Creative Writing Notes

**What is creativity?** From Human Motivation, 3rd ed., by Robert E. Franken:  Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or  possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and  entertaining ourselves and others. (page 39...

**What is creativity?** From Human Motivation, 3rd ed., by Robert E. Franken:  Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or  possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and  entertaining ourselves and others. (page 396)  Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:  1\. need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation  2\. need to communicate ideas and values  3\. need to solve problems (page 396)  In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different  perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new  alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people  can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives  or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more  fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or  unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown. (page 394)  From Creativity - Beyond the Myth of Genius, by Robert W. Weisberg.  \...\"creative\" refers to novel products of value, as in \"The airplane was a creative  invention.\" \"Creative\" also refers to the person who produces the work, as in, ?Picasso  was creative.\" \"Creativity,\" then refers both to the capacity to produce such works, as in  \"How can we foster our employees\' creativity?\" and to the activity of generating such  products, as in \"Creativity requires hard work.\" (page 4)  All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to  be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation.\"  (page 4)  From Creativity - Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly  Csikszentmihalyi.  Ways that \"creativity\" is commonly used:  1. 2. 3. ** The Systems Model of Creativity: (pages 27-28)** 1. 2. 3. Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms  an existing domain into a new one\...What counts is whether the novelty he or she  produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain.\" (page 28)  Characteristics of the creative personality: (pages 58-73)  1\. Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but they are also often quiet and  at rest.  2\. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time. 3\. Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or  responsibility and irresponsibility.  4\. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy ant one end, and  rooted sense of reality at the other.  5\. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between  extroversion and introversion.  6\. Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud at the same time. 7\. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender role stereotyping and  have a tendency toward androgyny.  8\. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. 9\. Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be  extremely objective about it as well.  10.The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to  suffering pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.  2\. Creativity  Creativity is the practice of thinking outside the box. It is equally  important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to see  concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation. Creativity is the  ability to produce new, diverse, and unique ideas. Thinking creatively  means looking at things from a different perspective and not be  restricted by rules, customs, or norms While creativity is often treated like a you-have-it-or-you-don't quality,  students can learn how to be creative by solving problems, creating  systems, or just trying something they haven't tried before. It means  students will be able to look at a problem from multiple perspectives --- including those that others may not see.  This 21st-Century Skill allows students to embrace their inner strengths  from big-picture planning to meticulous organization. They learn about  their creativity and also learn how to express it in healthy and  productive ways. More importantly, they also become motivated to  share that creativity with others.   Just like with critical thinking, that makes creativity contagious. One  student creates an interesting or innovative solution to a problem. Then,  when they share it, the next student can become inspired to try  something similar.  The point of creativity is to encourage students to think differently than  convention demands.  **What does that mean for our students?** To build effective Creatively Skills students must learn to:   Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)   Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)   Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative  efforts   Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation  will occur  Why is Creativity Important What Does It  Contribute?  Creativity engages the mind.  Creativity frees the mind in a way that enables a person to absorb knowledge more easily.  It makes processing learning more efficient  Creativity enables alternative ways of thinking.  It unblocks old patterns or habits of thinking. It allows for non-linear thinking. Creativity enables empathy. Creativity connects us to ourselves.  