scholarly definition of creative writing

St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censor old, Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

The Use of Figures of Speech

It is a common misconception that an image always involves a figure of speech. Often it does. The poet Francis Thompson in describing a poppy as a “yawn of fire” uses a metaphor. In comparing the sea and sky of a sunrise to the opening of a clamshell, D.H. Lawrence employs a simile. The Browning lines obtain their vividness from onomatopoeia (word-imitation of a sound). The Keats stanza, however, gets its total effect of coldness not entirely with figurative language. “Woolly fold” (metonymy, the use of one word for another that it suggests) is there as a contrasting image. The image of the frosted breath is primarily visual.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table

On the other hand, an objective approach is illustrated by Hemingway’s description of a trout stream in “Big Two-Hearted River” (from In Our Time ): “He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fast-moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the long-driven piles of the bridge . . .” Here the author only observes. He makes no judgment. There is no metaphorical leap, such as that in the Eliot lines, but only a reproduction of the thing seen. In later stories, especially in his novels, Hemingway wisely relaxed his ban against both metaphorical language and symbolism. Nevertheless his attempt to put the whole burden of vividness on the precision of observation was invaluable training. It was not unlike that which Gustave Flaubert set for his pupil, the future great short-story writer Guy de Maupassant, when he sent him out to report in a single phrase or a single word the content of an action. Whether arrayed in metaphor or stripped to bare observation, any creative writing must be concrete and must communicate by images. ( See also figures of speech .)

Different Ways of “Seeing”

Thomas Wolfe wrote in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had been badgering him about his lack of economy and form: “Don’t forget, Scott, that a great writer is not only a leaver-outer but also a putter-inner, and that Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dostoevsky were great putter-inners—greater putter-inners, in fact, than taker-outers and will be remembered for what they put in—remembered, I venture to say, as long as Monsieur Flaubert will be remembered for what he left out.” (From The Crack-Up .)

Wolfe himself was a mighty putter-inner. He could hardly let a character pass a hardware-store window without enumerating every tool in it; and the sights and sounds of afternoon in a familiar town set him into a sensuous frenzy: “Light came and went and came again, the great plume of the fountain pulsed and winds of April sheeted it across the Square in a rainbow gossamer of spray. The fire department horses drummed on the floors with wooden stomp, most casually, and with dry whiskings of their clean, coarse tails. The street cars ground into the Square from every portion of the compass and halted briefly like wound toys in their familiar quarter-hourly formula. A dray, hauled by a boneyard nag, rattled across the cobbles.. . . The courthouse bell boomed out its solemn warning of immediate three.. . .” (From The Hills Beyond .)

This is a passage worth study, particularly for its choice of strong and active verbs: “pulsed,” “sheeted,” “drummed,” “ground,” “rattled,” “boomed.” It is certainly not seven eighths below the surface, as Hemingway said icebergs are and stories should be. It is piled on, heaped until it runs over.

Differing from either method is the impressionism of such a writer as Anton Chekhov, who said, “You will get the full effect of a moonlight night if you write that on the mill-dam a little glowing star-point flashed from the neck of a broken bottle, and the round, black shadow of a dog, or a wolf, emerged and ran.” In that same impressionist manner, Stephen Crane carries the reader along with a fatally wounded soldier walking to some quiet place to die. The whole passage is like a prolonged silent scream, and it ends with a single staring phrase: “The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.”

Most potential writers are omnivorous readers, and in the nature of things an apprentice is sure to imitate. He has no other way to learn. Although he may try very hard to “develop a style of his own,” his real style will be a long time in developing and will parallel or reflect the development of his own mind and sensibility. The best way to find the style that naturally fits him is to follow Hemingway’s method and simply try to state purely whatever is before his eyes.

Freedom in the Use of Natural Language

Nothing is so likely to hinder the freedom of expression so essential to true creative writing as a too-strict adherence to “correctness.” This is not to say that correctness does not matter or that there is no distinction between good usage and bad usage. It is only to say that there should be growth and invention at all levels of language.

