And writing letters apparently isnt public enough

CCE - 01 Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University, Kota

General Principles of Creative Writing

Course Development Committee

Dr. (Smt.) Kshamata Chaudhary
Assistant Professor (English)
Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University
Kota

Members

Assistant Professor (English)
Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University

© Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University, Kota

Unit – 11 Press Coverage 105 – 119

Unit – 12 Critical Theories or Approaches to Literature 120 – 133

form that matter to them, sometimes stories/poem , they have long wanted to tell – and that

means no one is wasting their time.

Unit - 1

Creative Writing and its Significance

1.3 Scope and Area of Creative writing

1.4 Analysing a Creative Composition

1.9 Review Questions

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of figures of speech. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.

with the usual process and activities. Some may not feel dissatisfied at all with the way things are. And, those who do feel discontented may react or respond in one of the following ways:

Man is unique…….to master.

Man is unique in his ability to make metaphors. Creativity is the act of living metaphorically. Besides giving satisfaction to the soul, it gives a new experience to life on different stages of human development. A boy drawing strange figures on the beautiful walls of his house is really creative. It is a spark which gives individuals to recreate certain common things in our daily life in a genuine way.

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with other people who have felt and touched life which the writer has not. A creative writer, by using the kaleidoscope of his imagination, which comes from some where deep inside, from a part of mind and soul, recreates another world like the Wonderland of Alice. One key aspect of creative writing is to let your creativity lead you. You may be a great story teller but not all great story-tellers are great writers and combining the two is a task that takes time and patience to master.

The Audience: A specific audience may not be known in the beginning, and each situation is different. However, if the finished piece has a universal meaning, the story will speak to a wide range of readers and may have varied meaning for various people.

The Style: A writer's style comes from an array of choices that result in the sole ownership of the finished product. The key to attaining a unique style is focused control. The writer lays out a viewpoint and if it appeals to the readers, it influences them. A good write up has the ability to

Indianisms: Translating the idioms and expressions of Indian languages literally.

Mixed Metaphors: Comparing a thing to two or more things.

Pulp fiction is a term used to describe a huge amount of creative writing available to the American public in the early nineteen hundreds. What they generated was the real driving force for their huge readability. They attracted people to the world of reading and creativity. Once they are acquainted to the world of creativity, the next task is to improve the quality of their product. By choosing a wide range of books and reading them closely one can widen the area of his literary and creative world. The world of books is a wonderful world which gives you thousands of unperceived experiences. One thing is mandatory that you should open your eyes and sharpen your ears.

Creative writing is described as communication through revelations. It is a type of escape from the self. Each production gives him an aesthetic pleasure. He is intensely and emotionally connected to what he makes. The writer is genetically connected to his work and the readers identify it based on his style. So it is the duty of the writer to develop a unique style-some thing like a person’s finger print. It takes years to develop a writer’s style and voice, but through hard work and dedication he can bring his unique self (his identity/his style) on the page. Whether one writes fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, he can always seek ways to improve his skills.

Find out time to write daily. The more you write, better be the result. There is no substitute for simply writing as much as you can. In the beginning don’t be worried at the prospect of publishing; that may follow automatically. Attempt different genres. Nonfiction and poetry in particular have something to teach its readers. In the beginning there may be the influence of other writers, but it is not a great sin Your product may not be significant, but it should not be a matter of tension. Love writing and try to create a style gradually. Use only those words that come to you naturally. Of course you may try to improve your diction, then there is a high risk of using misfit words. Choose words from the real life, words with a smell of life-experiences. You can recollect moments from your childhood. Watch and try to digest your surroundings keenly. Since the world is a great stage and we can meet with any type of characters over there.

Since the work is for reading, be clear in expression. The sentences are advised to be simple, otherwise, the readers come out from the fictional dream which the writer tried hard to create. Avoid clichés in your work. They make things stereotypical. Remove them completely or at least put a twist on them to make the work stand out. For example, Mark Twain’s twist on the cliché-to count to a particular number when you are angry, to avoid to speak harshly. Twain writes: “When angry count four; when very angry swear.” But it is very difficult to attain a distinctive style in writing. Good writers develop their own style. You can identify a particular writer just by listening to what he says. The rhythm of his sentences, peculiarity of his vocabulary, casualness of his tone are distinctive like your fingerprint or DNA. The style comes to you if you lay your foundation aptly. Talking on style, let it happen. Don’t think about writing with a style but about clarity and conciseness. Avoid thinking about what your reader might expect or like. Write the way you like which is the quickest way to begin a personal style. Allow the quickness of your thinking to work and the distinctness of your personality to appear in your writing.

There are four stages for the culmination of an idea into a creative work.

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3.Implementation:

This can be considered as a research stage that the writing project will require. When one writer approaches a complex subject, he has to undergo a serious study on that topic. For example, if you are writing a novel on the aboriginals of Australia, You should study the history of the island and the problems faced by the aboriginals in particular. Lack of homework may affect the coherence of the novel. It is very important that you should keep the fictional reality.

In this unit we have introduced you to the concept and significance of creative writing in English. Besides now you understand what constitutes creative writing and what distinguishes pulp from great writers. Lastly you have also been informed about the stages through which an idea culminates into a creative work.

