Creative Writing

Learning Intention

To be able to recognise the elements needed to produce a piece of creative writing.

To be able to use these elements to produce your own piece of creative writing.

Success Criteria

I can list the elements of creative writing.

I can define creative writing.

I understand the importance of creative writing.

What is creative writing?

Any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature.

Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems.

Writing for the screen and stage, screenwriting and playwriting respectively, typically have their own programs of study, but fit under the creative writing category as well.

Watch the short film ‘Jack-Jack Attack’ and using the worksheet, take notes on the following:

character

plot

setting

theme

style and grammar

Hook ~ Jack-Jack Attack

GKR

In table groups, think about the short film and list the conventions you can think of that are part of creative writing.

Think about the characters:

1. What characters did you like/dislike?

2. What made you like/dislike them?

What does

the title tell

me?

What do I

predict the

text will be

about?

What can

the pictures

tell me?

What do I

already know

about this

topic?

What

words do

I expect

to see?

What

images come

to mind?

What will I

do as I

read?

Key Vocabulary

character

plot

sub plots

conflict

setting

theme

style

grammar

Creative Writing Conventions

1 Character

Every story has a main character.

If you don’t have characters that make the reader care about them, you might just as well throw out your story.

There is a whole art to character writing. Sure, you can slap up a name on a caricature, give it a few clichés (qualities so well known that there’s nothing caring about them) and call it a character. But that doesn’t make it a believable and real character… and I’m not talking just about cardboard cut-outs here.

Unbelievable characters are… well there’s no strong enough word in English to describe them. Pretty well nonsense. Don’t waste your ink making them up.

2 Plot

Every story has a main character. But does every story have a plot? The answer is not every story… but all the good ones have them.

If you want to know whether your story has a plot or not (what a mouthful) is: what happens in it?

Action is not plot. Plot is something different. Whether you want to write a detailed plot outline or just start your story, you must take care of plot.

Your plot can be anything in the world. It can be happy, it can be sad, it can be serious, it can be funny, it can be realistic and it can be fantastical. Its only function is to draw the reader in.

2 Plota. sub plot

If you include subplots in your story, you can increase interest in your novel. But that’s only if you carry it off well. What are subplots?

A subplot is a secondary plot strand that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting characters, those besides the protagonist or antagonist.

2 Plotb. conflict

In your plot, you must introduce conflict between the main character and his surroundings.

Conflict is necessary to make your novel spicy. Conflict between the protagonist (hero) and antagonist (villain), conflict between the protagonist and the side characters and so on.

Without conflict there is no excitement in a story. People hate to see everyone agreeing with each other. Introduce some conflict.

3 Setting

Where is your novel set?

It might be set in modern age India, it might be set in ancient Europe, it might be set in a fantasy world such as Middle Earth.

Wherever, it doesn’t matter. But it must be believable.

4 Theme

What is your novel about?

Is it about crime, about politics, about realism or about fantasy? What is the theme of the story?

How will readers feel after reading it?

If you answer these questions, you have a theme.

5 Style and Grammar

Writing voice, point of view, style and grammar matter.

If you break the rules, sometimes it’s for the better. But it’s always better to know them before breaking them.

If you make a spelling mistake, be sure to correct it with proof-reading.

Nothing gives away the amateurishness of a writer more than a spelling mistake.

Review

3 conventions of creative writing

2 ideas I have for my own writing

1 question I have about the task