Creative Writing: The Basics
Whether your goal is to write the “Great American Novel” or simply to pass your high school creative writing course, the basics are the same. This guide will help you nurture this drive to create, review the basics of all creative writing and assist you in exploring your potential as a writer.
Collect Your Thoughts
If your story ideas are just beginning to take form, consider investing in a notebook that you will use as a writing journal. Every detail matters, so pick a notebook that appeals to you. Get in the habit of carrying your writing journal with you and writing down impressions and story ideas as they arrive. Be as structured or flexible with this new writing habit as you like. The main objective is finding someway to launch your individual process of writing.
Where do you start when creating a story? It really doesn’t matter. If you’re feeling linear, starting at the beginning makes sense. However, if you notice that you’re compelled to jump to different parts of the story as part of your own evolving writing process, then jump! When it comes to writing, follow your muse.
Develop Your Story
Develop premise, plot, and viewpoint. A premise can be thought of as a formula for how specific actions lead to specific consequences over the arc of a story. Plot defines the core of your story. Viewpoint identifies which character is telling a story.
Write about what you know. In order to suspend your audience’s disbelief that they are reading a fictional story, it’s wise to draw on personal authority. This practice makes your story credible. Sometimes, research can be a good substitute for experience.
Dynamic characters, tension, and conflict make fiction exciting. Give your characters dimension and let them surprise your readers within the context of your story. Set up many battles of will between characters, always with the goal of moving your story forward.
Create backstories and bios. Try writing biographies for your characters. Creating backstories for your characters is big step toward breathing life into them and knowing what makes them tick.
Study the Craft of Writing
Depending on whether you’re a “chicken-first or egg-first” person, you may prefer to study something about the craft of writing before leaping into it. There are three useful ways to do this.
Read books about writing. Here are some resources for you to investigate:
- Dare to Be a Great Writer—329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by Leonard Bishop. Conveniently organized by an index of topics, such as “Advice to Writers,” “Character,” “Genre,” “Plot,” “Dialogue,” “Scene Structure,” and so on.
- How to Write & Sell Your First Novel by Oscar Collier with Frances Spatz Leighton. If you already have an eye toward getting your story published, this is a great combination of understanding the craft of writing and the publishing industry.
- How to Write a Damn Good Novel (two volumes) by James Frey. A good reference for writing according to traditional formulas, contains a wealth of examples.
- Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Anecdotal, user-friendly, and full of innovative exercises.
- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. A highly acclaimed, biographical, “one-step-at-a-time” approach to writing.
- The Writer As an Artist: A New Approach to Writing Alone and with Others by Pat Schneider. Based on the Amherst Writers & Artists Press workshop method, it contains fifty useful writing exercises. A very supportive approach to creative writing.
- The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler. Based on Joseph Campbell’s classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces, it is designed to help authors achieve maximum dramatic effects in writing. Rich with familiar literary and cinematic examples.
Attend writers’ conferences. This is a good way to validate yourself as a writer, and compare notes with colleagues who are at different stages of their writing experience. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn from informative presentations by experts in the publishing industry, such as editors and agents. Two good websites for finding writers’ conferences are: www.forwriters.com/conferences.html and awpwriter.org/conference/index.php.
Sign up for a writers’ group. Joining a writers’ group is yet another way to acknowledge yourself as a writer. Types of groups range from very structured to very flexible, and the input can be as critical, or as purely supportive, as you can stand. Shop a writers’ group carefully depending on your needs.
If you basically want to test a potential audience for your work, you may try a group that is supportive, offering criticism only as you request it. If you feel thick-skinned and ready to entertain reactions to your work that may be less than favorable (or at least appear so), plenty of groups exist for that purpose, too. The most important thing to remember is this: Do what makes sense at any given time based on your instincts as a writer.
How do you find a local writers’ group? Check classifieds, and bulletin boards in cafés and at colleges. The Complete Guide to Writers Groups, Conferences, and Workshops by Eileen Malone, may also be a helpful resource book.
Read Like a Writer
Because we often learn by example, what better way to hone your craft than by reading fiction more deeply? As you read short stories and novels, pay closer attention to your reactions to what works and what doesn’t work; begin to figure out why this is the case. Does the dialogue sound believable? Do descriptions of certain places ring true? Do you have a clear picture of each character in your mind? Are the characters distinct? Do you love the language but think something is lacking in the storytelling, or perhaps vice versa?
Identify your favorite authors and try to understand fully what qualities of their work appeal to you most. Read their biographies, if they exist, and learn more about how authors’ lives influence their stories. Go to readings and signings in your area and ask questions of contemporary writers. You will likely find that this enhanced experience of reading will enrich your own writing efforts.
Don’t Just Begin Your Story, Finish It
While each writer is unique, virtually all would agree that writing equals rewriting. This knowledge may relieve any pressure you feel about writing your story perfectly the first time around. It won’t hurt to develop some editing skills along the way, too. Writers love words so it’s sometimes tough to delete text you love, even when you know it doesn’t serve your story. Once you get over this tendency, you’ll likely find that your work will leap to a new level of improvement. This is when having a good editor can be helpful. Depending on what you are writing, this can be a professional editor, another writer, or a grammatically-savvy friend. No matter what, keep going—you’ll know when your story is finished. By the time you get to that last draft, you should feel that every single word in your story is intentional.
Whatever your level of commitment is to writing, it’s important to take that first step and get your ideas down on paper. The more time you devote to writing stories and mastering the basics outlined above, the better writer you will become—so get writing!
