Creative writing definition.
There is an abundance of terms related to creative writing. If you try to formulate its exact definition, you can see that there are numerous forms of creative writing that appeal to fiction, imagination, and creativity.
A creative writing is a writing style of non-traditional genres, a special type of work that involves the non-standard thinking of the author. Such work is carried out with maximum use of author’s creativity and imagination. This creates the best conditions for his personal expression and self-affirmation. In addition, this activity gives the opportunity to develop reflexive skills, the ability to see one selves “from the side” and independently evaluate their capabilities. But if you’re not sure about your capabilities in this area, it is okay to ask for help from professional writing services, so in the future you can improve your skills and handle creative writing without any help.
According to authoritative American psychologist Abraham Maslow, creativity is a creative trend, inherent in everyone, but lost by the majority under the influence of the environment.
Introduction to creative writing.
As we have already found out, the term “creative writing” is based on the notion “creativity”, which originated in the 90s. At that time, all original products, processes and behavior were recognized as creative. All this ultimately led to the fact that all the characteristics and assumptions could be transferred to a creative writing.
The American methodologist Mihai Chikszentmihayi, who has been studying creativity for 40 years, distinguishes creativity in a narrow and broad sense. The first affects everyday life, the second – culture.
Other researchers do not adhere to this point of view: Willy Earl and Ulrich Beer take novelty as a basis, where “creative is every action that is performed by an individual as new or in a broad sense means new to the cultural circle or to people.”
In the US, Creative Writing has become a teaching about poetry, which has been taught since the beginning of the 20th century and is the basis for “inspired” writers. This discipline began in about the 1970s at Columbia University in New York. Then the creative writing was integrated into various specialties as the main educational module, from 1983 – in American schools as a compulsory subject.
Creative writer.
To understand who is a creative writer, you need to understand the definitions of the concepts of artistic people and creative people.
Artistic people are people, such as artists, writers, fashion designers, photographers who are creatively express themselves through various types of art.
While creative people are more characteristic of business people: designers, advertisers, marketers, content writers, brand managers.
Because art is kind of spiritual and sublime, and creativity is still something more material.
It turns out that creative writers are professional writers who work in print and online marketing. They come up with interesting entertaining plots for their articles, create scripts for films and commercials for TV companies. The plots and characters of their compositions can be fictional.
The creative writer uses his creative thinking, seeks for original resolving of the given problem. He embraces novelty and is ready to change his views, because stereotypes and outdated thoughts do not promote progress.
The skills of creative writing can also be successfully applied while doing an academic writing job where you have to write creative compositions and texts.
Types of creative writing.
One of the means of expressing the author’s attitude to the topic of the text is to use when creating it a certain type of speech that has its own compositional features. The main types of speech are description, narration and reasoning.
The most common forms of creative writing are autobiography or memoirs, journalistic texts, literary stylization, novels, dramatic works, poetry, lyrics, and advertising.
Creative writing techniques.
In the process of preparing for writing your own creative text, you can use different methods of work.
The method of creating a cluster with the help of free associations and imaginative thinking (“to cluster” – to gather, grow into groups) is an attempt to combine the activities of the left and right brain hemispheres. In essence, it reminds us of the method of creating associative diagrams, but when creating a cluster, we do more actions: written word-associations are split on paper and combine into an idea. To the core-word, written in the middle of a blank sheet of paper and rounded circle, the first association (word, expression, line from the song, the name of the artistic work, etc.) is recorded, which is connected by a line (arrow) to this circle, and another association similarly connected to the previous one. It is important that recordings of associations take place quickly, without long deliberation and excessive concentration of attention. If all the ideas to the first branch are already exhausted, you should immediately return to the core-word and record the next chain of associations. Such actions are usually performed for 5-6 minutes, in fact, until the author understands what he wants to write. You can use a proverb, song, and picture instead of the core-word. On the basis of a finished cluster, the writer can already write a short text.
There are also other methods: “Brainstorming” and “Mind-map”, which, however, are more difficult to execute. The first is used as a method of group work and consists in the disordered recording of spontaneous thoughts and ideas that can be expressed by each of the creative team. The group then collects and structures the thoughts that can be used later in the text writing. The second method is to record a key word (sentence) in the center of a sheet of paper, from which the main themes and then sub themes will be radiated. Such a “map of thoughts”, forming a peculiar structure of the topic, reveals the possible structure of the text and facilitates its writing.
VIP Writers’ expert in linguistics George Aston says: “When writing the creative words generate ideas, and not vice versa, that is, a person thinks based on what he writes.”
To conclude, it doesn’t matter what field you work in and why you create something. The main thing is that you create! Because the ability to create something new is the key ability at present.