When Hemingway, in The Green Hills of Africa , remarked that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn ,” he was exaggerating. Nevertheless this work, containing the inspired lingo of Huck Finn, has had more effect on American literature and on the development of American speech than any other book.

Although Hawthorne was a good writer, any paragraph of his sounds old-fashioned and stilted. Huckleberry Finn , however, remains fresh and lively. An example is Huck’s description of a river sunrise: “Not a sound, anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line—that was the woods on t’other side; you coudn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away—trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks—rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other side of the river, being a wood-yard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!”

Although not traditionally “correct,” this passage is magnificent. It does what language was created to do. Twain has observed the scene with the greatest possible precision and found a way of stating it purely. The “bullfrogs a-cluttering,” the “song-birds just going it,” and the “wood-yard . . . piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres” are barbarisms skillfully handled, the kind of inventive and playful language that should not be suppressed. Barbarisms crop up in casual speech, in popular songs, even in advertising slogans. They exist as a kind of private language in the subculture of the American adolescent. They well up out of jazz and the jazz world. A young writer would make a mistake to be enslaved to subliterary languages, but he would be a fool to ignore them.

For the young creative writer there is no rule on language. There are only warnings, and they concern the extremes of choice. Bookish and literary language, the kind that half embarrasses its author when it is read aloud, is obviously a mistake. A mistake too is the affected overmasculine toughness that some young men adopt in the belief that it permits them to love literature without being called effeminate. Between those extremes anything that works is good, and a playful way with language is always better than a solemn one. When a tourist at Bryce Canyon, Utah, said to his wife as they got out of their car, “Well, shall we pace over and peer at it?” he was indulging in a playful attitude toward words. One would expect more from him in the way of true appreciation than from someone who braced himself solemnly and got ready to experience the feelings he thought he should have.

The Use of Symbolism

In one sense, every word is a symbol. “Tree” is four letters and a certain sound, but it is also a thing with bark and leaves. Put into a context which includes the word Calvary it becomes a metaphor for the cross on which Christ was nailed. That kind of extension of meaning, which is called symbolism, is actually one of the most suggestive and economical ways of communicating the aesthetic experience.

To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.

Here the symbolism is perfectly plain, on what Prof. Harry Levin of Harvard University called the conventional level. Much poetic symbolism is of this commonly accepted kind. A journey often symbolizes human life; a season often suggests the age of a man.

A symbolism less traditional is what Levin called the explicit. An example is this line by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!” A third sort described by Levin is the implicit, which takes the reader into more ambiguous country. In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick , Moby Dick is more than whale, but what precisely is it? God? The spirit of evil? A manifestation of pure mindless force? No single explanation will fully satisfy. It is in this area of unexplained, private, or ambiguous meaning that much contemporary writing exists.

Again there are no rules for the student except that he should read, and read, and read, and fill his mind, and express what he wants to as well as he can. If he is sucked into the whirlpool of allegory, he may go down; many have. He is safe in the conventional and explicit levels, however, and reasonably safe in the implicit. When he begins using private symbols, disguising rather than revealing his thoughts, he risks exclusiveness and pedantry.

Of one thing, however, he can be sure: when the outward story or poem is solid, the symbolism, even though ambiguous, will take care of itself. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels , though representing far more than appears on its surface, remains a fascinating children’s story. Moby-Dick is still a tale of adventure. It does not attempt to cast a shadow without having any solid substance.

The Problem of Point of View

The beginner should try all types of writing, but some forms will come more naturally to him than others. Short lyrics, short stories, and one-act plays are more within his scope than longer forms. He will learn most by making many beginnings and endings—the hardest parts of any piece of writing, and where, as Chekhov said, a man is most likely to lie.

Hiding himself is not a problem for the writer who chooses lyric poetry, because this is a very personal art. If he chooses fiction, however, particularly the short story, he will have to learn, like any good puppeteer, to keep his hands and feet from showing. Basic to all fictional writing is the problem of selecting the point of view from which one wishes to have the reader follow the story. Fiction is usually much less personal than the lyric poem and less bound to objectivity than the drama.

