, and then write creatively for a little over two minutes.

Some regions of the brain became active only during the creative process, but not while copying, the researchers found. During the brainstorming sessions, some vision-processing regions of volunteers became active. It’s possible that they were, in effect, seeing the scenes they wanted to write.

article on creative writing

Other regions became active when the volunteers started jotting down their stories. Dr. Lotze suspects that one of them, the hippocampus, was retrieving factual information that the volunteers could use.

One region near the front of the brain, known to be crucial for holding several pieces of information in mind at once, became active as well. Juggling several characters and plot lines may put special demands on it.

But Dr. Lotze also recognized a big limit of the study: His subjects had no previous experience in creative writing. Would the brains of full-time writers respond differently?

To find out, he and his colleagues went to another German university, the University of Hildesheim, which runs a highly competitive creative writing program. The scientists recruited 20 writers there (their average age was 25). Dr Lotze and his colleagues had them take the same tests and then compared their performance with the novices’.

As the scientists report in a new study in the journal NeuroImage, the brains of expert writers appeared to work differently, even before they set pen to paper. During brainstorming, the novice writers activated their visual centers. By contrast, the brains of expert writers showed more activity in regions involved in speech.

“I think both groups are using different strategies,” Dr. Lotze said. It’s possible that the novices are watching their stories like a film inside their heads, while the writers are narrating it with an inner voice.

When the two groups started to write, another set of differences emerged. Deep inside the brains of expert writers, a region called the caudate nucleus became active. In the novices, the caudate nucleus was quiet.

The caudate nucleus is a familiar part of the brain for scientists like Dr. Lotze who study expertise. It plays an essential role in the skill that comes with practice, including activities like board games.

When we first start learning a skill — be it playing a piano or playing basketball — we use a lot of conscious effort. With practice, those actions become more automatic. The caudate nucleus and nearby regions start to coordinate the brain’s activity as this shift happens.

“I was really happy to see this,” said Ronald T. Kellogg , a psychologist who studies writing at Saint Louis University. “You don’t want to see this as an analog to what James Joyce was doing in Dublin. But to see that they were able to get clean results with this, I think that’s a major step right there.”

But Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, was skeptical that the experiments could provide a clear picture of creativity. “It’s a messy comparison,” he said.

Dr. Pinker pointed out that the activity that Dr. Lotze saw during creative writing could be common to writing in general — or perhaps to any kind of thinking that requires more focus than copying. A better comparison would have been between writing a fictional story and writing an essay about some factual information.

Even the best-designed scanning experiments might miss signs of creativity, Dr. Pinker warned. The very nature of creativity can make it different from one person to the next, and so it can be hard to see what different writers have in common. Dr. Pinker speculated that Marcel Proust might have activated the taste-perceiving regions of his brain when he recalled the flavor of a cookie. But another writer might rely more on sounds to evoke a time and place.

“Creativity is a perversely difficult thing to study,” he said.

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Creativity, according to Maya Angelou, is a bottomless pit: "The more you use it, the more you have," said the novelist. "Creativity is intelligence having fun," is a phrase often attributed to Einstein. While advertising supremo David Ogilvy came at it from a business perspective: "If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative". We know creativity is alive in all fields of life, from medicine to business and agriculture. But the word –  which derives from the Latin creare , to make – is most often associated with the arts and culture, and is believed to have first appeared in the 14th-Century literary work, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

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"Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy – pure creative energy," is the first of 10 basic principles to be found in Julia Cameron's bestselling creative guide, The Artist's Way. It is subtitled A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity because, she tells BBC Culture, "creativity is, to my eye, a spiritual experience". For Cameron, there is no "creative elite"; we are all creative, she says. And while she began life as a scriptwriter – and continues to write novels, poetry and songs – it has become her life's work to teach the many thousands from all creative fields who come to her artistically hampered by the demons of self-doubt and self-criticism, or claiming lack of time or talent.

Julia Cameron's new book The Listening Path explores "creative unblocking" (Credit: Robert Stivers)

Julia Cameron's new book The Listening Path explores "creative unblocking" (Credit: Robert Stivers)

"Many blocked people are very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts," she says. Her "bedrock of creative recovery" prescription is to write "morning pages" – three pages of stream-of-consciousness longhand writing accomplished on rising, "when our rational, self-editing mind gets out of the way of intuitive inclination". The pages "develop our creativity and encourage belief in our potential," she says. "They are non-negotiable." "The artist date" is her second tool; a weekly experience to thrill, that "woos your inner artist", such as a visit to the zoo or buying crayons. 

Cameron's new book, The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention , revisits those two tools, and adds walking "to induce 'aha' moments of insight". The book focuses on listening – to others, yourself, the environment, your ancestors, silence. "People were always asking me how do I continue to be so prolific, and my answer is, I listen – and I 'hear' what I should be doing next." The author's own listening powers have become more attuned since relocating 10 years ago from the "honking, sirens and whistles" of Manhattan to a mountain village above Santa Fe where "it's so quiet, I can hear a truck rumbling on the road a quarter of a mile away".          

Intuition and "guidance" which "comes from inside" have helped her stay sober since she was 29, following battles with alcohol she has been candid about. Without sobriety, she says, she would have had to kiss goodbye to creativity. It is no coincidence the Artist's Way is a 12-week system of "recovery", in the same way Alcoholics Anonymous follows a 12-step programme of recovery, and also addresses a spiritual lack.

Cameron tells how she was "messaged" in her 20s, on being sent by Playboy to interview the then-budding film director Martin Scorsese over lunch: "I heard a voice say: 'This is the man you're going to marry.' I thought  –  does he know this?" He soon did. They were married (albeit briefly), and had a daughter, Domenica, now 46, a film director who has faithfully written "morning pages" since her mother came up with the idea.

Being endlessly curious was the key to the creative genius of Leonardo da Vinci (Credit: Getty Images)

Being endlessly curious was the key to the creative genius of Leonardo da Vinci (Credit: Getty Images)

One inner voice you don't want to pay attention to is the "inner critic". Cameron knows hers well  –  he even has a persona  –  Nigel is a British interior designer "for whom nothing is ever good enough". She's wrestled him out of earshot, to publish 40 books, and write songs and musicals despite having been pigeonholed the "non-musical person" in her family. "When I teach creative unblocking, I get unblocked myself," she says, on why she continues to teach into her 70s, and to create work, with no plans to retire.

Creativity will always provoke your fear – Elizabeth Gilbert

The writer Elizabeth Gilbert acknowledges Cameron's influence on her, saying "without the Artist's Way there would have been no Eat Pray Love", referring to her 2006 memoir that has sold 12 million copies.    

Gilbert explored creativity in her 2015 book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. She was inspired to write it having met so many people who complained they were creatively blocked. Their main problem, she concluded, is "always and only [to do with] fear – tumbling piles of fear".

"Creativity will always provoke your fear," says Gilbert , who has come to terms with her own artistic anxiety by "talking to it in a friendly way… I acknowledge its importance and I invite it along". Equally, we should allow, or even embrace, our mistakes. Being imperfect is fine. Perfectionism is "the murderer of all things good" she says.

Go with the flow  

The freedom to make mistakes, especially at a young age, is vital to creativity, according to the late Sir Ken Robinson, a leading force in creative and cultural education. Robinson's TED talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity ? is the most watched video in TED's history. "We know that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original," he said. He bemoaned the fact we often "get educated out of creativity", seeing it as a failure of the education system.

It was an advertising executive from Buffalo, New York, Alex Osborne, who is often cited as a pioneer teacher of creativity. Osborne, aka the "father of brainstorming" developed the Creative Education Foundation in the 1950s and 60s, with Sid Parnes. Teaching "creativity problem solving", or CPS, their model followed four basic steps: clarify, ideate, develop, implement. It begins with two assumptions: everyone is creative in some way, and creative skills can be learnt and enhanced.

Following in their footsteps, Dorte Nielsen has dedicated her life to "help others become creative thinkers". Having worked in advertising in London in the 1990s, Nielsen returned to her native Denmark  to establish the Centre for Creative Thinking in Copenhagen, and to set up a degree programme for art directors and conceptual thinkers.

When we are small we are happy creating because we are emotionally free – Dairo Vargas

"Creative thinking is like any other skill in life. The more you practise, the better you become," Nielsen tells BBC Culture. Author of several books about creativity, her most recent is The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker: How to Make Connections Others Don't. It's a boot camp for enhancing creativity, featuring exercises to inspire creative thinking and connections.

Picasso was a master of creative connections – his Bull's Head sculpture was fashioned from a bicycle's saddle and handlebars (Credit: Getty Images)

Picasso was a master of creative connections – his Bull's Head sculpture was fashioned from a bicycle's saddle and handlebars (Credit: Getty Images)

"Highly creative people are good at seeing connections," she says. "By enhancing your ability to see connections you can enhance your creativity." She cites the example of Picasso encountering a bicycle, and reimagining the seat and handlebars to create his 1942 sculpture Bull's Head – described by art historian Roland Penrose as an "astonishingly complete metamorphosis".      

What part does the creative muse play? In Picasso's mind, there is no point waiting for her to show up: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working," he said. Novelist Isabel Allende echoed that with her advice: "Show up, show up, show up". Meanwhile, Frida Kahlo declared: "I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best".     

Others believe we can encourage connection for inspiration, which Cameron calls "spiritual electricity", the source, or "the flow", the term coined in a 1990 book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe being totally absorbed in a creative activity.

The Colombian artist Dairo Vargas believes this is so. He uses "flow" techniques to make his abstract-expressionist paintings, some of which were recently displayed at London's Royal Academy of Arts . Vargas champions mental-health awareness, and has found respite from depression in painting. Young children are naturals at "flow", he says, and make art effortlessly and without inhibition.

Work by the artist Dairo Vargas – who champions mental health awareness – was recently displayed at London's Royal Academy of Arts (Credit: Royal Academy of Arts)

Work by the artist Dairo Vargas – who champions mental health awareness – was recently displayed at London's Royal Academy of Arts (Credit: Royal Academy of Arts)

"When we are small we are happy painting and creating because we are emotionally free," Vargas tells BBC Culture. "With a few lines, children tell so many stories." When he works with adults, he finds meditation helps them to "connect to a higher energy. Close your eyes, breathe, all the information you need is there".

For others, being creative is like brushing our teeth, a daily necessity. Writing in Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration and the Artistic Process (edited by Joe Fassler), novelist Mark Haddon says that it is like "coming to terms with borderline pathological obsession, an activity I simply have to do to feel human".  While Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, wrote that, for her, creativity and writing is about "being open… to new ideas, other frameworks, and dates I don’t understand at first". 

When she turned 60, in 2012, she spent a week on a remote island, and was mesmerised by the world underwater. "I even saw sharks! The ocean became a play land and I thought – how could I miss this enormous world? [It] was a metaphor for how in life, in work, there can be huge openings you don't even anticipate."

Creativity is many things. It is making connections, with yourself or a great other "universal source", connections that create new ideas; it is embracing fear and the inner critic; it is staying open-minded. But if Walter Isaacson's hunch is correct, creative cleverness is nothing without an inquiring mind. Isaacson, author of a 2017 biography of Leonardo da Vinci that was based on more than 7,000 pages of the artist’s workbooks, was asked by National Geographic what made Leonardo a genius. He identified the Italian Polymath's broad skillset  –  as artist, architect, engineer, and theatrical producer – as vital to his incredible achievements.

But his standout quality, he says, was his curiosity. "Being curious about everything… It's how he pushed himself and taught himself to be a genius." He concludes: "We will never emulate Einstein's mathematical ability. But we can all try to learn from, and copy, Leonardo's curiosity."

The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention by Julia Cameron is published by Souvenir Press/ Profile.

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article on creative writing

Teaching creative writing in primary schools: a systematic review of the literature through the lens of reflexivity

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  • Published: 17 June 2023

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  • Georgina Barton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2703-238X 1 ,
  • Maryam Khosronejad 2 ,
  • Mary Ryan 2 ,
  • Lisa Kervin 3 &
  • Debra Myhill 4  

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Teaching writing is complex and research related to approaches that support students’ understanding and outcomes in written assessment is prolific. Written aspects including text structure, purpose, and language conventions appear to be explicit elements teachers know how to teach. However, more qualitative and nuanced elements of writing such as authorial voice and creativity have received less attention. We conducted a systematic literature review on creativity and creative aspects of writing in primary classrooms by exploring research between 2011 and 2020. The review yielded 172 articles with 25 satisfying established criteria. Using Archer’s critical realist theory of reflexivity we report on personal, structural, and cultural emergent properties that surround the practice of creative writing. Implications and recommendations for improved practice are shared for school leaders, teachers, preservice teachers, students, and policy makers.

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Introduction

Creative writing in schools is an important part of learning, assessment, and reporting, however, there is evidence globally to suggest that such writing is often stifled in preference to quick on-demand writing, usually featured in high-stakes testing (Au & Gourd, 2013 ; Gibson & Ewing, 2020 ). Research points to this negatively impacting particularly on students from diverse backgrounds (Mahmood et al., 2020 ). When teachers teach on-demand writing typical pedagogical traits are revealed, those that are often referred to as formulaic (Ryan & Barton, 2014 ). When thinking about creative writing, however, Wyse et al. ( 2013 ) noted that it involves the absence of structure and teaching creative writing requires an ‘open’ pedagogical approach for students to be given imaginative choice. By this, they mean that teachers need to consider less formulaic ways to teach writing so that students can experience different opportunities and ways to write creatively. They argued that if students are not given the flexibility to experiment through writing then their creativity might be stifled. Similarly, Barbot et al. ( 2012 ), who carried out a study with a panel of 15 experts of creative writing, posited that creative writing is when students draw on their imagination and other creative processes to create fictional narratives or writing that is ‘unusually original’. They also noted that creative writing is important for the development of students’ critical and creative thinking skills and ways in which they can approach life in creative ways.

Creative writing is defined in various ways in literature. Wang ( 2019 ) defined creative writing as a form of original expression involving an author’s imagination to engage a reader. Other definitions of creative writing involve the notion of children’s imagination, choice, and originality and much research has explored the concept of creativity within and through the writing process.

While creative writing is defined in various ways, and the many ways that it is treated in literacy education, this article is not concerned with the nature of the term per se. Rather, it focusses on research about creative writing and creativity in writing to understand how research unpacks the personal and contextual characteristics that surround creative writing practices. To this aim, we adopt a broad definition of creative writing as a form of original writing involving an author’s imagination and self-expression to engage a reader (Wang, 2019 ). Creative writing is important for children’s development (Grainger et al., 2005 ), allowing them to use their imagination and broaden their ability to problem-solve and think deeply. Creativity in writing refers to specific aspects within a writing product that can be deemed creative. Some examples include the use of senses and how a writer might engage a reader (Deutsch, 2014 ; Smith, 2020 ).

International research on teaching writing has indicated a loss in innovative or creative pedagogical practices due to the pressure on teachers to teach prescribed writing skills that are assessed in high-stakes tests (Göçen, 2019 ; Stock & Molloy, 2020 ), often resulting in specific trends including teaching a genre approach to writing (Polesel et al., 2012 ; Ryan & Barton, 2014 ). A comprehensive meta-analysis by Graham et al ( 2012 ), designed to identify writing practices with evidence of effectiveness in primary classrooms, found that explicitly teaching imagery and creativity was an effective teaching practice in writing. In addition, a review of methods related to teaching writing conducted by Slavin et al. ( 2019 ) included studies that statistically reported causal relationships between teacher practice and student outcomes. Common themes in Slavin et al’s ( 2019 ) quest for improving writing included comprehensive teacher professional development, student engagement and enjoyment, and explicit teaching of grammar, punctuation, and usage. While they did not specifically cite creativity, motivating environments and cooperative learning were important characteristics of writing programs.

