Aimup - Creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing comes from your imagination. It is original and personal. It brings stories and feelings to life so that readers find out more about them and/or are entertained.

Types of creative writing include:

Biography (the story of a person's life - if you're writing about your own life this is an autobiography)
Fiction (novels and short stories not about real people or events)
Travel writing
Poetry.

People read creative writing because they want to, not because they have to. This means that it is very important to make it interesting and enjoyable to read. How it is written is just as important as what is written

People read creative writing because it interests them, so you have to make what you write interesting. You do this through what is said and how it's said.

Here are just 3 things to think about if you want to do some creative writing:

Descriptions
Characters
Plots

Descriptions

Descriptions help to draw your reader in to the world you are writing about.

Describe things - people, places and events - using all of your senses:

Sight - what can be seen
Smell - what can be smelt
Touch - what can be felt
Hearing - what can be heard
Taste - what can be tasted

Use descriptive words to tell the reader what things are like and how things are done.

Example:

If a man is walking, is he walking slowly or fast?

If there is a house, is it big or small?

Remember that your reader only has your words to help them see what is in your head. Try to find words that describe something as exactly as possible.

Example:

If a man is walking slowly, is he limping, staggering, wandering, creeping?

If a house is small, is it narrow or squat, is it a cottage?

Try this

Characters

The characters are the people you write about. You have to bring them to life for your reader through what you write about them.

The first thing you have to do is get to know the character yourself. This will help you:

Describe the character
Know what a character might do and how he or she would do it
Think of a story about that character.

You'll need to think about your character's:

Appearance - what they look like
Personality and characteristics (what they're like, habits, how they speak etc)
Age and background (family, education, important things that have happened to them etc)
Present situation (home, job etc).

Think about how you can pass this information on to your reader. Don't just give a long description. Give important bits of information early on and bring other bits in later. Sometimes how your character does something will tell readers lots about them.

Some things you know about your character you'll never tell the reader. Just knowing it will help you write about him or her.

Try this

Plots

The plot of a story is a plan of the main things that happen in it.

Think of the plot as the skeleton of your story. It gives you the shape of your story. The details, descriptions and interesting characters are the flesh that you put on top of the bones.

A story must have:

A beginning - which gets the reader interested and tells them who the characters are, where the action takes place and when the action takes place
A middle - where all the main action takes place
An end - where the reader finds out what happens (or is given enough information for them to work it out for themselves).

Basic plots often look like this:

Beginning	Middle	End
Characters are in a particular situation	Something happens which changes the situation	The characters deal with the situation (badly or well)

Beginning	Middle	End
A killer shark starts to terrorise a popular seaside resort and attack tourists.	Tourists stop coming to the town and people's jobs are threatened. Various people try to kill the shark and fail.	An expert in killer shark behaviour manages to outwit and kill the shark. Tourists return to the resort.

Try this