The writer of fiction, however he may pretend to be indifferent and invisible, is always there. He cannot help steering, cannot help providing some double vision, commentary, insight, or irony. If he wants a reader to participate intensely, he adopts the point of view of one of the characters in the story, sees through those eyes alone, thinks with that mind, knows nothing that that individual would not know. If he wants to imitate the dramatic, he pretends to be a camera. John Steinbeck does this in Of Mice and Men , a story which was written to fulfill at one and the same time the requirements of a novel and those of a play. If, as Chekhov, Conrad, Crane, and many others do, the writer wants to have the immediacy of drama but at the same time to keep the right of comment, then he has the subtle job of keeping himself out of his story while still making it say what he wants it to say.

Point of view is a complicated subject. Handling it, however, is a principal skill which a fiction writer must develop once he has perfected his gift of words. He must be in his story but not apparently in it; the story must go his way while appearing to act itself out. For this sort of skill, the short story is the best practice ground. It is so short that a flaw in the point of view shows up like a spider in the cream. It is so concentrated that it forces the writer to develop great economy and structural skill. It is so intense that, like a karate kick, it has great knock-down power.

A writer must knock readers down. This is the goal he must constantly have in mind: to make people listen, to catch their attention, to find ways to make them hold still while he says what he so passionately wants to say. Although creative writing as an intellectual exercise may be pursued with profit by anyone, writing as a profession is not a job for amateurs, dilettantes, part-time thinkers, 25-watt feelers, the lazy, the insensitive, or the imitative. It is for the creative, and creativity implies both talent and hard work.

Situation, or Conflict

Alexandre Dumas said that to make a novel you need a passion and four walls. He might have added that to make a passion you need people “in a bind,” in a situation charged with love, hate, ambition, longing—some tension that cries to be resolved. A beginning writer may have trouble finding his real situation. He may have only clues, characters, a place, an atmosphere, or the haunting association of ideas in his mind. In a novel he may even be able to grope for the situation through his first chapters. (One formula for the novel, proposed by Bernard De Voto, was to throw away the first five chapters and start with number six.) In a short story, however, the situation must be located at once, for even more than in a novel, a short story must start off running, must begin on a rolling slope as near the end as possible.

Because no situation can exist apart from what brought it about and what it leads to, the writer will be led both forward and backward from his germinal knot of tension. He must deal at least a little with the past, which in fictional technique is called summary or exposition; and he must deal with the dramatic present, which is called scene.

The Dramatic Present, or Scene

To make a scene is to put characters onstage and let them act out their own story. The point of view may not be strictly objective—there may be some equivalent of the stage manager of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town lounging around somewhere—but any scene is essentially dramatic. It follows George M. Cohan’s celebrated advice, “Don’t tell ’em—show ’em.” A scene must persuade the reader in all its aspects. The characters have to be credible and consistent. The dialogue must approximate real talk, without being cluttered by the monotony, fatuousness, and repetition of real talk. The action must move in a direct line, without wanderings or irrelevancies. An internal logic has to hold the scene together, beginning and middle and end. The setting must be sensuously realized and then never permitted to drop away and be forgotten.

If any object is important enough to be mentioned, it should be put to use. As Chekhov said, if you hang a gun on the wall at the beginning, it has to go off before the end. If there is a fireplace in a scene, characters should warm themselves by it or lean on its mantle, as part of their stage business.

One does not learn to do a job such as this by practicing whole paragraphs of description, whole chunks of setting or characterization. The elements interweave, and there are many balls to be kept in the air at once. A single paragraph may contain a fragment of action; a bit of dialogue that by its content or its manner and tone characterizes the speaker; a sensuous perception of some detail of setting; and a glance backward in memory, dialogue, or external comment to pick up a meaningful bit of the past.