This systematic literature review aims to share empirical international research in the context of elementary/primary schools by exploring creativity in writing and the conditions that influence its emergence. It specifically aims to answer the question: What influences the teaching of creative writing in primary education? And how can reflexivity theorise these influences? The review shares scholarly work that attempts to define personal aspects of creative writing including imagination, and creative thinking; discusses creative approaches to teaching writing, and shows how these methods might support students’ creative writing or creative aspects of writing.

Writing is a complex process that involves students making decisions about word choice, sentence, and text structure, and ways in which to engage readers. Such decisions require a certain amount of reflection or at times deeper reflexive judgments by both teachers and students. Consequently, we draw on Archer’s ( 2012 ) critical realist theory of reflexivity to guide our review as research shows that reflexive thinking in practice can improve writing outcomes (Ryan et al., 2021 ). Archer ( 2007 ) highlights how reflexivity is an everyday activity involving mental processes whereby we think about ourselves in relation to our immediate personal, social, and cultural contexts. She suggests we make decisions through negotiating the connected emergences of personal properties (PEPs) related to the individual, structural properties (SEPs) related to the contextual happenings and cultural properties (CEPs) related to ideologies, each of which is influenced by the other developments. These decisions influence, and are influenced by, our subsequent actions. In applying reflexivity theory to writing (see Ryan, 2014 ), we cannot simply focus on the writing product, but should also interrogate the process of writing, that is, the influences on decision-making and design which are enabled or constrained through pedagogical practices in the classroom. Writing practices and outputs are formed through the interplay of personal, structural, and cultural conditions. Student decisions and actions about writing ensue through the mediation of personal (e.g. beliefs, motivations, interests, experiences), structural (e.g. curriculum, programs, testing regimes, teaching strategies, resources), and cultural (e.g. norms, expectations, ideologies, values) conditions. Therefore, teachers play an important role in facilitating the interplay of these conditions for their students and recontextualising curricula and policy (Ryan et al., 2021 ). For example, by enabling students’ agency and creating an authentic purpose for writing, teachers can balance the personal conditions of students (such as their motivation and interest) against the structural effects of the curriculum requirements. Using a reflexive approach to investigating the literature on creative writing we aim to reveal the personal, structural, and cultural conditions surrounding the study and the practice of creative writing. We argue that it is through the understanding of these conditions that we can theorise how a. students might make their writing more creative and b. how teachers might establish classroom conditions conducive to creativity.

The approach taken for this paper was guided by the PRISMA method (Moher et al., 2009 ) for conducting systematic literature reviews (see Table 1 ).

Our electronic search involved several databases: researchers’ library online catalogue, EBSCO host ultimate, ProQuest, Eric, Web of Science, Informit, and ScienceDirect. Using the following search terms: creativ* AND (‘teaching methods’ OR pedagog*) AND writing AND (elementary OR primary) to search titles and abstracts as well as limiting the search to peer-reviewed articles written in English within a 10-year timeframe (2011–2020), we initially retrieved 172 articles. Information about all 172 articles was input into a data spreadsheet including author, article title, journal title, volume and issue number, and abstract. Once completed, these articles were divided into two equal groups and two researchers were assigned to review the articles for relevancy against the following inclusion criteria:

Studies were peer-reviewed empirical research published in English;

Participants were primary students and/or teachers;

Students were not specifically English as a Second or Additional Language/Dialect learners (samples of culturally and linguistically diverse students in primary classrooms were included);

Studies were not carried out in curriculum areas other than English; and

Studies did not have a specific focus on digital technologies in the classroom.

For this systematic review, we were interested in the ways in which teachers thought about, understood, and taught the ‘creative’ aspect of writing.

The 25 studies that met the inclusion criteria were synthesised to review what influences the improvement of creative writing in primary education. We analysed the papers for how creative writing and/or creative aspects in writing were viewed as well as how teachers might best support students to develop reflexive capacities to improve the creative aspects of writing. We also identified any personal, structural, and/or cultural emergences that might impact on the effectiveness of students’ creative writing. Two of the authors read the entire articles and identified four main categories of research which were (1) understanding creative writing; (2) creative thinking and its contribution to writing; (3) creative pedagogy; and (4) what students can do to be more creative in their writing. These were cross-checked by the entire research team. Some of the papers fit more than one of these themes. In the next section, each theme is introduced and defined and then the articles that fall within the theme are reviewed.

Overall a total number of 25 articles had overlapping themes that included various personal and contextual aspects. Figure  1 shows what we have identified as the key themes under each category. In the next sections, we represent papers based on their main theme.

figure 1

The personal, structural, and cultural conditions surrounding creative writing

Personal emergent properties

A total number of 13 articles were about what students can do to be more creative in their writing (Mendelowitz, 2014 ; Steele, 2016 ) and how teachers’ and students’ personal characteristics relate to the development of creative writing. These articles were mainly focussed on the personal emergent aspects of writing (Alhusaini & Maker, 2015 ; Barbot et al., 2012 ; Cremin et al., 2020 ; DeFauw, 2018 ; Dobson, 2015 ; Dobson & Stephenson, 2017 , 2020 ; Edwards-Groves, 2011 ; Healey, 2019 ; Lee & Enciso, 2017 ; Macken-Horarik, 2012 ; Ryan, 2014 ). The personal aspects identified in our review were (1) personal views about creative writing, (2) creative thinking, (3) writer identity, (4) learner motivation and engagement, and (5) knowledge and capabilities.

Personal views about creative writing

From our systematic review, we identified three articles exploring views about what creative writing is, and more specifically the role that it plays and the elements that make creative writing, in primary classrooms. One of these studies was focussed on the views and experiences of experts in writing (Barbot et al., 2012 ), whereas the other two investigated students’ perspectives and experiences (Alhusaini & Maker, 2015 ; Healey, 2019 ). Barbot et al’s ( 2012 ) work, for example, recognised that creative writing involves both cognitive and metacognitive abilities. This was determined by the expert panel of people whose work related to writing including teachers, linguists, psychologists, professional writers, and art educators. The panel were asked to complete an online survey that rated the relative importance of 28 identified skills needed to creatively write. Six broad categories were identified as a result of the responses and the rank given to each factor by the expert groups (See Table 2 ). They acknowledged that these features cross over various age groups from children to professional writers.

Findings suggested that each independent rater weighted different key components of creative writing as being more or less important for children. Overall, the findings showed.

a global ‘consensus’ across the expert groups indicated that creative writing skills are primarily supported by factors such as observation, generation of description, imagination, intrinsic motivation and perseverance, while the contributions of all of the other relevant factors seemed negligible (e.g. intelligence, working memory, extrinsic motivation and penmanship). (p. 218)

One factor that was ranked as critical by most respondents, but underemphasised by teachers, was imagination. Teachers’ work in classrooms around creative writing is complex due to the difficulty in defining imagination (Brill, 2004 ). Teachers also under-rated other aspects related to creative cognition.

Another study that explored students’ creativity in writing was conducted by Alhusaini and Maker ( 2015 ) in the south-west of the United States. Participants included 139 students with mixed ethnicities including White, Mexican American, and Navajo. This study involved six elementary/primary school teachers judging students’ writing samples of open-ended stories. To assess the work a Written Linguistic Assessment tool, which was based on the Consensual Assessment Technique [CAT] (Amabile, 1982 ) was implemented. According to Baer and McKool ( 2009 ), The CAT involves experts rating written artefacts or artistic objects by using their ‘sense of what is creative in the domain in question to rate the creativity of the products in relation to one another’ (p. 4). Interestingly, Alhusaini and Maker ( 2015 ) found the CAT to be effective in relation to interrater reliability. The authors do not share what the Judge’s Guidelines to Assess Students’ Stories entail. They mention the difference between technical quality and creativity and note that assessors were able to distinguish the differences between the two, but the reader is not made aware of the aspects of each quality. Overall, the study revealed that one of the most challenging problems in the field of creativity and writing is trying to measure creativity across cultures by using standardised tests. Such studies could have implications for other students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds as teachers become more aware of cultural nuances in constituting ‘creative’ in creative writing.

The final study we identified in this category was by Healey ( 2019 ). Healey employed an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and explored how eight children (11–12 Years of age) experienced creative writing in the classroom. He shared how children’s writing experiences were based on ‘the affect, embodiment, and materiality of their immediate engagement with activities in the classroom’ (p. 184). Results from student interviews showed three themes related to the experience of writing: the writing world (watching, ideas from elsewhere, flowing); the self (concealing and revealing, agency, adequacy); and schooled writing (standards, satisfying task requirements, rules of good writing). The author stated that children’s consciousness shifts between their imagination (The Writing World) and set assessment tasks (Schooled Writing). Both of these worlds affect the way children experience themselves as writers. Further findings from this work argued that originality of ideas and use of richer vocabulary improved students’ creative writing. Vocabulary improvement included diversity of word meanings, appropriate usage of words, words being in line with the purpose of the text; while originality of ideas featured creative and unusual (original) ideas—which in many ways is difficult to define.

Overall, when concerned with personal views and attitudes in creative writing, the two studies by Healey ( 2019 ) and Barbot et al. ( 2012 ) show contrasting findings about ‘imagination’ captured through the view of students and teachers, respectively. While Healey’s ( 2019 ) study suggests that children shift between their imagination and set assessment tasks in creative writing, Barbot et al. ( 2012 ) highlight the lack of attention to imagination among their participated teachers. Although these results cannot be generalised, they highlight the significance of understanding personal emergent properties that both students and teachers bring to the classroom and the way that they interact to affect the experience of creative writing for learners. From this theme, we suggest the importance of educators acknowledging students’ imagination through their definition of creative writing as well as providing quality time for students to choose what they write through imaginative thought. We now turn to creative thinking and related pedagogical approaches to teaching creative writing from the research literature.

Creative thinking

We identified two articles that were focussed on creative thinking and its contribution to writing (Copping, 2018 ; Cress & Holm, 2016 ). Copping ( 2018 ) explored writing pedagogy and the connections between children’s creative thinking, or a ‘new way of looking at something’ (p. 309), and their writing achievement. The study involved two primary schools in Lancashire, one in an affluent area and one in an underprivileged area. Approximately 28 children from each school were involved in two, 2-day writing workshops based on a murder mystery the children had to solve. Findings from this study revealed that to improve students’ writing achievement (1) a thinking environment needs to be created and maintained, (2) production processes should have value, (3) motivation and achievement increase when there is a tangible purpose, and (4) high expectations lead to higher attainment.

Cress and Holm’s ( 2016 ) study described a curricular approach implemented by a first-grade teacher and their class comprised 13 girls and 11 boys. The project known as the Creative Endeavours project aimed to develop creative thinking by (1) creating an environment of respect with a positive classroom climate. (2) offering new and challenging experiences, and (3) encouraging new ideas rather than praise. The authors argued that through peer collaboration and the flexibility to choose their own projects, children can become more authentically engaged in the writing process. The children wrote about their experiences and their choices, and reflected upon the projects undertaken. In this study, it was revealed that the children showed diversity in their writing assignments including presentation through sewing, photography, and drama. While there were only two papers in this particular theme, their findings are supported by systematic reviews (Graham et al., 2012 ; Slavin et al., 2019 ) that emphasise not only new ways of exploring a range of concepts for learning but also the creation of motivating environments for improving writing (Copping, 2018 ). In addition to the significance of positive and encouraging learning environments, these two studies suggest that setting ‘high expectations’ or ‘challenging experiences’ are conducive to creative thinking however, teachers would need to set appropriate, reflexive conditions for this to occur.

Writer identity

Studies in this category revolve around choice and learner writer identity. The study carried out by Dobson and Stephenson ( 2017 ) focussed on developing a community of writers involving 25 primary school pupils from low socio-economic backgrounds. The project was offered over 2 weeks and featured a number of creative writing workshops. The authors applied the theoretical frameworks of practitioner enquiry and discourse analysis to explore the children’s creative writing outputs. They argued that the workshops, which promoted intertextuality and freedom for the children as writers, enabled a shifting of their ‘writer’ identities (Holland et al., 1998). Dobson and Stephenson ( 2017 ) showed that allowing students to make decisions and choices in regard to authentic writing purposes supported a more flexible approach. They recommend stronger partnerships between schools and universities in relation to research on creative writing, however, it would be important for these relationships to be sustainable.

The second paper on this theme is by Ryan ( 2014 ) who noted that writing is a complex activity that requires appropriate thinking in relation to the purpose, audience, and medium of a variety of texts. Writers always make decisions about how they will present subject matter and/or feelings through all of the modes. Ryan ( 2014 ) suggested that writing is like a performance ‘whereby writers shape and represent their identities as they mediate social structures and personal considerations’ (p. 130). The study analysed writing samples of culturally and linguistically diverse Australian primary students to uncover the types of identities students shared. It found that three different types of writers existed—the school writers who followed teacher instructions or formulas to produce a product; the constrained writers who also followed instructions and formulas but were able to add in some authorical voice; and the reflexive writers who could show a definite command of writing and showed creative potential. Ryan ( 2014 ) argued that teachers’ practices in the classroom directly influence the ways in which students express these identities. She stated that when students are provided choices in writing, they are more able to shape and develop their voices. Such choices would need to include quality time and support to be reflexive in the decisions being made by the students.

The Teachers as Writers project (2015–2017) was conducted by Cremin, Myhill, Eyres, Nash, Wilson, and Oliver. In a recent paper ( 2020 ), the team reported on a collaborative partnership between two universities and a creative writing foundation. Professional writers were invited to engage with teachers in the writing process and the impact of these interactions on classroom teaching practices was determined. Data sets included observations, interviews, audio-capture (of workshops, tutorials and co-mentoring reflections), and audio-diaries from 16 teachers; and a randomised controlled trial (RCT) involving 32 primary and secondary classes. An intervention was carried out involving teachers writing in a week long residence with professional writers, one-on-one tutorials, and extra time and space to write. They also continued learning through two Continuing Professional Development (CPD) days. Results showed that teachers’ identities as writers shifted greatly due to their engagement with professional authors. The students responded positively in terms of their motivation, confidence, sense of ownership, and skills as writers. The professional authors also commented on positive impacts including their own contributions to schools. Conversely, these changes in practice did not improve the students’ final assessment results in any significant way. The authors noted that assuming a causal relationship between teachers’ engagement with writing workshops and students’ writing outcomes was spurious. They, therefore, developed further research building on this learning.

Knowledge and capabilities

The role of knowledge and capability is central to the articles in this category. In Australia, Macken-Horarik ( 2012 ) reported on the introduction of a national curriculum for English. This article drew on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by investigating the potential of Halliday’s notion of grammatics for understanding students’ writing as acts of creative meaning in context. Macken-Horarik ( 2012 ) argued that students needed to know deeply about language so that they could make creative decisions with their writing. She outlined that a ‘good enough’ grammatics would assist teachers in becoming comfortable with ‘playful developments in students’ texts and to foster their control of literate discourse’ (p. 179).

A project carried out by Edwards-Groves in 2011 highlights the role of knowledge about digital technologies in writing practices. 17 teachers in primary classrooms in Australia were asked to use particular digital technologies with their students when constructing classroom texts. Findings showed that an extended perspective on what counts as writing including the writing process was needed. Results revealed that collaborative methods when constructing diverse texts required teachers to rethink pedagogies towards writing instruction and what they consider as writing. It was argued that technology can be used to enhance creative possibilities for students in the form of new and dynamic texts. In particular, it was noted that teachers and students should be aware that digital technologies can both constrain and/or enable text creation in the classroom depending on a number of variables including knowledge and understanding, locating resources and logistical issues such as connectivity and reliability.