It opens our hearts and doors to our mind. It brings us to hidden parts of ourselves. It  allows recognition of uniqueness and identity. It can help draw out what is already there  within -- hidden talents and inner capacities can emerge. It connects us with our passions. Creative participation nurtures a sense of togetherness.  It brings people together and can nurture skills in teamwork and cooperation. Creativity challenges.  Creativity can connect reflection with action.  Creativity builds intercultural connections.  It connects us to different cultures and sub-cultures.  Creativity nurtures confidence.  Creativity builds confidence. When they are confident, young people are less easily  influenced by others  Creativity instills curiosity.  It encourages questions.  Creative expression gives a voice.  It can help capture ideas, thoughts and visions about the world. Young people can advocate for themselves and for others.  Creativity is participatory and interactive.  When engaging with creativity, young people are not passively listening/absorbing, but  are exploring, discovering and communicating. It can support young people to be more  active and present as members of society.  Creativity stimulates and motivates.  Creativity brings us beyond words.  It allows exploration and communication beyond the limitation of words. Creativity is fun and joyful and surprising.  Creativity keeps the mind active.  Creativity engages different learning styles.  Creative methods enable engagement through a variety of learning styles. Everyone  learns and engages differently.  Creativity allows us to view and solve problems more openly and with innovation. Creativity opens the mind.  A society that has lost touch with its creative side is an imprisoned society, in that  generations of people may be closed minded. It broadens our perspectives and can help us  overcome prejudices.  Creativity inspires collective thinking.  Creativity nurtures ideas.  Creativity supports resilience.  **What is creative writing?** - - - **What are the benefits of creative writing?** - Creative writing has many benefits, both for the writer and the reader. For the writer, it can be  therapeutic, helping them to explore their emotions and better understand themselves. It can also  be used as entertainment or communication, allowing them to share their ideas with the world.  For the reader, creative writing can provide enjoyment, escapism, and insights into the human  condition.  - As you learn to clarify your thoughts and emotions more efficiently and accurately, through  creative writing, you will communicate more effectively; a skill that's exceedingly important  in all areas of life.  - Practising creative writing is about a lot more than just improving your grammar, spelling and  vocabulary; it will allow you to develop your own unique voice and share your perspective  without limitations, expressing how you feel about the worlds inside and outside of your  head. When you engage in creative writing you're stimulating your imagination and thinking  outside the box, which teaches you how to think more innovatively and push boundaries.  Both are valuable skills.  - Creating a pretend universe will often mean assembling personalities, emotions, and places  that might be totally alien to your own life experiences. This is an effective way to build on  your capacity to feel empathy and understanding for people who may have had very different  life experiences to your own. Your perspectives and philosophies can be mirrored or explored  by your characters or their setting. With practise you'll find yourself becoming more  comfortable in asserting your opinions and values in real life.  - Expressive writing can bring a range of mental, emotional, and physical health benefits.  - If you engage with creative writing when you're dealing with difficult emotions, it can help  you explore why you're feeling what you're feeling, allowing a direct insight to your mindset.  It's an opportunity to work through whatever discomfort we're experiencing so we can get  back to whatever we want to achieve today; a healthy way to alleviate the negative thoughts  and emotions we experience on a day-to-day basis.  - Of course, creative writing exercises can also expand your vocabulary and provide a better  understanding of the mechanics of the written word. You'll learn to distinguish when  grammar works and when it doesn't. With practise, your writing will flow better for the  reader.  According to clinical psychologist Karen A.Baikie and psychiatrist Kay Wilhelm, writing  creatively about traumatic, stressful or emotional events has been found to improve both  physical and psychological health. In a clinical trial, participants who wrote about difficult  life events for 20 minutes, on a handful of occasions, had significantly better physical and  psychological outcomes compared to those who wrote about neutral topics. Baikie and  Wilhelm concluded that expressive writing has real potential as a therapeutic tool for  survivors of trauma and in mental health treatment settings.  By Grant J Everett, Panorama magazine  **The Importance of Creative Writing** Creative writing is important because:  It helps us express ourselves in ways we may not be able to do with other forms of  communication.  It allows us to explore our creativity and think outside the box.  