What is Creative Writing?
Creative writing is not less than an art. It is an art of words. It is an art that binds a person’s imagination with his words. It is away from all the academic or technical stuff. It can go beyond the ambits of a typical person’s reflects. Creative writing is formed from two words- creative and writing. Creative means imagination and innovation. Writing means to Pendown the thoughts or ideas in your mind. Thus creative writing means writing what you imagine. It is meant for entertaining. Other than entertainment, creative writing can also be used to share a person’s views or experiences. Creative writing, at times, is also called literature. Creative writing embraces short stories, poems, fiction, plays, movie scripts, speeches, and biographies.
How to Learn Creative Writing?
Many people contemplate that if they are good readers and listeners they will also be good writers. But this is not adequate. Creative writing has its own chucks. You need a flawless grammar and vocabulary for it. You need to know how the perfect sentence is to be moulded and a very good understanding of words is required. If you have to hit the road from the square one, you yen for a lot of practice. There are some tricks which can help you with this.
- Decide the Type of Creative Writing: To start creative writing, you need to decide what you want to write. It can be a story, novel, poem song or anything like this. Once you have decided this, you should now hunt your mind for a topic. Do not ask others for a topic because you will not be able to imagine it to the required height. If you choose a topic yourself, you must have probably already imagined about the topic. You will have that content in your mind which you will pen down.
- Write Short Works: If you want to write, you have to start from the rock bottom. So you need to start your practice by writing small essays, or stories, or poetry. You may also write quotations of about four to five lines. Then slowly and gradually you can escalate the content of your writing. Then you can reach your desired limit. You may also multiply your writing limit in this way. This will give you a great practice to write. You will get the required fluency in writing. But if you straightaway start with a lengthy article or poetry, you will get stuck because you will lack the required practice and fluency. You will not be able to put your thoughts in words.
- Look for Ideas: It is not always feasible that you can think about so many topics to write upon. You need to find topics. There are many ways for this. Whenever you go out, observe everything around you. Whatever you find fascinating and which can be the topic for your writing, note it down. You may note it down on a small paper or make use of the technology and take notes on your cell phone. Read newspapers and watch good television channels to search for topics. Note down if you find them of use to you or if they are able to trigger some imagination in you. These all observation can be the topic for your next writing.
- Find your most Creative Time: Everyone has their most creative time in the day. It does not mean that your brain will automatically become extra creative or you will gain some super powers to write something. It means that everyone has that time in which they can relax and think. Without any stress and burden, they can imagine beyond this world. They have that time which does not include the rest of the people around you. This time can be in the early morning or late at night when everybody is sleeping or when you get up from a small nap or whatever that suits you. You can use this time for creative writing.
- Avoid Distractions: This is not only for creative writing but for every work you do, try to avoid distractions. Whenever you sit down to write, avoid television, songs, radio, cellphones etc. They will deviate your mind from what you are doing and cause a lack of concentration and may make you commit mistakes in your work.
- Be Relaxed: Do not try to write when you feeling tensed or fatigued. Avoid writing when your mind is somewhere away from you. To be a good writer, you need to have full control over your imagination. For this, you need a calm and relaxed mind. A stressed or busy mind will affect the quality of your writing. It will cause many errors in your work.
- Be Regular: Regularity is required in every new thing you want to learn. Be regular in your writing approach. Write at least once one or two days. If you write every day, it will be the best. If you will keep on putting gaps in your work, your mind will start to wash away. You will lose the fluency in your work. Regularity will give you more ideas you will learn creative writing speedily.
- You cannot Write Correctly in One Go: Making mistakes is human nature. Do not get upset if you commit a snafu in your writing, this happens with everyone. You may have to edit your article twice or thrice. This is totally normal. Even very famous writers have to do this before getting their work published. If this is your time, you may make some mistake in sentence formation, punctuation, grammar or vocabulary. But do not get disappointed. You should learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat the same mistake in the future.
- Improve your Grammar and Vocabulary: Make your grammar the best. Practice grammatical exercise. Learn about the grammatical errors which you are making in your writings. Whenever you encounter a new word, find its meaning. Find out how that word can be used in a sentence; find its synonyms and antonyms. This will upsurge your vocabulary to a large extent. These days this task is very easy. Every carries cellphones or tablets with them. Just install a dictionary and thesaurus application in it so that whenever you find a new word you can read about it anywhere you are.
- Cut down Unnecessary Words from the Writing: It is not necessary to make writing a lengthy one. There is no need for adding repetitive and unnecessary words in it. Extra use of adverbs and adjectives is also not considered a good practice. It may make your writing quite boring. Such words shall only be used when you want to lay stress on something. Otherwise, it may increase your writing’s word count but it will degrade the quality of your writing.
- Seek for Reviews: If you have finished with your writing, ask for a review from others. Show it to your friends and family members. If you are a student you can show it to your language teachers also. They will give you advice regarding the quality of your work, what are your weak areas and how can you improve on them. They will also be able to tell your mistakes. So you can work on it in a better way.
- Meet People with the Same Passion: There are other people around you share the hobbies and talents you have. Meet them and share each other’s experiences of writing. Ask about each other’s mistakes, strong areas and weak areas. If possible, try to read each other’s writings. In this way, you may be able to guess what the person is thinking or imagining and do their thoughts match you. You may also have a healthy discussion and then you will have more content for your writings.
Mistakes made by other Creative Writers
- They do not Read other People’s Work: To become professional in creative writing you need to read. It will give you a writing experience. It will also develop your vocabulary and grammar. So read whatever you find interesting. It will give you more ideas and motivation.
- They Copy other People’s Work: Copying someone else’s work and publishing with your name is wrong. It can be against the law also if you copy a work which has a copyright. The person may also sue you in the court. It will also give you negative publicity. This may spoil your whole career.
Conclusion
Creative writing is a very good option for exploiting free time. If free time is used for creative writing it could be very profitable. It is a good way of improving language skills and vocabulary. Maybe be your time pass can become your talent in some time. Creative writing is also a good option for shaping your career. If you opt for creative writing as your career you may become a novelist, poet, writer, scriptwriter and there are many other options also. Some people are god gifted with this talent of creative writing but if you are not gifted then you can learn and practice it. You just need a strong imagination and the ability to Pendown your imagination. Following the above-mentioned tips, you can definitely gain a good command on creative writing. Creative writing is very easy. You just need a strong will to practice it. You will start to notice the improvements in your writing in the first week only if you practice daily. Practice can make a man perfect so it can make your work also perfect. So practice until your idols become your rivals.