In addition, Mendelowitz’s ( 2014 ) study argued that nurturing teachers’ own creativity assisted their ability to teach writing more generally. She noted several ‘interrelated variables and relationships that still need to be given attention in order to gain a more holistic understanding of the challenges of teaching creative writing’ (p. 164). According to Mendelowitz ( 2014 ), elements that impacted on these challenges include teachers’ school writing histories, conceptualisations of imagination, classroom discourses, and pedagogy. Documenting teachers’ work through interviews and classroom observations by the researcher, the study found that teachers need to be able to define imagination and imaginative writing and know what strategies work best with their students. She noted that the teacher’s approaches to teaching writing ‘powerfully shaped by the interactions between their conceptualisations and enactments of imaginative writing pedagogy’ (p. 181) and that these may either limit or create a space for students to be more creative with their writing.

Such Personal Emergent Properties show that individual attributes of both teachers and students are important in learning creative writing. The next section of the paper explores the articles that shared various structural and cultural properties.

Structural emergent properties

In the subset of structural emergent properties, we mainly identified pedagogical approaches for creative writing that explored primary school learning and teaching (Christianakis, 2011a ; Christianakis, 2011b ; Coles, 2017 ; DeFauw, 2018 ; Hall & Grisham-Brown, 2011 ; Portier et al., 2019 ; Rumney et al., 2016 ; Sears, 2012 ; Steele, 2016 ; Southern et al., 2020 ; Yoo & Carter, 2017 ). These pedagogical approaches were aimed at addressing issues related to personal emergent properties such as motivation and engagement, and confidence in writing. The two categories of writing pedagogies were those that engaged professional authors and artists in teaching about creative writing, and the approaches that involved play(ful) activities, and use of visual arts, and drama.

Engaging professional authors and artists

Interestingly, many of the studies used literary forms and/or professional creative authors to spike interest and motivation in the students. Coles’ ( 2017 ) study, for example, used a garden-themed poetry writing project to support 9–10-year-old children’s creative writing in a London primary school. The 5-week project partnered with a professional creative writing organisation that facilitated the Ministry for Stories (MoS) writing centres across the USA. The study found that the social relationships created through this partnership allowed for a more inclusive and socially generative model of creativity. This meant that teachers should not just include creative aspects in assessment rubrics but rather recognise that creativity is encouraged through imagination and working with others. The researchers found improvements in the children’s participation in classroom writing activities as well as diversity in the ways they expressed their writing. The approach valued ‘rich means of expression rather than a set of rules to be learnt’ (p. 396). They also acknowledged issues associated with school–community partnerships including the sustainability of the practice.

Similarly, Rumney et al. ( 2016 ) found that using creative multimodal activities increased students’ confidence and motivation for writing. The study implemented the Write Here project with over 900 children in 12 primary and secondary schools. The study involved the children visiting local art galleries to work with professional authors and artists. Case studies were presented about pre-writing activities, the actual gallery work and post-gallery follow-up sessions. It aimed to improve students’ social development and literacy outcomes through diverse learning activities such as visual art and play in different contexts such as art galleries and classrooms. Like Coles’ ( 2017 ) study, this project showed that creative activities (e.g. talking about and acting out pictures; using story maps; backwards writing and planning) engaged students more than just teaching skills.

In addition, DeFauw’s ( 2018 ) study had student-centred learning and leadership at the core when working with a children’s book author for one year. The collaboration involved three face-to-face sessions with the author as well as online communication through blog posts. Data included recorded interactions, readings and pre and post interviews with teachers ( n  = 9), students ( n  = 36), and the author. The partnership showed that students’ interest was activated and sustained due to the situational context as well as the extended time given to students to interact with the author. The project improved students’ interest in and motivation to write as a result of engaging with authors and hearing about their own experience and writing strategies. It also found that teachers gained more confidence to support students’ exploration of writing in more creative ways. The creative pedagogies were also used in addressing issues related to creative writing outcomes for students, including teachers’ lack of confidence about pedagogies (Southern et al., 2020 ). Through a creative social enterprise approach, the authors facilitated professional development and learning involving artist-led activities for students. The program called Zip Zap had been implemented in schools in Wales and England, and data were collected through focus groups with teachers, students, and parents/carers. Observations of some of the professional development workshops were also video recorded. Third space theory was used to describe the collaborative practice between educators and artists that supported students’ creative writing outcomes. It was noteworthy that involving ‘creative’ practitioners largely focussed on the specific strategies that could be used in classrooms, to which our next section now turns.

Play(ful) activities, visual arts, and drama

Much research explores how to best support students who find writing difficult. Sears’ research ( 2012 ) is a case in point. The author shared how visual arts may be an effective way to improve struggling students with writing. They argued that the visual arts can provide ways of ‘accessing and expressing [student] ideas and ultimately opening a world of creative possibilities’ (p. 17). In the study, six third-grade students engaged with drawing and painting as pre-writing strategies, leading to the creation of poems based on the artworks. The students’ final poems were assessed and showed improved knowledge of all 6 technical categories in writing: ideas, organisation, fluency, voice, word choice, and conventions. The author also argued that students’ motivation to write increased as a result of the visual art activities.

A study by Portier et al. ( 2019 ) investigated approaches to teaching writing that were motiving and engaging for students. Involving 10 northern rural communities in Canada, the project implemented collaborative, play(ful) learning activities alongside sixteen teachers and their students. Interestingly, the study, like many others in our review, found a disconnect ‘between the achievement of curricular objectives and the implementation of play(ful) learning activities’ (p. 20); an approach valued in early childhood education. The students were supported through action research projects in creating texts with different purposes. Students’ motivation as well as samples of work were analysed and showed that student interest areas and collaborative approaches benefited both teachers and students. Further research on how reflexive thinking might have influenced these benefits is recommended.

Similarly, Lee and Enciso ( 2017 ) highlighted the importance of motivation and engagement in their study. In a collaboration with Austin Theatre Alliance, Lee and Enciso ( 2017 ) investigated how dramatic approaches to teaching, such as through expanded imagination and improvisation, can improve students’ story writing. They argued that the students’ motivation to write was also increased. The study was carried out through a controlled quasi-experimental study over 8 weeks of story-writing and drama-based programs. 29 third-grade classrooms in various schools, located in an urban district of Texas, were involved. The study also pre- and post-tested the students’ writing self-efficacy through story building. The study found that students were more able to use their cultural knowledge such as ‘culturally formed repertoires of language and experience to explore and express new understandings of the world and themselves…’ (p. 160) for creative writing purposes but needed more quality resources to support opportunities such as the Literacy for Life program. A most important finding was that for children who experience poverty, drama-based activities developed and led by teaching artists were extremely powerful and allowed the students to express themselves in entertaining ways. We do note that ‘entertainment’ and or engagement might mean different things for different students so reflexive approaches to deciding what these are would be necessary.

Steele’s ( 2016 ) study also looked at supporting teachers’ work in the classroom. Involving 6 out of 20 teacher workshop participants in Hawaii, this exploratory case study utilised observations, interview, and portfolio analyses of teacher and student work. Findings from the study showed that some teachers relished moving away from everyday ‘typical’ practice and increased student voice and choice. Other teachers, however, found it difficult to take risks and hence respond to student needs and ideas.

Dobson and Stephenson’s ( 2020 ) study focussed on the professional development of primary school teachers using drama to develop creative writing across the curriculum. The project was sponsored by the United Kingdom Literacy Association and ran for two terms in a school year. Researchers based the research on a collaborative approach involving academics and four teachers working with theatre educators to use process drama. Data sets included lesson observations, notes taken during learning conversations, and interviews with the teachers. The findings showed that three of the four teachers resisted some of the methods used such as performance; resulting in a lack of child-centred learning. The remaining teacher could take on board innovative practice, which the researchers attributed to his disposition. The study argued that these teachers, while a small participant group, needed more support in feeling confident in implementing new and creative approaches to teaching writing.

The final study, identified as addressing creative pedagogies for creative writing, was carried out by Yoo and Carter ( 2017 ) as professional development for teachers. Data included teacher survey responses and field notes taken by the researchers at each workshop (note: number of workshops and participants is unknown). The program aimed to investigate how emotions play a role in teachers’ work when teaching creative writing. The researchers found that intuitive joint construction of meaning was important to meet the needs of both primary and secondary teachers. A community of practice was established to support teachers’ identities as writers (see also Cremin et al., 2020 ). Findings showed that teachers who already identified as writers engaged more positively in the workshop.

These studies presented some approaches for teachers to consider how to teach creative writing. For example, the need to value unique spaces for students to write, including authentic connections with people and places outside of school environments was shared. Further, the need for quality stimuli and time for writing was acknowledged. Several other studies identified that blended teaching approaches to support student learning outcomes in the area of creative writing is important for schools and teachers to consider. We do acknowledge there may be other methods available to support students in creative writing, however, understanding what types of SEPs are impacting on teaching creative writing is an important step in determining improvements in schools.

Cultural emergent properties

Christianakis ( 2011a , 2011b ) wrote two papers about children’s creative text development with an emphasis on the cultural aspects. The first was an ethnographic study across 8 months with a year five class in East San Francisco Bay. The study included audio recording the students’ conversations and analysing over 900 samples of work. In the classroom, students were involved in a range of meaning-making practices including those that were arts-based and multimodal. The conversations with the students involved the researcher asking questions such: tell me more about this drawing, how did you come up with the idea? or why did you make this choice? The study found that there was a need for schools to reconceptualise the teaching of writing ‘to include not only orthographic symbols, but also the wide array of communicative tools that children bring to writing’ (p. 22). The author argued that unless corresponding institutional practices and ideologies were interrogated then improved practice was unlikely.

Christianakis’ ( 2011b ) second article, from the same project, explored more specifically the creation of hybrid rap poems by the children. She explicated how educators needed to negotiate and challenge dominant practices in primary classroom literacy learning. Like many studies before, a strong recommendation was to be more inclusive of youth popular cultures and culturally relevant literacies for students to be more engaged in creative writing practices. For Christianakis, culturally relevant literacies meant practices that embraced diversity in class and race and accounted for, and challenged, the dominant hegemonic curriculum that ‘privileges a traditional canon’ (p. 1140).

In summary, we found several themes under PEPs that could be considered for further research including those outlined in Table 3 below.

Discussion and implications for classroom practice

From this systematic literature review, several positions were exposed about the personal, structural, and cultural influences (Archer, 2012 ; Ryan, 2014 ) on teaching creative writing. These include limited teacher and student knowledge of what constitutes creative writing (Personal Emergent Properties [PEPs]), and no shared understanding or expectation in relation to creative writing pedagogy in their context (Cultural Emergent Properties [CEPs]). The negative impact of standardised testing and trending approaches on how teachers teach writing (CEP; Structural Emergent Properties [SEPs]) could also be considered (see AUTHORS 1 and 3, 2014 for example). In addition, teachers’ poor self-efficacy in terms of teaching creative writing (PEP); a paucity of quality professional development about teaching and assessing creative writing (SEP); and issues related to the sustainability of creative approaches to teach writing (SEP; CEP) need to be considered by leaders and teachers in schools. Our literature review advances knowledge about creative writing by revealing two interconnected areas that affect creative writing practices. Findings suggest that a parallel focus on personal conditions and contextual conditions—including structural and cultural—has the potential to improve creative writing in general. Below, we share some implications and recommendations for improved practice by focussing on both (1) personal views about creative writing and (2) the structural and cultural aspects that affect creative writing practices at schools.

Focussing on personal views about creative writing

School leaders and teachers must clearly define what creative writing is, what key skills constitute creative writing.

From our search it was apparent that schools and their educators often do not have a clear idea or indeed a shared idea as to what constitutes creative writing in relation to their own context. Without a well-defined focus for creative writing students may find it difficult to know what is required in classroom tasks and assessment. In addition, when planning for creative writing in school programs, teachers should consider flexible learning opportunities and choice for their students when developing their creative writing skills. Such flexibility should also involve choice of topic, ways of working (e.g. peer collaboration, individual activities etc.), and open discussions led by students in the classroom as shown throughout this paper. It would also be important for leaders and teachers to interrogate current approaches to teaching writing which we argued in the introduction to be formulaic and genre based.

Improve teacher self-efficacy, confidence, and content knowledge in teaching writing

Many of our studies showed that teachers who lacked confidence about writing themselves had less knowledge and skills to teach writing than those that may have participated in projects encouraging ‘teachers as writers’. Further, improved knowledge of grammar (as highlighted in Macken-Horarik’s, 2012 work); talk about writing in the classroom and other spaces (Cremin et al., 2020 ) and the writing process (see Ryan, 2014 ) could assist teachers in becoming more confident to take risks in the classroom with their students. Above all being playful about writing through extended conversations and practices is required.

Focussing on the structural and cultural resources

Improve training and further professional development and learning about teaching and assessing creative writing.

In order for the above personal attributes to be improved, further professional development and learning are required. Many of the papers presented throughout this review demonstrated the powerful impact of immersive professional learning for teachers. Working alongside professional authors, researchers, drama practitioners, visual artists, poets, for example, provided positive opportunities for teachers to learn about writing but also to feel more confident to teach it without imposing strict boundaries on students. We argue for professional development to be both formal and informal including such approaches as coaching and mentoring in the classroom. Demonstrated practice alongside the teacher is also recommended. This, in turn, would address the ongoing issue of creative writing being stifled for students in the classroom context.

Consider sustainability of creative pedagogic approaches and spaces for creative writing in curriculum planning

Many of the studies throughout this paper shared creative approaches to teaching writing but there were concerns that some of these methods may not be sustainable. It is important for school leaders to support the work of teachers in relation to teaching creative writing. We acknowledge that there is increasing uncertainty and scrutiny surrounding teachers’ everyday work (Knight, 2020 ), however, continued engagement in learning about and participating in creative pedagogy for writing is highly recommended. In addition, the studies suggested the provision of appropriate and authentic spaces in which students could creatively write and these often included spaces outside of the normal classroom environment and arts-based approaches implemented in such spaces. Teachers should be encouraged to collaborate and take risks rather than follow predetermined strategies for every lesson. A whole of school practice can be developed with important conversations about the ideologies that inform the school’s approach to writing.

Schools should not stifle creativity in the classroom due to the infiltration of standardised and/or trending approaches to teaching and assessing writing

It is evident that pedagogical approaches to teaching writing have been stifled by more formulaic methods aiming to meet expectations of standardised tests despite other evidence showing the benefits of more productive, engaging, and creative approaches to teaching writing as highlighted above. This can be particularly the case for students from non-dominant backgrounds where writing about cultural and life experiences through innovative practices has been proven to empower their voices (Johnson, 2021 ). The research shows that when students are offered rigid structures of texts, no choice of genres, and indeed word lists, their own decisions about writing are diminished (Ryan & Barton, 2013 ). It has been proven that students’ engagement and motivation to write can increase when they are able to write directly from their own experience or in social groups. It is therefore recommended that school leaders and teachers reconsider their ideologies about writing and explicitly indicate the importance of real-world purposes for writing—not just formulised, quick writing as usually included in external tests—but also those that encourage students’ growth in imagination, creativity, and innovative thought.

This systematic review used a lens of reflexivity to situate writing as a process of active and creative design whereby students make conscious decisions about their writing, with guidance from their teachers. As explained, we see creative writing as writing that engages a reader and, therefore, requires knowledge of authorial voice and appropriate word choice. This involves reflexive decisions relating to personal, structural, and cultural emergent properties. Predominant in the literature was the striking influence of CEPs or the values and expectations ascribed to writing, which in turn influence the strategies and resources (SEPs) and the experiences and motivations of students and teachers in the classroom (PEPs). Writing is about more than a series of perfectly formed sentences in a recognisable structure, which dominates conceptions of writing through high-stakes testing globally. It is about engagement with the expressive self, emergent identities, and relationships to places and people and above all communicating to and/or entertaining a reader. Without quality education in creative writing, society is at risk of losing an art form that is important for cultural practice and expression (Watson, 2016 ).