It can help us better understand our emotions by exploring them through storytelling  or poetry.  Writing creatively can also provide much-needed escapism from everyday life,  allowing us to escape into a world of our creation.  Creative writing helps us connect with others by sharing our experiences through  stories or poems they can relate to. This way, we can gain insight into other people's  lives while giving them insight into ours.  **THE PURPOSE OF CREATIVE WRITING** In this section, we will focus on the purpose of creative writing, which will in turn aid students in  understanding why a writer writes and the importance of the relationship between author and reader.  There are numerous motives as to why someone would want to express a thought, opinion, or fact to  other individuals through words. Creative writing can be used for entertainment, informative, or  persuasive purposes. This type of writing can also be used to convey an emotion.  In each lesson, a purpose will be explained thoroughly with definitions and examples; a writing  prompt will follow.  The writing prompt will train the student writer to write specific topics as well as use each purpose  correctly. The examples will help the student grasp what the lesson is trying to explain and have the  student perfect their writing skills to the best of their ability.  *This lesson will cover how entertainment is used in writing.* ***THE PURPOSE OF CREATIVE WRITING:*** ***[ENTERTAINMENT]*** We will define creative writing and entertainment along with some of its elements. There are examples of entertainment  that will be familiar to readers so that they can learn how to use them in everyday writing.  A writing prompt will follow this lesson so it can encourage the reader to make their own piece of entertaining writing.  This subject will start with its easier points and may get tougher, but it will still teach the reader how to be the best writer  possible.  *This lesson focuses on the informative aspect of writing.* ***THE PURPOSE OF CREATIVE WRITING:*** ***[INFORMATION]*** This lesson pays attention to the second purpose of writing which is to give information.  Writers will learn how to put information into their work and put it in a way that is clear and concise. Examples will be  included as well as a writing prompt.  It talks about the many reasons why an author may want to share information to the reader and how to remind the writer  what they should appear in the writing as well as develop proper writing habits.  This lesson focuses on the persuasive aspect of writing. **THE PURPOSE OF CREATIVE WRITING:** **[PERSUASION]** This lesson focuses on the persuasive aspect of writing. Writers will learn what persuasion means in writing and how to  persuade a reader using the modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, or logos).  Examples will follow each mode of persuasion as well as a writing prompt using one of the modes of persuasion.  This can help the writer meet their goal of trying to get the reader to see from their perspective. This can be used for speech purposes as well.  *This lesson focuses on channeling emotions in writing.* ***THE PURPOSE OF CREATIVE WRITING:*** ***[CHANNELING EMOTION]*** Lesson duration: 20-25 Minutes  This lesson talks about how to channel emotions from author to reader. Emotions include happiness, anger, or sadness  depending on what the writer is writing about.  It will show students (or people who want to improve their writing) how to do it successfully.  Different methods include telling a joke, using a metaphor, telling a story, or simply using words to create theb atmosphere. There are a few examples (for metaphor and storytelling) as well as a writing prompt.  This can be used for speeches as well.  **Writing as a Language Macroskill** *What are the Four Macro Skills of Communication?* \> Language is expressed in four ways: reading, speaking, writing and listening. **[Writing ]** \>Writing is perhaps the most complex of the communication macro-skills and takes the most time to master. As with any other skill, the craft of putting words on paper is improved through practice and a willingness to improve on past attempts. The more you practice, the better you will get! Moving beyond the basics, many types of writing skills can be used, depending on audience and purpose. Writing can be a basic means of conveying information---such as in newspapers---or a tool to create elaborate new worlds, much like those found in fiction novels such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy. *MICRO SKILLS AND MACRO SKILLS OF WRITING* Brown (2004:221) has summarized all those aspects into two main skills; they are the micro skills and macro skills of writing. [Microskills:] \(1) Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English. \(2) Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose. \(3) Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns. \(4) Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, and rules. \(5) Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. \(6) Use cohesive devices in written discourse. [Macroskills:] \(7) Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. \(8) Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose. \(9) Convey links and connections between events, and communicative such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. \(10) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings of writing. 11. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text. \(12) Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing audience\'s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing. In conclusion, we can say that the earlier micro skills apply more appropriately to imitative and intensive types of writing performance in which they tend to describe about the mechanical of writing and at the level of word, such as cohesive devices, past verb, etc. On the other hand, the macro skill covered wider areas of writing, such as the form and the communicative purpose of a written text, main idea and supporting idea, the literal and implied meaning writing, etc. thus, it is not only about a word but it is about the whole written text. ***[The Writing Process]*** - Writing is a process that can be divided into three stages: Pre-writing, drafting and the final revising stage which includes editing and proofreading.\\ - Writing is often described as a linear process, moving from the first stage to the last stage in an orderly fashion. - The writing process often requires moving back and forth between steps and is often more complex than the linear model represents. **[Pre-Writing]** IN THE PRE-WRITING STAGE YOU PLAN AND PREPARE YOUR WRITING. THIS IS ALSO THE STAGE WHERE YOU RESEARCH YOUR TOPIC AND LOOK FOR RELEVANT SOURCES. Early in the pre-writing stage you should give thought to the subject and purpose of your assignment. AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WRITING PROCESS IT IS IMPORTANT TO TAKE TIME TO CREATE A TIMETABLE FOR WRITING IN ORDER TO ENSURE THAT YOU WILL HAVE A FINISHED PRODUCT WHEN THE ASSIGNMENT IS DUE. WHEN PLANNING YOUR TIME, TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE REVISING PHASE MAY TAKE AS MUCH TIME AS THE INITIAL WRITING, ORPERHAPS EVEN LONGER. **[Drafting]** Once you have created an outline it is time to start writing. Remember that you do not have to write a perfect first draft. Instead of focusing on producing a flawless text at this stage, try to concentrate on writing down your main ideas. You do not need to edit or proofread yet. Instead, try to let your thinking and writing flow as freely as possible. Furthermore, you do not have to write the text from start to finish. It is okay to begin with the sections that you feel the most confident with. **[REVISING, EDITING AND PROOFREADING]** This is the stage in the writing process where you make sure that your text is coherent and written accurately. Your final product should be a text that has been thoroughly worked through and that meets the academic standards of writing. Make sure that you allow enough time to revise, edit and proofread your assignment before submission. PRE-WRITING POINTS TO USE WHEN REVISING YOUR TEXT ***Structure***. Does your text follow the chosen or assigned structure? ***Outline***. Are your points presented in a logicalorder? ***Edit for relevance*** - perhaps not all text that you have produced during the writing process belongs in the final product. ***Contents***. Are your argument and claims supported with evidence? Does your text support the thesis statement or answer the research questions? Check your introduction, particularly if you wrote it early in the process. Does it correspond with what you have written in the rest of the text? ***Language***. Is the language keeping in line with academic standards? Is it explicit, objective and formal? Have you avoided subjective expressions and clichés? ***References and citations.*** Are all sources cited correctly and included in the list of references? Do your references follow the assigned referencing system and are you consistent in your use of references? ***Check for coherence.*** Think from the reader\'s perspective. Rewrite any passages that are unclear. ***Check for consistency.*** Make sure that there are no shifts in the language and style. This is particularly important when you are writing in a group - remember that you should sound like you are one voice. ***Check paragraphing***, grammar, spelling and punctuation. ***Formal requirements.*** Does your text follow the requirements for formal aspects such as length, spacing and title page? Make sure you have the time to proofread! Allowing enough time to check your assignment ensures higher levels of quality and accuracy. ***[WRITING SUB SKILLS]*** 1\. Manipulating the script of the language: handwriting, spelling and punctuation. 2\. Expressing grammatical \[syntactic and morphological\] relationships at the sentence level. 3\. Expressing relationships between parts of a written text through cohesive devices \[especially through grammatical devices such as noun-pronoun reference\]. 4\. Using markers in written discourse, in particular: - - - - - - - 5\. Expressing the communicative function of written sentences: using explicit markers without using explicit markers 6\. Expressing information or knowledge in writing: explicitly implicitly 7. Expressing conceptual meaning 8\. Planning and organizing written information in expository language narrative straight description of phenomena or ideas descriptions of process or change of state argument curriculum, skills, syllabus, writing cohesive devices, curriculum, discourse, sentence level, syllabus, writing