Now for a few rules of thumb: (1) Start in the middle of things; begin in motion. (2) Stay in motion by not letting the summary intrude; keep the summary feeding into the scene in hints and driblets, by what Henrik Ibsen called the “uncovering” technique. (3) Never explain too much. Most readers are offended if they cannot use their imaginations, and a story loses much of its suspense the moment everything is explained. (4) Keep yourself out of your story; pick a point of view and (especially in the short story) stay with it. Nobody has less right in your story than yourself. (5) Do not show off or try to impress others with your style. The writing should match the characters and the situation, not you. This principle applies as well to obscenity and profanity as to other matters. They are appropriate only where character and situation call for such elements. (6) Nothing is to be gained by attempts to find substitutes for the word “said” in dialogue tags. “Said” is a neutral word that disappears. (7) Stopping a story is hard. Learn to do it cleanly, without leftovers or repetition.

Wallace E. Stegner

Additional Reading

Applebee, Arthur. Context for Learning To Write (Ablex, 1984). Barkas, J.L. How To Write Like a Professional (Arco, 1984). Barzun, Jacques. Simple and Direct, rev. ed. (Harper, 1985). Beaugrande, Robert de. Writing Step by Step: Easy Strategies for Writing and Revising (Harcourt, 1985). Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Little, 1987). Clouse, B. The Student Writer: Editor and Critic (McGraw, 1986). Donovan, Melissa. Teaching Creative Writing (Good Apple, 1990). Phillips, K., and Steiner, B. Catching Ideas (Libraries Unlimited, 1988). Smith, Frank. Writing and the Writer (Holt, 1985). Stein, Gertrude. How To Write (Dover, 1975). Stott, Bill. Write to the Point and Feel Better About Your Writing (Doubleday, 1984). Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E.B. The Elements of Style, 3rd ed. (Macmillan, 1979). Zinsser, William. On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, rev. ed. (Harper, 1985). ‘Death in the Afternoon’: Copyright 1932 Charles Scribner’s Sons; renewal copyright (c) 1960 Ernest Hemingway. ‘The Figure a Poem Makes’ from ‘Complete Poems of Robert Frost’. Copyright 1930, 1939 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. ‘Notes on Life and Letters’ by Joseph Conrad quoted with permission of J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ in ‘Collected Poems 1909–1935’ by T.S. Eliot, copyright, 1936, by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. ‘In Our Time’: Copyright 1925, 1930 Charles Scribner’s Sons; renewal copyright 1953, 1958 Ernest Hemingway. ‘The Crack-Up’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Copyright 1945 by New Directions quoted with the permission of the Estate of Thomas Wolfe. ‘The Hills Beyond’ by Thomas Wolfe quoted with the permission of Harper & Brothers. ‘The Green Hills of Africa’: Copyright 1935 Charles Scribner’s Sons. ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’ in ‘A Shropshire Lad’—Authorized Edition—from ‘Complete Poems’ by A.E. Housman. Copyright (c) 1959 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. ‘The Single Hound’ by Emily Dickinson, copyright 1914, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi, by permission of Little, Brown & Co. The illustration—permission to reprint has been granted by the Publishers from ‘The Poems of Emily Dickinson’, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, copyright 1951, 1955 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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What Is Creative Writing? Simple Definition and Tips

It can seem difficult to narrow down the answer to the question, “What is creative writing?” Since creative writing encompasses many types of writing, exploring examples helps define this art form. Use the definition of creative writing and creative writing tips to learn how to become a creative writer.

Creative Writing Definition

The true definition of creative writing is:

original writing that expresses ideas and thoughts in an imaginative way

It's the "art of making things up" or putting a creative splash on history, as in creative nonfiction. In any instance, creative writing makes you step out of reality and into a new realm inspired by your own imagination. With creative writing you're able to express feelings and emotions instead of cold, hard facts, as you would in academic writing .

Creative Writing Types and Categories

Because it is such a broad topic, the best way to define creative writing is to browse a list of things that are and are not considered creative writing.