We do foresee several limitations with such a review, largely related to the positive nature of the studies in relation to creative approaches to teaching writing as well as the relatively small numbers of participants in some of the studies. Most of the studies reported favourably on the approaches taken by teachers to influence student motivation towards writing with limited comments about adverse effects. In terms of contributions, the notion that students need to draw on creative thought and ideas when writing means that teachers and leaders must think about diverse ways to teach writing. We argue, on the basis of the findings, that inquiry-based and reflexive professional learning projects about creativity are crucial for primary classrooms: what creativity means in different contexts and for different writers; how it is enabled; and the decisions and actions that emerge when creative and reflexive design guide our approach to classroom writing. Without quality knowledge and understanding of what creative writing is and how it is taught, we would be at risk of diminishing students’ self-expression and ability to communicate meaning to others in literary forms.

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Barton, G., Khosronejad, M., Ryan, M. et al. Teaching creative writing in primary schools: a systematic review of the literature through the lens of reflexivity. Aust. Educ. Res. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00641-9

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  • What Is Creative Writing? The ULTIMATE Guide!

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At Oxford Royale Academy, we offer a range of writing courses that have become extremely popular amongst students of all ages. The subject of creative writing continues to intrigue many academics as it can help to develop a range of skills that will benefit you throughout your career and life.

Nevertheless, that initial question is one that continues to linger and be asked time and time again: what is creative writing? More specifically, what does it mean or encompass? How does creative writing differ from other styles of writing?

During our Oxford Summer School programme , we will provide you with in-depth information on creative writing and how you can hone your skills. However, in this guide, we want to provide a detailed analysis of everything to do with creative writing, helping you understand more about what it is and why it could benefit you to become a creative writer.

The best place to start is with a definition.

What is creative writing?

The dictionary definition of creative writing is that it is original writing that expresses ideas and thoughts in an imaginative way. [1] Some academics will also define it as the art of making things up, but both of these definitions are too simplistic in the grand scheme of things.

It’s challenging to settle on a concrete definition as creative writing can relate to so many different things and formats. Naturally, as the name suggests, it is all built around the idea of being creative or imaginative. It’s to do with using your brain and your own thoughts to create writing that goes outside the realms of what’s expected. This type of writing tends to be more unique as it comes from a personal place. Each individual has their own level of creativity, combined with their own thoughts and views on different things. Therefore, you can conjure up your own text and stories that could be completely different from others.

Understanding creative writing can be challenging when viewed on its own. Consequently, the best way to truly understand this medium is by exploring the other main forms of writing. From here, we can compare and contrast them with the art of creative writing, making it easier to find a definition or separate this form of writing from others.

What are the main forms of writing?

In modern society, we can identify five main types of writing styles [1] that will be used throughout daily life and a plethora of careers:

  • Narrative Writing
  • Descriptive Writing
  • Persuasive Writing
  • Expository Writing
  • Creative Writing

Narrative writing refers to storytelling in its most basic form. Traditionally, this involves telling a story about a character and walking the readers through the journey they go on. It can be a long novel or a short story that’s only a few hundred words long. There are no rules on length, and it can be completely true or a work of fiction.

A fundamental aspect of narrative writing that makes it different from other forms is that it should includes the key elements of storytelling. As per UX Planet, there are seven core elements of a good story or narrative [2] : the plot, characters, theme, dialogue, melody, decor and spectacle. Narrative writing will include all of these elements to take the ready on a journey that starts at the beginning, has a middle point, but always comes to a conclusion. This style of writing is typically used when writing stories, presenting anecdotes about your life, creating presentations or speeches and for some academic essays.

Descriptive writing, on the other hand, is more focused on the details. When this type of writing is used, it’s focused on capturing the reader’s attention and making them feel like they are part of the story. You want them to live and feel every element of a scene, so they can close their eyes and be whisked away to whatever place or setting you describe.

In many ways, descriptive writing is writing as an art form. Good writers can be given a blank canvas, using their words to paint a picture for the audience. There’s a firm focus on the five senses all humans have; sight, smell, touch, sound and taste. Descriptive writing touches on all of these senses to tell the reader everything they need to know and imagine about a particular scene.

This is also a style of writing that makes good use of both similes and metaphors. A simile is used to describe something as something else, while a metaphor is used to show that something is something else. There’s a subtle difference between the two, but they both aid descriptive writing immensely. According to many writing experts, similes and metaphors allow an author to emphasise, exaggerate, and add interest to a story to create a more vivid picture for the reader [3] .

Looking at persuasive writing and we have a form of writing that’s all about making yourself heard. You have an opinion that you want to get across to the reader, convincing them of it. The key is to persuade others to think differently, often helping them broaden their mind or see things from another point of view. This is often confused with something called opinionative writing, which is all about providing your opinions. While the two seem similar, the key difference is that persuasive writing is built around the idea of submitting evidence and backing your thoughts up. It’s not as simple as stating your opinion for other to read; no, you want to persuade them that your thoughts are worth listening to and perhaps worth acting on.

This style of writing is commonly used journalistically in news articles and other pieces designed to shine a light on certain issues or opinions. It is also typically backed up with statistical evidence to give more weight to your opinions and can be a very technical form of writing that’s not overly emotional.

Expository writing is more focused on teaching readers new things. If we look at its name, we can take the word exposure from it. According to Merriam-Webster [4] , one of the many definitions of exposure is to reveal something to others or present them with something they otherwise didn’t know. In terms of writing, it can refer to the act of revealing new information to others or exposing them to new ideas.

Effectively, expository writing focuses on the goal of leaving the reader with new knowledge of a certain topic or subject. Again, it is predominately seen in journalistic formats, such as explainer articles or ‘how-to’ blogs. Furthermore, you also come across it in academic textbooks or business writing.

This brings us back to the centre of attention for this guide: what is creative writing?

Interestingly, creative writing is often seen as the style of writing that combines many of these forms together in one go. Narrative writing can be seen as creative writing as you are coming up with a story to keep readers engaged, telling a tale for them to enjoy or learn from. Descriptive writing is very much a key part of creative writing as you are using your imagination and creative skills to come up with detailed descriptions that transport the reader out of their home and into a different place.

Creative writing can even use persuasive writing styles in some formats. Many writers will combine persuasive writing with a narrative structure to come up with a creative way of telling a story to educate readers and provide new opinions for them to view or be convinced of. Expository writing can also be involved here, using creativity and your imagination to answer questions or provide advice to the reader.

Essentially, creative writing can combine other writing types to create a unique and new way of telling a story or producing content. At the same time, it can include absolutely none of the other forms at all. The whole purpose of creative writing is to think outside the box and stray from traditional structures and norms. Fundamentally, we can say there are no real rules when it comes to creative writing, which is what makes it different from the other writing styles discussed above.

What is the purpose of creative writing?

Another way to understand and explore the idea of creative writing is to look at its purpose. What is the aim of most creative works of writing? What do they hope to provide the reader with?

We can look at the words of Bryanna Licciardi, an experienced creative writing tutor, to understand the purpose of creative writing. She writes that the primary purpose is to entertain and share human experiences, like love or loss. Writers attempt to reveal the truth with regard to humanity through poetics and storytelling. [5] She also goes on to add that the first step of creative writing is to use one’s imagination.

When students sign up to our creative writing courses, we will teach them how to write with this purpose. Your goal is to create stories or writing for readers that entertain them while also providing information that can have an impact on their lives. It’s about influencing readers through creative storytelling that calls upon your imagination and uses the thoughts inside your head. The deeper you dive into the art of creative writing, the more complex it can be. This is largely because it can be expressed in so many different formats. When you think of creative writing, your instinct takes you to stories and novels. Indeed, these are both key forms of creative writing that we see all the time. However, there are many other forms of creative writing that are expressed throughout the world.

What are the different forms of creative writing?

Looking back at the original and simple definition of creative writing, it relates to original writing in a creative and imaginative way. Consequently, this can span across so many genres and types of writing that differ greatly from one another. This section will explore and analyse the different types of creative writing, displaying just how diverse this writing style can be – while also showcasing just what you’re capable of when you learn how to be a creative writer.

The majority of students will first come across creative writing in the form of essays . The point of an essay is to present a coherent argument in response to a stimulus or question. [6] In essence, you are persuading the reader that your answer to the question is correct. Thus, creative writing is required to get your point across as coherently as possible, while also using great descriptive writing skills to paint the right message for the reader.

Moreover, essays can include personal essays – such as writing a cover letter for work or a university application. Here, great creativity is needed to almost write a story about yourself that captivates the reader and takes them on a journey with you. Excellent imagination and persuasive writing skills can help you tell your story and persuade those reading that you are the right person for the job or university place.

Arguably, this is the most common way in which creative writing is expressed. Fictional work includes novels, novellas, short stories – and anything else that is made up. The very definition of fiction by the Cambridge Dictionary states that it is the type of book or story that is written about imaginary characters and events not based on real people and facts. [7] As such, it means that your imagination is called upon to create something out of nothing. It is a quintessential test of your creative writing skills, meaning you need to come up with characters, settings, plots, descriptions and so much more.

Fictional creative writing in itself takes on many different forms and can be completely different depending on the writer. That is the real beauty of creative writing; you can have entirely different stories and characters from two different writers. Just look at the vast collection of fictional work around you today; it’s the perfect way to see just how versatile creative writing can be depending on the writer.

Similarly, scripts can be a type of creative writing that appeals to many. Technically, a script can be considered a work of fiction. Nevertheless, it depends on the script in question. Scripts for fictional television shows, plays or movies are obviously works of fiction. You, the writer, has come up with the characters and story of the show/play/movie, bringing it all to life through the script. But, scripts can also be non-fictional. Creating a play or movie that adapts real-life events will mean you need to write a script based on something that genuinely happened.

Here, it’s a perfect test of creative writing skills as you take a real event and use your creative talents to make it more interesting. The plot and narrative may already be there for you, so it’s a case of using your descriptive writing skills to really sell it to others and keep readers – or viewers – on the edge of their seats.

A speech is definitely a work of creative writing. The aim of a speech can vary depending on what type of speech it is. A politician delivering a speech in the House of Commons will want to get a point across to persuade others in the room. They’ll need to use creative writing to captivate their audience and have them hanging on their every word. A recent example of a great speech was the one by Sir David Attenborough at the recent COP26 global climate summit. [8] Listening to the speech is a brilliant way of understanding how creative writing can help get points across. His speech went viral around the world because of how electrifying and enthralling it is. The use of many descriptive and persuasive words had people hanging onto everything he said. He really created a picture and an image for people to see, convincing them that the time is now to work on stopping and reversing climate change.

From this speech to a completely different one, you can see creative writing at play for speeches at weddings and other jovial events. Here, the purpose is more to entertain guests and make them laugh. At the same time, someone giving a wedding speech will hope to create a lovely story for the guests to enjoy, displaying the true love that the married couple share for one another. Regardless of what type of speech an individual is giving, creative writing skills are required for it to be good and captivating.

Poetry & Songs

The final example of creative writing is twofold; poetry and songs. Both of these formats are similar to one another, relying on creativity to deliver a combination of things. Poetry can take so many forms and styles, but it aims to inspire readers and get them thinking. Poems often have hidden meanings behind them, and it takes a great deal of imagination and creativity to come up with these meanings while also creating a powerful poem. Some argue that poetry is the most creative of all creative writing forms.

Songwriting is similar in that you use creativity to come up with lyrics that can have powerful meanings while also conjuring up a story for people. The best songwriters will use lyrics that stay in people’s minds and get them thinking about the meaning behind the song. If you lack imagination and creativity, you will never be a good songwriter.

In truth, there are so many other types and examples of creative writing that you can explore. The ones listed above are the most common and powerful, and they all do a great job of demonstrating how diverse creative writing can be. If you can hone your skills in creative writing, it opens up many opportunities for you in life. Primarily, creative writing focuses on fictional pieces of work, but as you can see, non-fiction also requires a good deal of creativity.

What’s needed to make a piece of creative writing?

Our in-depth analysis of creative writing has led to a point where you’re aware of this style of writing and its purpose, along with some examples of it in the real world. The next question to delve into is what do you need to do to make a piece of creative writing. To phrase this another way; how do you write something that comes under the creative heading rather than another form of writing?

There is an element of difficulty in answering this question as creative writing has so many different types and genres. Consequently, there isn’t a set recipe for the perfect piece of creative writing, and that’s what makes this format so enjoyable and unique. Nevertheless, we can discover some crucial elements or principles that will help make a piece of writing as creative and imaginative as possible:

A target audience

All creative works will begin by defining a target audience. There are many ways to define a target audience, with some writers suggesting that you think about who is most likely to read your work. However, this can still be challenging as you’re unsure of the correct demographic to target. Writer’s Digest makes a good point of defining your target audience by considering your main motivation for writing in the first place. [9] It’s a case of considering what made you want to start writing – whether it’s a blog post, novel, song, poem, speech, etc. Figuring out your motivation behind it will help you zero in on your target audience.

Defining your audience is vital for creative writing as it helps you know exactly what to write and how to write it. All of your work should appeal to this audience and be written in a way that they can engage with. As a simple example, authors that write children’s stories will adapt their writing to appeal to the younger audience. Their stories include lots of descriptions and words that children understand, rather than being full of long words and overly academic writing.

Establishing the audience lets the writer know which direction to take things in. As a result, this can aid with things like character choices, plot, storylines, settings, and much more.

A story of sorts

Furthermore, great works of creative writing will always include a story of sorts. This is obvious for works such as novels, short stories, scripts, etc. However, even for things like poems, songs or speeches, a story helps make it creative. It gives the audience something to follow, helping them make sense of the work. Even if you’re giving a speech, setting a story can help you create a scene in people’s minds that makes them connect to what you’re saying. It’s a very effective way of persuading others and presenting different views for people to consider.

Moreover, consider the definition of a story/narrative arc. One definition describes it as a term that describes a story’s full progression. It visually evokes the idea that every story has a relatively calm beginning, a middle where tension, character conflict and narrative momentum builds to a peak and an end where the conflict is resolved. [10]

Simplifying this, we can say that all works of creative writing need a general beginning, middle and end. It’s a way of bringing some sort of structure to your writing so you know where you are going, rather than filling it with fluff or waffle.

A good imagination

Imagination is a buzzword that we’ve used plenty of times throughout this deep dive into creative writing. Every creative writing course you go on will spend a lot of time focusing on the idea of using your imagination. The human brain is a marvellously powerful thing that holds the key to creative freedom and expressing yourself in new and unique ways. If you want to make something creative, you need to tap into your imagination.

People use their imagination in different ways; some will be able to conjure up ideas for stories or worlds that exist beyond our own. Others will use theirs to think of ways of describing things in a more creative and imaginative way. Ultimately, a good imagination is what sets your work apart from others within your genre. This doesn’t mean you need to come up with the most fantastical novel of all time to have something classified as creative writing. No, using your imagination and creativity can extend to something as simple as your writing style.

Ultimately, it’s more about using your imagination to find your own personal flair and creative style. You will then be able to write unique pieces that stand out from the others and keep audiences engaged.

How can creative writing skills benefit you?

When most individuals or students consider creative writing, they imagine a world where they are writing stories for a living. There’s a common misconception that creative writing skills are only beneficial for people pursuing careers in scriptwriting, storytelling, etc. Realistically, enhancing ones creative writing skills can open up many windows of opportunity throughout your education and career.

