Creative writing is the area where your imagination can run free. It can be associated with painting or composing. There are students who achieve great personal satisfaction when writing creatively. All writing, even though a routine, can be creative. It can include the putting together of a shopping list.
If we have in mind how people write a creative shopping list, a number of aspects are of interest to us:
- The audience people address to (themselves)
- People can add or delete items on the list
- People can make drawings on the list
- Words can be underlined or bolded
- A creative shopping list needs no editing
Even if the shopping list is not an example of sophisticated writing, however, it tells us something about the process of writing creatively. The creative writing process can be influenced by:
a. The content – the subject matter of the writing
b. The type of writing – poems, essays, short stories, novels
c. The medium the text is written in – pen and paper or computer word files
Everything that was already mentioned suggests that the creative writing process has four main elements:
Planning
Writers plan what they are going to write. Before starting to write, you should decide what you are going to say. You should make detailed notes or at least some preliminary notes.
When planning, you should have in mind three main issues:
- The purpose of your writing including the type of text you produce and the language you use
- The audience you write for, using a formal or an informal tone
- The content structure including the sequence of facts and ideas
Drafting
A draft is the first version of a piece of writing. The draft is thought to be amended later. In order to reach the final version, many drafts can be produced.
Editing (Revising)
Once you have produced a draft, you will read through what you have written paying attention to:
- The order of information
- Ambiguous information
- Word order
- General meaning
- Overall structure
- Grammatical accuracy
Final version
The final version is produced after revising your draft and making the necessary changes. It can look different from the original plan or the first draft. This stage implies sending the written text to the intended audience.
We need to represent the four aspects of the creative writing process in a different form – the process wheel, showing the directions you can take to reach the final version.
The writing process we have written about operates with different writings, referring to e-mails, letters, poems or novels. It depends on us how much attention we pay to the different stages of the process. Therefore, when you write a piece, you should give attention to:
- The kind of writing you are performing
- The content
- The length of your piece
- Whom you address to
Whenever you write a creative piece, you should plan your writing, and then proofread what you have written before you send it off. A careful planning and writing will lead to your success.