Creative Writing

What is creative writing? It is writing that expresses your thoughts, feelings, and personal experiences. For instance, you can express your creative spirit by blogging.

Creative writing is often about the world in which you live. For instance, many types of creative writing are based on the human condition or human experience.

Creative writing requires you to use your imagination to write a poem, short story, personal essay, memoir, screenplay, and so forth.

Creative writing needs to be authentic or original. Even if you are writing about a topic that has been covered before, you need to find a new way to write about it.

Creative writing is writing that entertains your audience. Humour is one way to delight your readers.

Creative writing requires that you use the literary devices of metaphor, simile, imagery, symbolism, and more.

Creative writing requires that you use the elements of fiction, such as setting, plot, characterization, conflict, dialogue, and theme to craft both fictional and true stories.

Creative writing requires that you “show, don’t tell” your readers.

Common types of creative writing are journaling, poetry, fiction, screenwriting, humour and comedy writing, and creative nonfiction, such as a memoir, personal essay, and articles.

The following poem is an example of creative writing at its best:

The Layers

By Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.