  • Improve essay writing – Naturally, creative writing forms a core part of essays and other written assignments in school and university. Improving your skills in this department can help a student get better at writing powerful essays and achieving top marks. In turn, this can impact your career by helping you get better grades to access better jobs in the future.
  • Become a journalist – Journalists depend on creative writing to make stories that capture audiences and have people hanging on their every word. You need high levels of creativity to turn a news story into something people are keen to read or watch.
  • Start a blog – In modern times, blogging is a useful tool that can help people find profitable and successful careers. The whole purpose of a blog is to provide your opinions to the masses while also entertaining, informing and educating. Again, having a firm grasp of creative writing skills will aid you in building your blog audience.
  • Write marketing content – From advert scripts to content on websites, marketing is fuelled by creative writing. The best marketers will have creative writing skills to draw an audience in and convince them to buy products. If you can learn to get people hanging on your every word, you can make it in this industry.

These points all demonstrate the different ways in which creative writing can impact your life and alter your career. In terms of general career skills, this is one that you simply cannot go without.

How to improve your creative writing

One final part of this analysis of creative writing is to look at how students can improve. It begins by reading as much as you can and taking in lots of different content. Read books, poems, scripts, articles, blogs – anything you can find. Listen to music and pay attention to the words people use and the structure of their writing. It can help you pick up on things like metaphors, similes, and how to use your imagination. Of course, writing is the key to improving; the more you write, the more creative you can get as you will start unlocking the powers of your brain.

Conclusion: What is creative writing

In conclusion, creative writing uses a mixture of different types of writing to create stories that stray from traditional structures and norms. It revolves around the idea of using your imagination to find a writing style that suits you and gets your points across to an audience, keeping them engaged in everything you say. From novels to speeches, there are many forms of creative writing that can help you in numerous career paths throughout your life.

[1] SkillShare: The 5 Types of Writing Styles with Examples

[2] Elements of Good Story Telling – UX Planet

[3] Simile vs Metaphor: What’s the Difference? – ProWritingAid

[4] Definition of Exposure by Merriam-Webster

[5] The Higher Purpose of Creative Writing | by Terveen Gill

[6] Essay purpose – Western Sydney University

[7] FICTION | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary

[8] ‘Not fear, but hope’ – Attenborough speech in full – BBC News

[9] Writer’s Digest: Who Is Your Target Reader?

[10] What is a Narrative Arc? • A Guide to Storytelling Structure

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Creative writing as a research methodology

Author: Jonathon Crewe (University of West London)

Creative writing as a research methodology

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Keywords: creative writing, practice-led, narrative, fiction, focalisation

Crewe, J., (2021) “Creative writing as a research methodology”, New Vistas 7(2), 26-30. doi: https://doi.org/10.36828/newvistas.150

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Published on 14 oct 2021, peer reviewed, creative commons attribution 4.0.

Within Arts and Humanities departments across academia, it is not unusual to find researchers who split their time between more 'traditional' research methodologies and their own professional and creative practice. Indeed, I am one of them. As well as being a Senior Lecturer and researcher producing papers such as this, I am also a creative writer working across film and theatre. Having insights into the production of both forms of outputs, it is clear that there are many similarities in their aims and methods. Combining these into a practice-led research approach, allowing synergies and dialogue to develop, offers the opportunity for deriving unique insights that may otherwise have been overlooked. This article argues that creative writing, in all its various forms, is a valuable research methodology—an argument that could be extended to all practice-led research disciplines.

One strength of practice-led research is the potential to bridge the gap between academia and the general public. The UK Research Excellence Framework's definition of impact beyond academia is 'an effect on, change or benefit to...an audience, community, constituency, organisation or individuals' (REF, 2018, p.83). Whereas social scientists may work with and theorise about group or community identities, individuals do not experience these groups per se, rather they experience interactions with other individuals who may be members of a group. Creative writing, as a practice-based research approach, provides a route to resolving this dilemma by accessing group and community identities from the perspectives of individuals within a particular group or those who have interactions with individuals from this group. Fiction facilitates the portrayal of, and access to, complex and nuanced interiorities (inner character) through the lived experiences of relatable characters, presenting

‘people and situations in their contexts with multidimensionality...as a method of disrupting dominant ideologies or stereotypes by...[describing] social reality and then [presenting] alternatives to that reality. One of the main advantages of fiction as a research practice is the...[ability] to promote empathy, build bridges of understanding across differences, and stimulate self-­reflection’ (Leavy, 2014, p.298).

Practice-led research can produce externalisations of interior knowledge and understanding, as well as exposing socio-cultural frameworks for contextual critical analysis and reflection. Creative writing works to explore the 'human process of making meaning through experiences that are felt, lived, reconstructed and reinterpreted,' and this includes both the writing and the reading process, where 'meanings are "made" from the transactions and narratives that emerge and these have the power and agency to change on an individual or community level' (Sullivan, 2009, 50).

Creative writing allows the researcher access to the individual, but also to go beyond the personal, whereby the 'methods and theoretical ideas as paradigms may be viewed as the apparatuses, or procedures of production from which the research design emerges' (Barrett, 2010, p.138, original italics). Although creative writing provides the researcher and reader with unique insights, it cannot fully realise its research potential without a framework for theoretical and contextual analysis and reflection. A practice-based researcher must maintain a discourse between the artefact and the exegesis, in order to exploit findings and outcomes so that a wider impact can be realised. As such, the creative writing process works in dialogue with continued critical and contextual analysis. In The Political Unconscious , Frederic Jameson argues that ‘the production of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act in its own right’ (Jameson, 2010, p.64). Therefore, the process of creative writing can be analysed in terms of it being a socially symbolic act, whereby the inclusion and usage of ideologemes can be exposed and interrogated. In this context, an ideologeme is understood, according to Jameson, as both a conceptual construction and narrative sign, incorporating concepts such as beliefs and opinions as well as minimal units of socially symbolic narrative acts. As such, they can be seen as the inherited units of representation upon which the process of writing and rewriting through interpretation bases its narrative construction. As Jameson puts it,

‘by their respective positions in the whole complex sequence of the modes of production, both the individual text and its ideologemes…must be read in terms of…the ideology of form, that is, the symbolic messages transmitted…by the coexistence of various sign systems which are themselves traces or anticipations of modes of production’ (Jameson, 2010, p.61).

As such, narrative texts are not individual entities, but exist within the wider body of the literary canon, reflecting the social order in which they were written. In addition, practice-based researchers, similar to more traditional researchers, inevitably develop their methods and techniques in relation to the existent and recognised practices of their predecessors and contemporaries (Barrett, 2010). An understanding of this suggests a duality for the creative writing researcher, whereby a 'double movement occurs, of decontextualisation in which the found elements are rendered strange, and of recontextualisation, in which new families of association and structures of meaning are established' (Carter, 2010, pp.15).

This process not only informs the creative writing researcher, but also the reader of the text. For an example of how this works, this article will consider a creative writing research project in the form of a novel that aims to investigate a particular marginalised social group, whilst challenging typified representations of that group in mainstream media and politics (for a practice-led research project that does this, see Crewe, 2017). In line with the UK Research Excellence Framework's definition above, a novel can create a change in the behaviour and attitudes of its readers, as well as bringing potential benefits to a community—with respect to this example, a particular marginalised group.

Monica Ali and Caryl Phillips are both contemporary authors who have written from the perspective of individual characters from groups often vilified by mainstream media—for example, the Bangladeshi immigrant Nazneem in Ali's Brick Lane (2007), or the African asylum seeker Gabriel / Solomon in Phillip's A Distant Shore (2004). By providing extended, vivid and nuanced insights into the minds of individuals from groups often portrayed with homogenised negative stereotypes in mainstream media, Ali and Phillips work to challenge these tropes, individuate their characters and elicit sympathy from the reader (see Booth, 1983). In other words, the individualisation of a marginalised voice moves the character beyond the sociological and into the psychological, the point where representational meaning can occur in narrative form, in the sense that ‘the psychological impulse tends toward the presentation of highly individualised figures who resist abstraction and generalisation, and whose motivation is not susceptible to rigid ethical interpretation’ (Scholes, Phelan & Kellogg, 2006, 101; see also Currie, 2010 and Jameson, 2010). In the above example, the creative writing researcher's conscious attempt to shift perceptions from a typified reading of characters from a marginalised group to a de-homogenised, individuated reading, serves to exploit Jameson’s concept of rewriting texts through the interpretation process, whereby any given literary text cannot be viewed as independent and autonomous in itself, but rather as being ‘rewritten’ as part of a set of traditional interpretative functions during the process of reading. The reader’s ‘real-life’ assumptions about the lifestyles and behaviour of these groups are exposed and challenged through their own interpretation of the characters’ lifestyles, behaviour and choices within the ‘fictional world’ of the text.

Howard Sklar (2013) claims that emotions, in particular sympathy and compassion, felt by a reader in response to a fictional character can have ‘ethical implications beyond the experience of reading itself…[Although] directed towards imaginary individuals, they may lay a foundation for emotional and ethical sensitivity in real life’ (p.9; see also Kuiken, Miall & Sikora, 2004). This process allows the reader to recognise the emotional and psychological experience of a character, providing a route to the identification and re-evaluation of pre-existing assumptions about a person or character from a particular excluded or ’other’ group. Although readers will possess existing ‘interpretive frames and experiences to the reading of a given text, the narrative itself provides its own counterweight to personal presumptions by “persuading” readers to feel and to evaluate characters in particular ways’ (Sklar, 2013, p.59). This re-framing of the reader’s interpretive perspective will not only involve a re-evaluation of a character’s behaviour and lifestyle choices, but also of the reader’s systems of belief in relation to the character’s social group. As with Booth and Sklar, Currie (2010) argues that ‘sustained imaginative engagement with a vividly expressed and highly individuated mental economy through a long and detailed narrative can…be expected to have…finely-tuned imitative consequences, with correspondingly powerful results in terms of framing’ (p.104). Narratologists have regularly pointed to focalisation, that is, ‘seeing’ from a character’s perspective, as a technique for achieving this re-framing effect, inducing readers to view the narrative from a perspective that is not their own. For example, Sklar (2013) suggests that this re-framing effect is similar to the process of defamiliarisation, where readers are forced to reassess their ‘familiar’ assumptions about the fictional/real world as a result of shifts in perspective of the narrative’s subject of focalisation, which ‘may challenge readers to re-construct their representations of that character’s feelings or attitudes’ (p.69). Kuiken, Miall and Sikora (2004) discuss a set of phenomenological studies they undertook to investigate how defamiliarisation can lead to what they call ‘self-modifying feelings’ in the readers of literary texts:

‘At times, readers of literary texts find themselves participating in an unconventional flow of feelings through which they realize something that they have not previously experienced—or at least...not...in the form provided by the text...The imagined world of the text can become unsettling. What is realized (recognized) also may become realized (made real) and carried forward as a changed understanding of the reader’s own life-world’ (Kuiken, Miall & Sikora, 2004, pp.268).

Identification with an individuated character can elicit emotions of sympathy and compassion from the reader, forcing them to re-evaluate their judgements of the character within the fictionalised world—one of the key strengths of practice-based research (Leavy, 2014). Creative writing takes us 'to where we've never been, to see what we've never seen...[then brings] us back... [to] look again at what we thought we knew' (Sullivan, 2010, p.62). These self-modifying feelings can instigate changes in the reader’s attitudes to parallel/comparable real-life situations.

Creative writing can exploit the nature of realist fiction by portraying aspects of a world familiar to the reader that are ‘perceived as part of a conceptual frame and ultimately integrated into the world the readers know’ (Fludernik & Häusler-Greenfield, 2009, p.55). Its narrative meaning is established though the relationship between a reader’s response, the author’s conscious and unconscious intentions, and the stylistic construction 1 of the literary text itself. In this way, creative writing works to create a connection between its fictional world and the real world of the reader. As Miall and Kuiken (1999) conclude from a number of empirical studies: ‘during literary reading, the perspectives that we have, perhaps unthinkingly, acquired from our culture are especially likely to be questioned…This points to the adaptive value of literature in reshaping our perspectives…, especially by impelling us to reconsider our system of convictions and values’ (p.127). This observation supports the notion of practice-based research as being consistent with more traditional scientific methodologies, as they 'bear intrinsic similarities in their attempts to illuminate aspects of the human condition...and work toward advancing human understanding' (Leavy, 2014, p.3).

Creative writing, and by extension all the unique specialisms and approaches of practice-led research, as a process of decontextualisation and recontextualisation, working in tandem with critical reflection and analysis, can produce original insights that may remain overlooked or undiscovered by more conventional research methodologies. In its impact beyond academia, potentially changing behaviours and attitudes in its readers and audiences as a result of defamiliarisation and re-writing through interpretation, creative writing can be seen as a valuable research methodology that, alongside more traditional research outputs, can bring new insights and original contributions to knowledge.

Ali, M. (2007) Brick Lane. London: Black Swan.

Barrett, E. (2010) Foucault's 'What is an Author': Towards a critical discourse of practice as research. In Practice as research: approaches to creative arts enquiry , edited by E. Barrett, E. & B. Bolt. London, I.B. Tauris.

Booth, W.C. (1983) The Rhetoric of Fiction. London: University of Chicago Press.

Carter, P. (2010) Interest: The Ethics of Invention. In Practice as research: approaches to creative arts enquiry , edited by E. Barrett, E. & B. Bolt. London, I.B. Tauris.

Crewe, J. (2017) Another London: A novel and critical commentary investigating representations of the white working class in media, politics and literature in an age of multiculturalism , PhD dissertation. The University of Surrey.

Currie, G. (2010) Narratives and narrators a philosophy of stories . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fludernik, M. & Häusler-Greenfield, P. (2009) An Introduction to narratology. Abingdon; New York: Routledge.

Jameson, F. (2010) The political unconscious: narrative as a socially symbolic act. London: Routledge.

Kuiken, D., Miall, D.S., & Sikora, S. (2004) Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading. Poetics Today, 25 (2): 171-203

Leavy, P. (2014) Method Meets Art, Second Edition: Arts-Based Research Practice . New York: Guilford Publications.

Miall, D.S. & Kuiken, D. (1999) What Is Literariness? Three Components of Literary Reading. Discourse processes, 28 (2): 121

Phillips, C. (2004) A Distant Shore. London: Vintage.

REF – Research Excellence Framework (2018) Draft guidance on submissions. Retrieved from https://www.ref.ac.uk/media/1016/draft-guidance-on-submissions-ref-2018_1.pdf

Scholes, R., Phelan, J. & Kellogg, R.L. (2006) The nature of narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sklar, H. (2013) The art of sympathy in fiction forms of ethical and emotional persuasion . Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Sullivan, G. (2009) Making Space: The purpose and place of practice-led research. In Practice-led research, research-led practice in the creative arts , edited by H. Smith & R.T. Dean. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

About the author

Dr Jonathon Crewe is a Senior Lecturer in Film Production in the London School of Film, Media and Design at the University of West London.

It is worth noting a key limitation of creative writing, amongst others, that style and aesthetics can potentially distance the reader from the subject, rather than eliciting empathy. ↩

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Crewe, J. (2021) 'Creative writing as a research methodology', New Vistas . 7(2) :26-30. doi: 10.36828/newvistas.150

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Crewe, J. Creative writing as a research methodology. New Vistas. 2021 10; 7(2) :26-30. doi: 10.36828/newvistas.150

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Crewe, J. (2021, 10 14). Creative writing as a research methodology. New Vistas 7(2) :26-30. doi: 10.36828/newvistas.150

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Writing contests, make money writing, hottest topics, we have 171 articles in creative writing.

