Creative writing

Creative writing is a term used to distinguish certain types of writing from writing in general. The lack of specificity of the term is partly intentional, designed to make the process of writing accessible to everyone and to ensure that non-traditional, or traditionally low-status writing (for example, writing by marginalised social groups, experimental writing, genre fiction) is not excluded from academic consideration or dismissed as trivial.

Despite this inclusivity, some characteristics of creative writing can be tentatively identified. The most obvious is that creative writing has a quality of awareness or self-consciousness which writing in general need not have. The writer of a shopping list may agonise over its contents, but once he or she begins to think about their presentation, their order on the page, their true ability to represent the items on supermarket shelves, their possible symbolic or associative meaning, what they imply about the character of the person writing them, how they undermine or reinforce each other, how a reader from another cultural context would consider them, and so on, the shopping-list writer is becoming a creative writer, and might do well to move on to greater projects.

Creative writing thus includes, but is not limited to:

• fiction;
• drama for stage or screen;
• poetry;
• self-exploratory writing (e.g. autobiography);
• writing that self-consciously mixes these or other genres.

Taught courses in creative writing are increasingly popular, ranging from one-day workshops to three- or four-year university degrees. While some people still argue that true talent for writing cannot be taught, it is now generally accepted that it is possible to teach techniques which help people access or exploit their creativity, from overcoming writer's block and generating random ideas, to understanding how standard genres of writing achieve their effects and structuring their work. In fact, noted authors such as Robert Clark Young and Michael Chabon are graduates of university creative writing programs.

From the above attempt at definition, it is also clear that 'creative writing' implies the possibility of 'creative reading'. A literary artefact whose author did not consider it creative may be read, ingenuously or disingenuously, as if it was written in a creative context. The reverse process can also be applied - often a kind of criticism analogous to 'my five-year-old could have done that' - so creative writing, its definition and the ways that it is (or even the fact that it is) taught continue to be controversial issues in literary circles.

Related Subjects

• writing
• creativity
• authorship
• Creative Writing Process
• National Novel Writing Month
• The Untitled Forum - Critical fiction and non-fiction discussions for writers