Types of Creative Writing

Your imagination starts to flow when you engage in creative writing. The majority of writing, by far, is creative. With it, you can pretend anything you want and help a potential reader do the same. Different types of creative writing are found in these writing categories:

Types of Writing That Aren’t Creative Writing

Any type of writing that is very formal, precise and reliant upon facts isn’t considered creative writing. Forms of writing that are not considered creative writing include:

Creative Writing Tips and Techniques

If you feel you have a story inside you, you probably do. Why not let it out? It may seem as simple as sitting down, pulling up a blank document and letting it all flow, but sometimes that blank document can be intimidating. Use some creative writing techniques and tips to help you get creative.

Be an Avid Reader

Reading all types of writing can spark ideas in your own imagination. The more you read fiction and creative nonfiction, the more you'll naturally adopt their natural rhythm and flow.

Keep an Idea Book

Inspiration for creative writing can strike at any moment. Be prepared with a notebook dedicated to ideas or even a notes app on your phone. When you periodically browse your ideas, you might find that combining a couple of seemingly unrelated ideas sparks a new piece of writing.

Ask What if Questions

To tap into your creativity, ask yourself questions that start with “What if?” For example, if you know you want to write about a cat, you might ask yourself “What if the cat is best friends with a mouse?” or “What if the cat doesn’t look like an ordinary cat?”

Write with Abandon

If you have an idea for a story, sit down and start typing, without editing as you go. Just let the ideas flow out of your mind. After the story is out of your head and onto the screen, then you can consider revising.

Read Your Work Out Loud

Even after you've gotten it all out, it's still not time to edit. Read your idea out loud to hear how it sounds. See which scenes jump out at you. Remember which bits of dialogue are particularly powerful.

Create a Scene List

You might want to outline your scenes after you've written that first draft of your story. This helps you organize the plot line and make sure it flows.

Proofread and Edit Out Fluff

Now it's time to proofread and edit. Even though your work is meant to be creative and original, it should still follow standard writing rules. While imagination is key to creative writing, you still need to remove any "fluffy" parts of the story.

Examples of Creative Writing

At its core, creative writing is a form of entertainment. It's also a form of art found in most of your favorite TV sitcoms, movies, books, poems, and other mediums.

Poetry Example

Poems provide great examples of creative writing. In fact, they're almost exclusively emotional and imaginative. This excerpt from Lewis Carroll's " The Walrus and the Carpenter " is an example of creative writing because it is not based in fact and uses a lot of imagination.

If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,' the Walrus said, That they could get it clear?' I doubt it,' said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear.

If you'd like to try your hand at a poem, check out these tips on writing poems .

Short Story Example

Short stories can be narrative, funny, mysterious, satirical, fantasy, or historical. Often stories include a lesson for the reader. This excerpt from Margaret Barrington's "Village Without Men," from The Glass Shore anthology (edited by Sinéad Gleeson) is a great example of using creativity to evoke emotion.

Weary and distraught, the women listened to the storm as it raged around the houses. The wind screamed and howled. It drove suddenly against the doors with heavy lurchings. It tore at the straw ropes that anchored the thatched roofs to the ground. It rattled and shook the small windows. It sent the rain in narrow streams under the door, through the piled-up sacks, to form large puddles on the hard, stamped, earthen floors.

Novel Example

Novels are certainly creative. Readers look forward to dipping in and out of new worlds created in novels, be they fantasy or realistic. This excerpt from Dark Witch , by famed romance writer Nora Roberts features a real place, Ireland, with a fictional character and story.

The cold carved bone deep, fueled by the lash of the wind, iced by the drowning rain gushing from a bruised, bloated sky. Such was Iona Sheehan's welcome to Ireland. She loved it. How could she not? She asked herself as she hugged her arms to her chest and drank in the wild, soggy view from her window. She was standing in a castle. She'd sleep in a castle that night. An honest-to-God Irish castle in the heart of the west.