How to Write Dialogue: 6 Tips for More Believable & Compelling Conversations

How to Write Dialogue: 6 Tips for More Believable & Compelling Conversations

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15 Marketplaces to Publish Your Poetry

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The Writing Style of Stephen King

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The Writing Style of William Shakespeare

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Writing Sleuths - Pet Detectives

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Writing Sleuths - Five Tips For Developing Bodyguard Characters

Writing Sleuths - Five Tips For Developing Bodyguard Characters

The fearless, protective bodyguard who is willing to put his/her life on the line to protect a client has long been a popular character in books, TV, and movies

Writing to Convey Drama and Place - Techniques to Keep Readers Reading

Writing to Convey Drama and Place - Techniques to Keep Readers Reading

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6 Steps to Get You Started Writing Your Memoirs

6 Steps to Get You Started Writing Your Memoirs

Everyone has a story or two to tell. As time passes, these precious personal and family memories can be lost. But how and where do you begin? Right here.

The Writing Style of Agatha Christie

The Writing Style of Agatha Christie

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Write a Story Starting With I Always Thought That I Would

Write a Story Starting With I Always Thought That I Would

Learn how to start a story with 'I Always Thought That I Would.' This prompt can be very useful to help you start your creative short story.

Creative Writers : Can You Write Good Transition Sentences?

Creative Writers : Can You Write Good Transition Sentences?

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Writing a Children's Book - 11 Things You Need to Know

Writing a Children's Book - 11 Things You Need to Know

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Writing a Comedy Church Skit - How to Create Funny Characters

Writing a Comedy Church Skit - How to Create Funny Characters

You don't have to be a professional writer to create funny characters and humorous drama that makes a spiritual impact on your church congregation.

Writing a Comedy Screenplay

Writing a Comedy Screenplay

A useful rule of thumb for comedy is that there are three reasons for a line of dialogue to be in the script. Read the article to discover what they are.

5 Tips for Writing Authentic Crime and Legal Fiction

5 Tips for Writing Authentic Crime and Legal Fiction

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How to Become a Fiction Writer

How to Become a Fiction Writer

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10 Ways to Take Writing Humor Seriously

10 Ways to Take Writing Humor Seriously

It has often been said that everyone likes humor and laughter on our planet. Well maybe not everyone, but almost every person who is normal will like humor

Basic Structure for a Three Act Movie Screenplay

Basic Structure for a Three Act Movie Screenplay

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Using Character Sheets in Fiction Writing

Using Character Sheets in Fiction Writing

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5 Ways to Use Flashbacks in Your Fiction Writing

5 Ways to Use Flashbacks in Your Fiction Writing

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Finding Age Appropriate Words When Writing For Children

Finding Age Appropriate Words When Writing For Children

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Story Ideas From the 4 Seasons

Story Ideas From the 4 Seasons

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Teaching a Memoir Workshop: Easy is Usually Not Best

Teaching a Memoir Workshop: Easy is Usually Not Best

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Technical Writer to Fiction Writer: The Process

Technical Writer to Fiction Writer: The Process

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10 Laws of Great Storytelling

10 Laws of Great Storytelling

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5 Ways To Nurture and Defend Your Muse

5 Ways To Nurture and Defend Your Muse

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The Hero Journey Motif As a Tool for Reading and Writing

The Hero Journey Motif As a Tool for Reading and Writing

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The Many Paths to Plotting

The Many Paths to Plotting

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The Purpose of the Science Fiction Novel

The Purpose of the Science Fiction Novel

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Screenwriter's Guide: Concept and Logline

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Scriptwriting: The Five Key Points of Story Structure

Scriptwriting: The Five Key Points of Story Structure

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How to Use Weather to Set the Scene

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The 7 Deadly Sins For Non-Fiction Writing

The 7 Deadly Sins For Non-Fiction Writing

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How to Go to Sitcom Heaven

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6 Steps to a Good Low-Budget Movie Script

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How to Make Metaphors Work For You

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A Writing Career: Newspaper vs. Magazine Work

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A Creative Problem-Solving Tool for Journal Writing

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5 Steps to Start Journaling For the Health of It

5 Steps to Start Journaling For the Health of It

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19 Questions to Help You Write a Memoir

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How to Become a Food Critic

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How to Journal - Where to Begin

How to Journal - Where to Begin

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How to Plot a Film Script

How to Plot a Film Script

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Five Tips for a Successful Music Review

Five Tips for a Successful Music Review

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Don't Lose Readers, Get the Narrative and Dialogue Balance Right

Don't Lose Readers, Get the Narrative and Dialogue Balance Right

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Grant Writing Jobs - A High Demand Writing Career

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Creative Writers - Horror Writing

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3 Types of Freelance Writing Personalities: Who Has the Easiest Time Making a Full-Time Living?

3 Types of Freelance Writing Personalities: Who Has the Easiest Time Making a Full-Time Living?

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A Problem in Fiction Writing: Writing Truthfully Versus Writing Accurately

A Problem in Fiction Writing: Writing Truthfully Versus Writing Accurately

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Writing Vividly: the Power of Description

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Writing Poetry for Children

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Freelance Writing Advice: Writing Descriptive Articles for Editors

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Top 5 Tips to Write An Interesting Narrative for Any Story

Top 5 Tips to Write An Interesting Narrative for Any Story

WRITING NARRATION - You can discover numerous ways of crafting an intriguing narrative. Some narrative methods are so refined that a skilled writer has...

An Introduction to Using Point of View in Your Story

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Creative Writing: Using the Epigram as a Literary Device

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Verse Making: Using Poetic License

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The Weirdest Literary Awards for Writers

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Using Dialogue to Start a Short Story, a Creative Writing Technique

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The Time Element in Telling a Story

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Write While Lying Down: On Finding Rest in Creative Labor

Holly haworth tries to shelter the muse from economic reality.

“Write while lying in bed,” I tell my creative-writing students. I am trying to get their attention, sure, and the suggestion carries a rebellious flair.

What I know that they don’t yet is that the weight of the work we have to do as artists, in a world in which time is money, can press so heavily upon us that, well, we need to lie down sometimes.

I’ve said that my students don’t know this yet, but I can see already engrained in them the years of writing in school to earn not money but the grade they want—the grade they now feel they need, so they can go on to a career that earns them enough money. I can see the worry knitted into their young brows. How deeply their creative process is already entrenched in concerns of an economy of one kind or another.

What I know that they don’t quite yet is that we have to find creative ways, even, of accessing our creative selves in a world in which grind culture gnaws always at our minds. Finding rest or refuge in our writing is a necessary skill for resilience, our shield against burnout, our sustenance for going the long haul. Telling my students is a way of reminding myself: the page can be a space of pleasure and play. Writing can be a restorative act that fortifies you for all the other work you will, no doubt, be compelled to do.

It’s a good utopian touchstone, anyway, this angle of repose, even if on most days, if we are being honest, the work won’t look or feel that way. That’s what I know, too.

In a culture obsessed with productivity and industry, many of us writers and artists have found ourselves pressured to argue the merit of what we do as bona fide work, especially those of us who try in some way to make a living at it. We know that it can be grueling, that it requires incredible energy, that it takes all of what we have to give. But in a culture that views writing and art-making as a kind of loafing around, we also have to do the work of earning respect, the validation that what we do is , actually, work.

Like a lot of writers, I suspect, I have often felt my work belittled and misunderstood by those whose work is more obviously industrious and profitable. I would guess that most of us have known the difficulty not only of getting words on the page but also justifying what we’re doing to others. And, of course, there is the grim reality of feeling that we must turn out words as commodity in order to survive.

And so we are accustomed to thinking and speaking in terms of daily word counts and page quotas, deadlines, and payments. Language people that we are, we have learned to use words from the business world both as a way to honor our own work as such and to prove to others that this writing stuff is real work. That is all very understandable.

The problem is that our language is powerful. We ourselves forget that while this is all very hard work for which we should, yes, be compensated, there is also something else at work in us, in the best of moments—something unspoken and beyond all that. There is something else that we are up to here. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” wrote the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, “There is a field. I’ll meet you there. / When the soul lies down in that grass, / The world is too full to talk about.”

There is no language in this field where we lie down, and yet it sparks our verses.

The blank page is that field where we go to lie down, a field where our thoughts can stretch out, where we meet—in the best of moments—a world so full we have no words, and yet our words begin to bubble up as if from a wellspring, our thoughts begin to flower.

It takes so much work to get to the field these days. Grind culture and the attention economy grips our shoulder so tightly, dings in our ears, pushes notifications on us wherever we try to go.

That’s why we have to protect the work of writing as something that happens in a different kind of workspace, a private place. If not a place where we literally lie down—even if actually a desk, like the one where I sit now, or only a blank page and us, on a bus or the train—it is a place where we can hear the trickling stream of our memory, see the light of our lives shifting with the seasons and years, a place where go to reflect and dream, to see the world in its motion or stillness. It is a place where in some way we are able to slow time long enough to see a single moment, to have a single and complete thought. In Thoreau’s 1851 journal, I find this: “Only thought which is expressed by the mind in repose as it were lying on its back & contemplating the heavens—is adequately & fully expressed—”

The poet William Stafford wrote that, “The stance to take, reading or writing, is neutral, ready, susceptible to the now; such a stance is contrary to anything tense or determined or ‘well-trained.’ Only the golden thread knows where it is going, and the role for a writer or reader is one of following, not imposing.”

Contrary to anything tense or determined. This is a state of receptivity, a stance that looks relaxed.

In Lewis Hyde’s 1979 book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (later editions had the subtitle Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World ), Hyde wrote that the artist who involves her art in the marketplace “must develop a more subjective feel” for what he called “the two economies”: the ancient system in which art was a gift, as well as a system such as ours in which all things are ruled by money. Though we are living in a hyper-capitalistic society, our writing inhabits (at least) two worlds. The artist must get a feel for “his own rituals for both keeping them apart and bringing them together.” She must be able to deal with her work as a commodity and “be able to forget all that and turn to serve his gifts on their own terms.”

Something else rules in this other space, there are other terms in operation—long spoken of as spirits, Muses, ancestors, all the poets and storytellers of the past. The sky, in which our vision might be immersed were we to be lying down in a field or meadow or on a mountaintop or remote strand of beach or riverbank or park bench or rooftop just now, has long been associated by cultures around the world with thought, imagination, and the divine: a common space to which we all have access.

As artists, when we gaze at the wide sky of stars or the passing clouds, we are working, yes, but we are also in some sense gifted with this work. We understand that time moves differently here, that the words do not always flow at the rate we wish, on the schedule we set, don’t always bend to our annual fiscal goals, and that sometimes they flow like great starry rivers, sometimes they rain down on us.

If lying down is not the literal position we take when writing—it very rarely is—I choose to stamp this image on my psyche as a symbol of how I must serve the gift on its terms, as something different than simply work. The image of lying down is a humble position, and I like to imagine the words and stories pouring over me, a gift I earned but also didn’t, something I don’t ever have to earn but that I can go to immerse myself in.

Writing is an act I want to stake a boundary around. Hyde calls it the “protected gift-sphere.” This sphere may not be a light-filled study and probably will not be a dream-shack in the deep woods. It’s fantasies and concepts like these that capitalists use to paint writers as loafers, or worse, that make people believe they have to be privileged to write. The protected gift-sphere may be a desk and a chair, the floor, a front stoop, the seat of a taxi. Or it may indeed be a bed, when we crawl into it tired and frayed from a hard day’s work.

Then also, it may look like nothing but lazy repose. John McPhee described in a New Yorker article ten years ago how he lay on his back on a picnic table for a fortnight, attempting to sort out the hoard of reporting and research he’d amassed for his book The Pine Barrens , vexing himself over the structure. To anyone passing this would have looked like a man lying on a picnic table. But with writers, we should know better. Much of the work is invisible and requires rest, is done best, maybe, when our parasympathetic nervous systems are engaged.

I confess now that I have written some of the most difficult passages of my book-in-progress while lying on a blanket on the creekbank in the woods behind my house, my eyes absorbing the most stunning light in the trees, the sound of the creek shushing over its stones and coaxing my words from me. I have unlocked stuck words on my yoga mat, in puppy pose, my notebook splayed before me, my elbows propped on either side, my pen flowing easily, finally, across the page, more fluid thanks to the blood rushing to my head, thanks to gravity, one of my trusted Muses. I have jostled free sentence after sentence while taking long hikes in the mountains, and walking, for many, is also a way of resting, of dipping into the sky.

Call these creekbank, yoga-mat, trail-walking stances my prayers to whatever wild, abundant, restful forces draw the words from me. In a culture in which back pain and headaches are a kind of virtue-signaling that you are working hard, I am learning to accept that sometimes I just might not look so virtuous. Some passerby in a suit might make a silly passive-aggressive joke like working hard or hardly working? in this culture where we’ve all learned to shame and police one another about productivity, in which we’re conditioned to believe that anything that looks like play, rest, or pleasure can’t possibly be work.

Hyde draws a distinction between work and labor that I have found useful. “Work is what we do by the hour,” he writes. “Labor, on the other hand, sets its own pace.” Because of that, it “is usually accompanied by idleness, leisure, even sleep. … When I speak of labor, then, I intend to refer to something dictated by the course of life rather than by its society, something that is often urgent but that nevertheless has its own interior rhythm, something more bound up with feeling, more interior, than work.”

My emphasis is on the phrase that conveys urgency, because we know how this labor can grip us, too, how the Muses don’t always visit between the hours of 9 and 5, and nor do we shutter our doors or ears to them on Saturday or Sunday. They can ring the bell at the counter at any moment, and we must appear from the back room to serve them. We know, in truth, that we are always laboring.

Stafford’s golden threads, as he called them, are what we pursue across the land and seas even while we are on “vacation.” That’s the way it is for us, to be ever occupied, always making notes, noting details, keeping journals, paying attention to conversations, keeping our eyes open, finding inspiration, to be ever OPEN, as the signs on shop windows say. Mary Oliver hid pencils in the nooks of trees in her woods, kept paper scraps in her pockets, in case a poem were to strike her when she intended to be only musing at natural wonders. Even our dreams can be fodder, and so we also labor to dream and know that it is part of what we do.

When I think of the artist laboring, I think often of Frida Kahlo, who painted her most incredible paintings while lying on her back in bed. She painted that way, as we know, because of the terrible injuries she had sustained in a bus accident, which became a source of chronic pain.

And so I think, too, of the very serious necessity of finding a sense of rest in our creative labors at a time when debilitating chronic pain and illnesses are increasing. These afflictions are much more common among women and people of color, who bear a disproportionate burden of work of all kinds, who face more violence and who still earn lower pay in the workplace. In her book Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hersey argues that rest pushes back against the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. “Naps provide a portal to imagine, invent, and heal,” she said in an interview. “Our dream space has been stolen, and we want it back.” It’s a very intentional kind of rest, a mindful play, a crucial repose that we take. It is our job as writers to dream better worlds, and to dream we must lie down.

Hyde makes clear the truly harrowing reality of a money-driven and work-obsessed culture. He writes:

As those who must worry about the livelihood of artists are fond of saying, “You cannot play ‘The Minute Waltz’ in less than a minute.” Worse (or perhaps better) you cannot write “The Minute Waltz” in less than… what? A day, a week, a year —however long it takes. There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.

That was in 1979. Forty-five years later, AI can likely write a minute waltz in less than a minute, and more students are using ChatGPT to pass classes so they can have more time not for leisure but for higher productivity. It has become more efficient to consign art to the robots. What once was considered a gift is now pure commodity, and this is tied, too, to climate collapse. Hyde wrote back then that in an “age of monopoly capitalism,” gift wealth is converted to market wealth also as “forests, wildlife, and fossil fuels” are sold “and converted into private fortunes.”