3. How will you go about developing, pruning and nourishing your own individual style of writing?

4. Discuss the four stages for the culmination of an idea into a creative work.

Structure

2.0 Objectives

2.5 Prosaic Poems

2.6 Poetic Prose

In this unit we intend to give you an overview of types of creative writing: poetry, prosaic poems and poetic prose so that on the basis of the subject matter you have in your mind you can choose the genre. With the information about poetic prose, we wish to show you that it is not unusual

The world of science is the world of fact, where the physical activity is objectively considered. The scientist is interested in things as they are in themselves. Science aims to give a systematic explanation of things in terms of cause, effect and physical law. In our day to day life, we are not interested in things as they are in themselves. We are concerned with that aspect of things which appeal to our emotional nature. We are impressed by the mystery and beauty of things. Poetry gives us the emotional and spiritual side of things. Poetry thus expresses and interprets their appeal to us and our responses to them. Thus poetry is at once the antithesis and the compliment of science.

The imaginative view of the world that poetry embodies is distinguished by several attitudes and elements peculiar to it. First of all, poetry is an emotional embodiment of experience and we respond to it emotionally, sincerely and intellectually. As T.S. Eliot has pointed out, there is a perfect fusion of thought and feeling, of the intellect and the emotions, in other words, a unification of sensibility in the greatest kinds of poetry. Great poets have the ‘essential quality of transmitting ideas and sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind’. Poetry uses language that is intense and highly charged with meaning. It makes a formal and intensely structural use of language. It communicates its special world view through a variety of features such as rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and the like. The emotional colouration of poetry is very often conveyed through poetic modes such as image, metaphor and symbol and through the connotative significance of words.

Nevertheless, we should first analyse the various elements that contribute to the life of the poem and define and discuss each category. Since poetry is a highly compressed and intense form of communication, the diction of poetry assumes great significance. Regarding the use of words, two aspects may usefully be distinguished: denotative and connotative meanings. The meaning of a word in isolation – its dictionary definition – is implied by denotation. But, words over a period of time

Metaphor is the soul of poetic language. The greatest thing for a poet is to have good command of metaphor. Basically, in metaphor, a word or expression which in literal usage denotes one kind of thing or action is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing or action, without asserting a comparison. If Burns had said “O my love is a red, red rose”, he would have uttered a metaphor.

The components of metaphor are its tenor and vehicle. Tenor is the underlying idea that the metaphor expresses or the subject of the comparison. The basic analogy that is used to embody the tenor is vehicle. When Macbeth says that ‘Life is but a walking shadow’, ‘life’ is the tenor and ‘walking shadow’ is the vehicle.

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And that is to be restored, our sickness must grow worse’
He is resorting to paradox to communicate a truth about the metaphysical nature of man. Oxymoron is really a kind of paradox in which opposite terms are brought together in a single statement. Yeats’ memorable phrase ‘a terrible beauty’ is an oxymoron. Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement.

eg: If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song,
May hope, chaste eve, to soothe thy pensive ear...

Rhythm is the integral part of the music of verse, it is not confined to verse alone but is basic to all forms of nature, both animate and inanimate. The change of seasons, the ebb and flow of tides, the heart beats are all various forms of rhythm and follow a regular pattern of recurrence. Rhythm is the fundamental feature of language and consists in the regular recurrence of stress. But unlike the mechanical, regular and repetitive rhymes of the pendulum of a clock, the rhythm of poetry is a vehicle for the transmission of the poem’s meaning. In ‘Coriolan’ by T.S. Eliot, the rhythm stimulates bodily movement and we hear the rise and fall of feet keeping time to the beat of a martial drum.

Unrhymed iambic pentameter is blank verse. It is close to the rhythm of English speech. Blank verse is the standard meter for Elizabethan plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Wordsworth’s Prelude etc.

In a trochaic foot a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed one

As a globed fruit.

Dumb,

* * *
A poem should be equal to:
Not true:
For all history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf
For love
The leaning grasses and two light above the sea
A poem should not mean
But be.

This may be one of the beautiful free verse poem ever written. But what is interesting is how close it comes to metered poetry. The first section can be broken into lines of ten syllables (with the exception of the final two words). These new lines contain five feet each, and they make excellent iambic pentameter with anapests and trochees are variants:
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit. Dumb, as old medallions
To the thumb; silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown

Prosaic Poems
Prose is a form of language which applies ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry). It is mainly used in spoken dialogue, factual discourse as well as in topical and fictional writing. eg: in literature, newspaper, magazines, encyclopedias, history, philosophy etc.

she went back to reading her book.

- Hal Sirowitz.

Though the name of the form may appear to be a contradiction, the prose poem essentially appears as prose, but reads like poetry.

While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme. The prose poem can range in length from a few lines to several pages long, and it may explore a limitless array of styles and subjects.

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the

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There is also a type of narrative prose known as 'stream of consciousness'. This is a modern development that seeks to take the first person narrative even deeper. The aim is to reproduce the random flow of frequently unassociated ideas that race through the human mind at any given moment. The objective, external world is diminished and everything is seen exclusively through the perceptions of one mind, which is analysed in all its ramifications, with the trivial and the significant side by side. It is an attempt to be more accurate and honest in the portrayal of human psychology. In the hands of a Joyce or a Woolf, it has proved an extremely effective form of narration.

Narrative prose is what a writer utilizes when he or she is describing a specific scene such as a landscape or perhaps a battle. Characteristics of prose narratives include language that is lush with adjectives. Careful concern is essential on the writer's standpoint to not over describe a scene to the sense of boredom.