How to Become a Creative Writer
By: Tom Farr
Tags: Poetry, Writing, Fiction, Creative Writing, Creative Non Fiction

How to Become a Creative Writer

3 strategies for engaging a reader’s imagination with your writing

Photo by Clever Visuals on Unsplash

When we think of creative writing, it can get a bit confusing because it seems like a redundancy. Isn’t the very act of writing creative? So why is there writing and creative writing?

Unless you’re copying the words of someone else, all writing is creation. Even writers of owner’s manuals, which don’t feel particularly creative, have to create clear instructions on how to properly use a product.

So why the differentiation in terms?

A working definition of creative writing

Creative writing refers to writing that utilizes and engages the imagination, and that’s where the distinction is found. Creative writing is approached differently than writing that is more traditionally non-fiction, such as straightforward reporting or informational essays. In other words, any other type of writing that doesn’t tend to engage people on an emotional level.

Creative writing is about making people feel and imagine

Creative writing is called creative writing simply because you tend to use your imagination more in writing it than you do with more informational non-fiction writing. Creative writing features more figurative and sensory language than you would encounter in a news report or an informative article.

Creative writers approach the blank page with an incredible weight of responsibility to create something that will resonate with their readers on an emotional level and stick with them long after they’ve read it.

3 Ways to Put Creative Writing Into Practice

Creative writing can be broken up into three main categories: fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. We’ll look at each one a little more closely.

1. Writing Fiction

Fiction takes many forms, such as novels, short stories, and screenplays. What makes fiction unique is that it is the crafting of a story that doesn’t actually exist. We create the details of the story out of our own imaginations.

The key to writing compelling fiction is introducing your readers to a complex character they can invest in over the course of the character’s journey to try to get something she wants.

Stories are essentially about a character who wants something, faces opposition to get it, and undergoes a significant character change along the journey of trying to attain the goal.

Stories take people on a journey and engage them on a personal level, and they’re a fun way to exercise your creativity and tap into your imagination.

2. Writing Poetry

When you woke up this morning, how did you feel? What about on your way to work? How about when the weekend finally arrived? When you had a disagreement with your significant other? When someone told you that you were doing a great job?

We have a wide range of emotions that we feel throughout any given day. This is the human condition. And the worse thing you can do is bottle up your emotions.

Poetry is all about emotional expression. Poetry uses a variety of literary and poetic elements, such as figurative and sensory language, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, and other poetic devices

There are many different forms of poetry you can learn about, but the point is to capture emotions and communicate them in a concrete way through poetry.

For example, “His words cut like a knife” is a more creative and poetic way of saying he said something to cause her emotional pain.

3. Writing Creative Non-Fiction

Creative non-fiction is telling stories that are true in a creative way. A creative writer might learn about a story of a man who rescued a small child from a burning building. A journalistic approach would just report the facts: who the man was, who the child was, where the fire was located, how the man got the child out, etc.

A creative writer would recognize the immersive value of the story and want to write it in a way that engages people’s senses and emotions.

Ron Chernow’s outstanding biography Alexander Hamilton, the basis for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, is an example of creative non-fiction that engages the reader in the story of the nation’s first treasury secretary using concrete and image-rich language, crafting a compelling narrative that tells a true story.

Creative non-fiction is about finding important true stories that will impact people and tell them in a way that is accurate, creative, and memorable.

For some excellent advice on writing creative non-fiction, I highly recommend Jack Hart’s book Story Craft.