The gift of art can provide rest from the brutal and ceaseless conversion of all the world’s gifts into commodities. The implications are quite serious, and Báyò Akómoláfé has said that, “When we rest, the earth heals.” The value of writing is beyond all calculation for its power to re-imagine and envision better futures and alternative realities, and to show us the world in which we’re living. For Hyde, art gives to society “a storehouse of works that can serve as agents for transformation.” It creates nothing short of “a sense of an inhabitable world—an awareness, that is, of our solidarity with whatever we take to be the source of our gifts, be it the community or the race, nature, or the gods.”

And so, I tell my students, write while lying down. I tell myself, as I labor with all my heart and might on my first book, which I am writing under the incredible stresses and strain of supporting myself with a pauper’s teaching salary. I don’t fool myself that I can actually attain such a state of rest all that often. But the idea of writing in repose, writing as refuge and sanctuary away from the din and grind, is one I hold dear and close. “Often I am permitted to return to a meadow,” wrote the poet Robert Duncan in a poem we know well. “It is so near to the heart, / an eternal pasture folded in all thought.” The meadow is “only a dream of the grass blowing / east against the source of the sun / in an hour before the sun’s going down.”

There, my phone doesn’t ring or ding because I’ve turned it off. There, email doesn’t reach me. There, I am pulled into a current of thought and feeling so rejuvenating, all the worries of bills and expenses fly from my mind. They take wing, a flock of sparrows diving and wheeling in the golden light that burnishes the field and sets my vision blazing. I am richer here than the world will ever know.

I will meet you there, where our souls can lie down in the grass, where the world is too full to talk about. 

Holly Haworth

Holly Haworth

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Craft or Commodity? The ‘Paradox’ of High School Creative Writing Competitions

By propelling winners to elite colleges and empowering them to pursue writing, these competitions can change the course of students’ lives. But the pressure to win can also stunt young writers’ growth and complicate their relationship with their craft and themselves.

One story of his — which went on to win a national award for flash fiction — begins as a dispassionate description of household events, but turns by the end into a heart-wrenching account of a child dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. In writing it, Heiser-Cerrato says he was inspired by the struggles of friends who had experienced divorce.

He also wrote it to enter into national creative writing competitions.

In other disciplines, high schoolers compete in elite programs that can serve as pipelines to top colleges. Students interested in STEM fields often strive to qualify for the International Science and Engineering Fair, while those hoping to go into law and politics can apply for the U.S. Senate Youth Program or compete in the national championships for speech and debate.

For students like Heiser-Cerrato, a number of creative writing contests now serve as a similar path to elite college admissions.

Heiser-Cerrato, who won multiple national awards for his prose and poetry, submitted creative writing portfolios to Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s sure his creative writing is what propelled him to Harvard.

“It was my main hook,” he says.

Competitions like YoungArts and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have skyrocketed in selectivity and prestige over the past few decades, becoming a quantifiable way for colleges to identify rising literary stars. The winners of top competitions disproportionately go on to attend elite universities.

However, selecting the nation’s top storytellers is more complicated than selecting its top scientists. Competitions can’t score poems in the same objective way they score students in a Math Olympiad. Instead, who wins these competitions often comes down to taste. Several former high school creative writers say that specific styles and topic areas disproportionately win national writing competitions. Top competitions, they say, incentivize writers to dredge up traumatic experiences or commodify their cultural backgrounds.

By propelling winners to elite colleges and empowering them to pursue writing, these competitions can change the course of students’ lives. But the pressure to win can also stunt young writers’ growth and complicate their relationship with their craft and themselves.

Creative writing contests aim to promote self expression and foster a new generation of artists. But does turning creative writing into a competition for admissions erode its artistic purpose?

‘The Most Important Experiences of My Life’

H eiser-Cerrato went to a “sports high school” where it was difficult for him to receive the mentorship he needed to improve his writing or find a creative community. With so few fellow writers at his high school, he had no way to judge his talent beyond the confines of his English classes.

Creative writing competitions were founded for students like Heiser-Cerrato. Even a century ago, Maurice Robinson — the founder of Scholastic — was surprised at the gap that existed in recognizing students interested in the arts. In 1923, he hosted the first national Scholastic Art and Writing Competition.

By the 2000s, Scholastic no longer had a monopoly on creative writing competitions. YoungArts was founded in 1981, and the Foyle Young Poets Competition held its inaugural competition in 1998. After the Adroit Journal and Bennington College launched their annual creative writing competitions in the 2010s, competing in multiple creative writing competitions became common practice for aspiring poets and novelists.

When students started finding out about competitions through the internet, competitions like Scholastic doubled in size. The Covid-19 pandemic drove submissions to competitions like Foyle Young Poets up even more. Last year, the Scholastic awards received more than 300,000 entries, up from the 200,000 some entries received in 2005.

Collectively, these contests now receive more than 315,000 creative writing entries a year in categories like poetry, prose, and even spoken word. Students submit individual works of writing, or in some cases portfolios, to be judged by selection panels often consisting of professors and past winners. They are assessed on criteria like “originality, technical skill, and personal voice or vision.”

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards boasts an impressive list of alumni who have gone on to win the highest literary prizes in their fields. Past winners include lauded writers Stephen King, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates, and Amanda S. Gorman ’20.

Hoping to perhaps join this illustrious group, Heiser-Cerrato began applying to competitions his sophomore year. Spurred on by his high school English teacher — who incorporated contest submissions into assignments — Heiser-Cerrato felt the concrete nature of competition deadlines helped hold him accountable.

“When you’re trying to do something creative and you have no feedback loop or deadline, you can get very off track and not develop,” he says. “I never would have done that if there wasn’t a contest to submit to, because then there was no opportunity to get feedback.”

While Heiser-Cerrato went on to win some of Scholastic’s top honors — a National Silver Medal and Silver Medal with Distinction for his senior portfolio — even some who fare less well appreciate the feedback competitions provide.

“I think a lot of people are very cautious to give negative feedback to younger writers,” says Colby A. Meeks ’25, a former poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate. “I think getting rejections from certain contests and losing certain competitions did help me grow as a writer insofar as tempering an ego that I think young writers can very easily get from English teachers.”

Heiser-Cerrato views his experience with the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program — a program that pairs high schoolers with established writers — as “pretty instrumental to my growth.” After applying during his senior year, Heiser-Cerrato met bi-weekly with his mentor, discussing works of other authors and workshopping two stories of his own.

Similarly, when Darius Atefat-Peckham ’23, then a student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, won a National Silver Medal in the Scholastic competition, he became eligible to apply to the National Students Poet Program. From a pool of finalists submitting more than 23,000 works, Atefat-Peckham was selected as one of five National Student Poets.

“It led me to probably the most important experiences of my life. As a National Student Poet, I got to travel the Midwest and teach workshops to high schoolers and middle schoolers,” he says. “That pretty much set me on my trajectory for wanting to be a teacher someday, wanting to apply myself in the ways that I would need in order to get to a prestigious institution.”

‘If You’re Going to Apply to Harvard…’

W hen Daniel T. Liu ’27 opened his Harvard application portal, he knew exactly why he’d gotten in.

“My application to college was almost solely based on writing,” Liu says.

In high school, along with serving on the editorial staff of multiple literary magazines and attending creative writing summer camps, Liu won dozens of contests — including becoming a YoungArts winner and a 2022 Foyle Young Poet of the Year.

“I actually read my admissions file, and they did mention camps that they know, summer camps like Iowa and Kenyon, which are big teen writing summer programs,” says Liu. “They pointed that out.”

According to The Crimson’s analysis of publicly available data and interviews with multiple students, there is a clear link between high school creative writing contest success and enrollment at highly selective colleges.

From 2019 to 2022, among students with publicly available educational history who won Scholastic’s Gold Medal Portfolio — the competition’s highest award — just over 50 percent enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford. Fifteen percent more received writing scholarships or enrolled at creative writing focused colleges.

From 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of the students who won first, second, or third place in the Bennington Young Writers Awards for fiction or poetry enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford.

“My application to college was almost solely based on writing,” Daniel T. Liu says.

As Atefat-Peckham reflects back on his college application, he knows his creative writing successes were essential in complementing his standardized test scores. While he was proud of his ACT score, he did not believe it would have been enough to distinguish him from other qualified applicants.

Since 2018, three recipients of YoungArts’ top-paying scholarship — the $50,000 Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award — have matriculated to Harvard. Other winners attended Brown, Swarthmore, and Wesleyan. Recent recipients include Stella Lei ’26, Rhodes Scholar-Elect Isabella B. Cho ’24, and Liu.

Creative writing competitions’ prominence in the college admissions process comes during the most competitive college application environment ever. Harvard’s Class of 2025 received a record-high number 57,435 applicants, leading to the lowest admissions rate in College history.

Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24, a YoungArts winner and Rhodes Scholar-elect, described YoungArts as “super cool” in allowing her to meet other artists. She also recognized the importance of her participation for college applications.

“I can’t lie: If you think that you’re going to apply to Harvard, it’s very helpful to have some kind of national accolade,” she says.

The ‘Paradox’ of Competitive Art

I n 2021, an anonymously written document accusing student poet Rona Wang of plagiarism made waves in the competitive creative writing community. Wang — who had won awards from MIT and the University of Chicago, was affiliated with Simon & Schuster, and had published a book of short stories — was accused of copying ten works written by other student poets.

According to Liu, this behavior isn’t unprecedented. Several years ago, Liu explains, an “infamous” scandal erupted in the high school creative writing world when a student plagiarized Isabella Cho’s poetry and entered it into competitions.

Liu says more students are beginning to apply to writing competitions out of a desire to have awards on their resume, rather than because of a genuine interest in creative writing.

While creative writing contests can provide valuable opportunities for feedback and mentorship, several students look back on their time in the competitive creative writing circuit with ambivalence. The pressure to write in service of a contest — writing to win, not just to create — can pressure writers to commodify their identities and cash in on their painful experiences, turning a creative outlet into a path to admissions or quest for outside validation.

Liu says he regrets that creative writing competitions are becoming a pipeline to elite college admissions. He’s worried competitions like Scholastic and YoungArts are becoming too similar to programs like the International Science and Engineering Fair.

“Math, science, all these competitions, they all have some aspect of prestige to them,” says Liu. “What makes it so difficult in that regard is that writing isn’t math. It requires a level of personal dedication to that craft.”

“It kind of sucks because a lot of artistic practice should come out of personal will,” says Liu. “To compete in art is paradoxical, right?”

Sara Saylor, who won a gold portfolio prize for her writing, told the New York Times in 2005 that “the awards came to mean too much to me after a while.”

“Whenever Scholastic admissions time rolled around, we began to get very competitive and more concerned about winning the contest than we should have,” she says.

Indeed, students at elite creative high schools like the Interlochen Center for the Arts are pushed by teachers to enter competitions. Hannah W. Duane ’25, who attended the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts as part of the creative writing department, was required to submit to three creative writing competitions every six weeks.

(These competitions are dominated by schools like Duane’s. In 2019, 23 Interlochen students received national Scholastic awards for their creative writing — a distinction typically awarded to less than 1 percent of entries.)

Though Liu wasn’t required to submit to contests, he felt a different kind of obligation. Liu says writing competitions pushed him to write almost exclusively about his heritage, keeping him from exploring other narratives.

“From the start, I applied with a lot of cultural pieces, like pieces about my family history,” says Liu. “Those were the ones that won. And so it built me into a cycle where I was only writing about these areas — heritage.”

Liu’s experience wasn’t uncommon. When looking at other winning pieces, he noticed a similar trend.

“The competitions — Scholastic, YoungArts, those two big ones — definitely prioritize writing about your heritage,” says Liu. “Part of the reason behind that is for a lot of the students, that’s a very unique aspect of them.”

“In a hyper-competitive environment, what you can write better than anyone else is what’s gonna make you stand out,” he adds.

In an emailed statement, YoungArts Vice President Lauren Slone wrote that YoungArts winners in writing “must demonstrate a sense of inventiveness, show attention to the complexities and technical aspects of language, and have a clear, original, and distinct point of view.”

Chris Wisniewski ’01, Executive Director of the nonprofit that oversees Scholastic, wrote in an email that the competition has been “welcoming to works across many styles, subjects, and points of view” and does not give “implicit or explicit guidance” to jurors or competitors about the content or style of winning pieces. He added that “on the national level, each piece of writing undergoes at least three separate readings from jurors to diversify the views on its adherence to the program’s original and sole criteria.”

Ryan H. Doan-Nguyen ’25, who received a Scholastic Gold Key and won the New York Times’s Found Poem Contest, notes another way young writers try to distinguish themselves.

“Students feel compelled to embellish or to write about really painful things,” says Doan-Nguyen, a Crimson News Editor. “It does tend to be really heavy hitting topics that make the page.”

According to him and multiple others, the creative writing circuit pushes students to expose deeply personal, sometimes traumatic experiences for academic points. (Students make similar claims about the college admissions process .)

Doan-Nguyen was hesitant to publicly open up about vulnerable experiences, so he shied away from writing about traumatic memories of his own. But he fears this reluctance held him back.

“Maybe that’s why I did not win more contests,” he says. “I was always too afraid to be so vulnerable and raw.”

Duane recalls the competitions being dominated by sobering personal narratives: often stories about authors’ experiences with racism, abuse, or sexual assault. However, her school worked to insulate its students from the pressure to sensationalize.

“The constant refrain we would hear is, ‘Writing is not your therapy. Get that elsewhere,’” she says.

Liu says writing contests not only changed his content — they also pushed him and other competitors to write in the specific style of past winners. He says many successful pieces were reminiscent of the poet and novelist Ocean Vuong.

Writers would cut their lines off at odd places “to give the illusion of mystery when there’s no real thought behind it besides, ‘Hey, it should look like this because it looks pretty like this,’” says Liu. He also recalls writers, especially young poets, using “a lot of language of violence.” Liu worries this overreliance on stylistic imitation can stunt young writers’ growth.

He questions whether the existence of creative writing competitions is helping young writers at all.

“If writing is supposed to be a practice of self-reflection, you’re not doing those things when you plagiarize. You’re not doing those things when you submit just a draft of someone else’s style,” says Liu. “It doesn’t align with what it should be as an artistic practice.”

‘I Will Always Be Writing’

S ince coming to Harvard, Heiser-Cerrato has begun writing for a very different purpose. He joined the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

With the structure and pressure of creative writing competitions behind them, he and other past winners are taking their writing in new directions.

“My high school writing was very sentimental and very focused on trying to be profound,” Heiser-Cerrato says. “But here, I’ve been more interested in the entertainment side of things.”

When writing for competitions, Heiser-Cerrato says it was difficult for him to define his goals. But for the Lampoon, he says he just wants to make others laugh. There, Heiser-Cerrato has finally found the sense of community he lacked in high school.

Meeks joined the Harvard Advocate, where he critiques poetry instead of writing it. In high school, Meeks appreciated competitions as an avenue through which to receive feedback on his writing. Now, he works to give those who submit work to the Advocate similar guidance.

“Often, submitting to a literary magazine feels like you’re sending something into a void,” Meeks says. “And I really wanted as much as possible, as much as it was manageable timewise, to make sure that people were getting some feedback.”

Like Meeks, Wikstrom and Doan-Nguyen are also members of campus publications. Wikstrom is the former editorial chair of The Crimson, and Doan-Nguyen is a Crimson News and Magazine Editor.

Wikstrom, who was the Vice Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland in high school for her spoken word poetry, says she loved spoken word poetry in high school because of its capacity to spark action. At Harvard, she saw The Crimson’s Editorial Board as another way to speak out about important issues.

“It’s a really interesting middle ground for creative writing, because you do have the commitment to factual accuracy,” she says. “But you also have more leeway than perhaps news to be injecting your personal voice. And also that urgency of, ‘I feel very strongly about this. And other people should feel strongly about this, too.’”

Unlike Heiser-Cerrato, Atefat-Peckham wasn’t drawn to any existing organization on campus. Though he attended Interlochen and succeeded in highly selective contests while in high school, Atefat-Peckham disagreed with the cutthroat, commodifying incentive structure and believed campus literary organizations like the Advocate and Lampoon were too selective.

When Atefat-Peckham returned to campus after the pandemic, he helped form the Harvard Creative Writing Collective, a non-competitive home for creative writing on campus.

Liu is a member of the Creative Writing Collective and the Advocate. But most of his writing at Harvard has been independent. Instead of writing for competitions, Liu says he’s transitioned to writing for himself.

And though Doan-Nguyen is not sure what he wants to do after college, he — along with Liu, Meeks, Heiser-Cerrato, Wikstrom, and Duane — is sure writing will play a role in it.

“It’s a big part of my life and always has been, and I think it’s made me see so much about the work that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if I didn’t put my pen to paper,” says Doan-Nguyen.

“I know that no matter what I end up doing, whether that’s going to law school or journalism or just doing nonprofit work, I will always be writing. Writing and writing and writing.”

Correction: February 13, 2024

A previous version of this article included a misleading quote attributed to Ryan Doan-Nguyen.

— Magazine writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at [email protected] .

— Associate Magazine Editor Adelaide E. Parker can be reached at [email protected] .

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Khanaja Scott

Senior Year Reflection: The Case for Creative Writing

Since coming to Berry, Khanaja Scott ’24 has flourished as a creative and professional. She stretched her skills writing fantasy and poetry but now leans toward a career as an editor. A student director at Berry’s writing center, she discovered how much she loves working with others. Here she gives perspective to the power and practicality of a liberal arts education — through the lens of a creative writer and coach.

Q. How do you apply creative writing skills in the workplace?

A. I think a part of being an effective writer is exposing yourself to different attitudes and ideologies. This allows you to connect with a wide range of people and audiences. … From clients to co-workers to higher-ups, knowing how to pivot your language to the situation is very important. Just as well, knowing how to get people to connect with you and allow you to connect with them is essential in terms of marketing and securing return customers. In a more literal sense, we’re living in a very digital world, and knowing how to format documents and utilize different software is crucial. 

Q. What do you enjoy about your job at the writing center?  

A. Effective writing isn’t a secret code that some people are ingrained with at birth; it’s a skill like anything else that can be practiced and improved at any point. I’ve had some regulars for a very long time, and I have never felt prouder than when I see them become more confident in areas they used to struggle in. … In one day, I go from reading deeply personal RHW papers to upper-level papers on medicinal chemistry or neonatal nursing packages or the Montana TikTok ban! 

Q. What is the value of taking courses like Writing and Community?  

A. We got to teach creative writing to the kids in the Rome Youth Detention Center, which in itself is a very valuable encounter. I think, as a writer, exposing yourself to as many new and undiscovered paths, people and landscapes as possible is the most valuable thing that you can do. 

Q. Describe your Honors thesis and its purpose. 

A. My Honors thesis focuses on defining, destigmatizing and empathizing with picky eating. I’ve been a picky eater all my life and discovering the patterns – in nationality, ethnicity, parenting types, socioeconomic status, birth order and so on – of picky eaters has been absolutely fascinating. … Why is picky eating a choice while other forms of disordered eating – such as disorders and intolerances – are taken seriously? As I discuss in the project, picky eating surely comes with some pretty serious health concerns. 

Q. Any advice for students considering the creative writing major at Berry?

A. If you want to study creative writing because you love writing, want to be a better writer and have obtainable goals regarding writing, this is the place for you! If you want to major in creative writing so that you can immediately become famous, published and rich, then reconsider whether you love writing! You have to be willing to listen, to read, to accept criticism and to be open to change and progress. Creativity is dynamic, and no one is ever done learning a craft; no one’s writing is perfect or ideal; learning lasts forever.

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  • Oct 29, 2021

Creative Writing 101: Into the Writer’s Creative Mind: Overview & Dynamics

article on creative writing

([Photograph describing piles of opened books], 2021)

Creative Writing 101 articles serve as one of the academic courses in the field of Literary Theory and Literature. The course, which is a fundamental guide within the scope of general knowledge compared to the technical knowledge of Literary Theory and Literature, also addresses students and the general readership alike. With this goal in mind, the author has opted to write the article in very plain and basic English to convey just the necessary understanding of Creative Writing by making the article merely an introduction.

Creative Writing 101 is mainly divided into five chapters including:

- Creative Writing 101: Into the Writer’s Creative Mind: Overview & Dynamics

- Creative Writing 101: Theorizing Creative Writing as a Discipline

- Creative Writing 101: Insights on Writing Poetry

- Creative Writing 101: Insights on Writing Short Stories

- Creative Writing 101: Insights on Writing Novels

The creation of written content is a process, a state of brainstorming ideas, and a version of reality that the writer would present, fabricate, distort, or even reshape to invite the readership into a world where there are multiple versions of truth. The representation of truth is pieces of writings, regardless of their literary genre, inscribed on white papers or typed electronically to describe the dynamics of a writer’s mind—his ideas, his ideology, and his vision of the world—all combined to reflect the complexity of writing itself.

The quest for framing writing, if ever applicable to be framed, undergoes through a demystification of its process and principles, for which the act of writing is, undeniably, an act of creation. In other words, any attempt of shaping a literary written content is powered by the writer’s imagination and creative mind. Thus, the written output produced out of the mind is qualified as creative. The introductory concern in this first article will be to grasp writing shaped into a space proper to writing itself, before undergoing through instances of the dynamics of the writer’s creative mind.

The Space-Time Dimension in Writing

Creative Writing is an art that is performed through language. Unlike painting that reflects a visual description of the world no matter how it is portrayed on canvas, the act of writing comes to shape art in written and non-visual form, emphasizing the power of words. David Morley (2007), the Associate Professor in English at the University of Warwick, explains the rapport of the writer to the blank page as a space to map through words, for the emptiness of space delineated in an empty page is considered as “an open space” (p.1), inviting the writer to make the language exists through the use of words and imagination.

Moreover, Morley (2007) states, “by writing on that page, we are creating another version of time; We are playing out of new version of existence, of life even.” (p.1). The page becomes thus a space itself, designed by language and breaks through time and space to constitute what Morley (2007) names as “an entirely fresh piece of space-time, and another version of your self .” (p.1). Not only did Morley conceptualize the page as a space-time entity, but he also thinks that writing is framed through four dimensions: Three dimensions of space along with the dimension of time.

The piece of “space-time” writing that any writer fabricates all along a process of creative endeavor is presented to a reader, who becomes partially a reader-writer as well, participating in a way or another to the comprehension of the literary writing. That is to say, a well-experienced writer is considered to be a well-experienced reader as well. Writing and reading are entwined together because once the writer reads, the mind becomes stimulated by the linguistic and the thematic input that reading provides, and thus it makes the reader, who partly may become a writer afterwards, conceptualize what the eye reads into what the eye sees. Once the reader pictures the text, he/she travels through, what Morley (2007) describes as, “psychological fifth dimension.” (p.2).

The Dynamics of the Creative Mind

Controversy over the mechanisms used by creative writers to produce good creative outputs is centered on establishing writing as an asset, inherited as a talent or as a craftmanship, and which is further enhanced through practice and time as the French writer Anatole France states, “You become a good writer just as you become a good carpenter: by planning down your sentences.” (Morley, 2007). For many thinkers, such as Morley, the only way for creative writing to be taught as a discipline is that it has to be first of all a talent because it lies in the writer’s imagination to create worlds of literature. It would have never been possible for anyone to learn about writing, and being able to produce any creative writing content if it had not been about the power of the writer to conceive a literary world out of a system of language and lexis.

As a matter of fact, neuroscientists advocate that creative writers are endowed with a potential of imagination higher than other people willing to become writers because they have brain predispositions to that. The instance of parable, “a short and simple story, related to allegory and fable, which points a moral.” (Penguin Books, 1999), was referred by the neuroscientist Mark Turner in his book The Literary Mind (1996), whereby his approach to grasp the concept of the parable or the story, in general, is advocated and characterized as being the origin of the human reflection, knowledge, performance, creation, and language.

The parable in the creative writer’s mind is used not only to project a moral of a story into a reader’s mind but to invite also the reader to be a part of the writer’s world and the storyline space. Turner (1996) explains that, “in the space of the story narrated, the narrator does not exist and necessarily has no special powers there. In the space of narration, the narrator does exist. He has no special powers with respect to most of that space, but he does have special powers with respect to the story he is telling: He can shift the focus of time and place in the narration. In the blend, the narrator, the readers, and the characters can inhabit one world.” (p. 75). Presumably, this is where the power of the creative writer resides in transgressing the boundaries of narration by making the readership have a role to play in that space.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story entitled Leaf by Niggle (1945), the story is centered on the value of the artwork in human life in parallel with a reflection on the dualist themes of life/death and purgatory/heaven. Niggle, the main character in the story is portrayed as a humble painter, whose ambition in life is to make art. Tolkien’s fictional character Niggle started his project magnum opus, whereby his project was to paint a leaf which turned, afterwards, into a tree in spite of all the constraints the main character faced on his journey.

article on creative writing

Leaf by Niggle. Leaf by Niggle , J.R.R Tolkien, HarperCollins Publishers, 2016. Front cover.

Many critics identify the short story Leaf by Niggle as an allegory to Tolkien’s life, depicting many similarities between the character of Niggle and the author himself. Tolkien’s short story is acknowledged as “ one of the most important works for understanding the author's mind and creative process. It is a vivid embodiment of the principles of Creation and Sub-creation.” ( Leaf by Niggle Background , n.d.).

The creative mind of the writer goes far beyond the limits of the four-dimensional space-time piece of writing, whereby a novel technique to approach the interpretation and reading of the literary writings is commonly experienced by the Russian Formalist, Viktor Shklovsky’s literary concept known as defamiliarization, inciting the writer to alter “the reader’s habitual perceptions by drawing attention to the artifice of the text.” (p. 214). In 1917, defamiliarizing or making the familiar look unfamiliar to the reader came to revolutionize the traditionalist method of reading itself towards more focus on “the form of the text and not just its content or meaning.” (newworldencyclopedia.org, n.d.).

Coupled with the literary concept of defamiliarization, David Morley (2007) perceives the essence of creative writing as being derived from defamiliarization itself; For any artistic endeavors to flourish, they “often go through four stages of cognitive and creative process–attention to detail (of a problem) translation to metaphor→defamiliarization→receiving something at a different angle–in effect, perceiving it anew, as a child does.” (p.9).

Aristotle’s Poetics came to revolutionize the human mind at that period, upholding the efficiency of learning through imitation as a means of intellectual and societal upgrowth and prioritizing reason and logic over emotion to make that process of learning achievable through time; the work in itself is considered as a significantly literary creation at that era.

article on creative writing

Aristotle’s Poetics . Aristotle’s Poetics: literally translated, with explanatory notes and an analysis , Aristotle., Golden, L., & Hardison, O.B., G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1819. Front cover.

In parallel, the idea of approaching art, in this case, the literary art, by using Shklovsky’s defamiliarization to enhance the experience of the reader rendering the familiar unfamiliar, strange to the mind for better re-interpretations of the work itself, is suggested by the writer Bourne (2018), to be an extension of the thematic aspect of Aristotle’s Poetics in re-experiencing life through art itself.

On the whole, the creation of any artistic work, precisely any literary genre, is a complex yet organized process through which creative writers thrive to present their own perception of the world through various four-dimensional spaces, inviting the reader to be part of perceiving the truth those writers claim through imagination and creativity. In Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle , the readership travels in a world of fantasy, depicting a human journey of a painter, driven by perseverance, creativity, and ambition, whereas in Aristotle’s Poetics the core of the subject is different as it highlights the importance of art as a creative and instructive means of communication and learning through mimesis.

Image Source:

G. & W.B. Whittaker. Aristotle’s Poetics . Aristotle’s Poetics: literally translated, with explanatory notes and an analysis , Aristotle., Golden, L., & Hardison, O.B., G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1819. Front cover.

HarperCollins. Leaf by Niggle. Leaf by Niggle , J.R.R Tolkien, HarperCollins Publishers, 2016. Front cover.

[Photograph describing piles of opened books]. (2021). https://evernote.com/blog/12-creative-writing-templates/

References:

Bourne, A. (2018, August 20). An Evening with Aristotle and Victor Shlovsky; How “Poetics” and “Art as Technique” Speak to One Another. Owlcation. https://owlcation.com/humanities/An-Evening-With-Aristotle-and-Victor-Shlovsky-How-Poetics-and-Art-as-Technique-Speak-to-One-Another

Defamiliarization (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Defamiliarization

GradeSaver. (n.d.). Leaf by Niggle Background. https://www.gradesaver.com/leaf-by-niggle

Morley, David. (2007). Introducing Creative Writing. The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing (pp. 1-35). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Penguin Books. (1999). Defamiliarization. In Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory (4th ed., p. 214).

Penguin Books. (1999). Parable. In Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory (4th ed., p. 634).

Turner, Mark. (1996). Creative Blends. The Literary Mind (pp. 57-84). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Articles on Creative writing

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Title: weaver: foundation models for creative writing.

Abstract: This work introduces Weaver, our first family of large language models (LLMs) dedicated to content creation. Weaver is pre-trained on a carefully selected corpus that focuses on improving the writing capabilities of large language models. We then fine-tune Weaver for creative and professional writing purposes and align it to the preference of professional writers using a suit of novel methods for instruction data synthesis and LLM alignment, making it able to produce more human-like texts and follow more diverse instructions for content creation. The Weaver family consists of models of Weaver Mini (1.8B), Weaver Base (6B), Weaver Pro (14B), and Weaver Ultra (34B) sizes, suitable for different applications and can be dynamically dispatched by a routing agent according to query complexity to balance response quality and computation cost. Evaluation on a carefully curated benchmark for assessing the writing capabilities of LLMs shows Weaver models of all sizes outperform generalist LLMs several times larger than them. Notably, our most-capable Weaver Ultra model surpasses GPT-4, a state-of-the-art generalist LLM, on various writing scenarios, demonstrating the advantage of training specialized LLMs for writing purposes. Moreover, Weaver natively supports retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and function calling (tool usage). We present various use cases of these abilities for improving AI-assisted writing systems, including integration of external knowledge bases, tools, or APIs, and providing personalized writing assistance. Furthermore, we discuss and summarize a guideline and best practices for pre-training and fine-tuning domain-specific LLMs.

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  25. Creative Writing 101: Into the Writer's Creative Mind ...

    FOREWORD ([Photograph describing piles of opened books], 2021) Creative Writing 101 articles serve as one of the academic courses in the field of Literary Theory and Literature. The course, which is a fundamental guide within the scope of general knowledge compared to the technical knowledge of Literary Theory and Literature, also addresses students and the general readership alike. With this ...

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  27. [2401.17268] Weaver: Foundation Models for Creative Writing

    This work introduces Weaver, our first family of large language models (LLMs) dedicated to content creation. Weaver is pre-trained on a carefully selected corpus that focuses on improving the writing capabilities of large language models. We then fine-tune Weaver for creative and professional writing purposes and align it to the preference of professional writers using a suit of novel methods ...