Creative writing

We have a name for the tendency to go on a reasonable number of random walks: we call it “creativity.”

Creative writing is about creating ‘literature’ and not genre stories: it is more so a question of quality than content
Writing is an innate talent: writing is a tool that can be honed and practiced
No real world application for creative writing: almost all conversations, media, arguments, involve some form of convincing the other side! what better way to do that than through story telling
The riddle of storytelling
- Imagine two groups of early humans competing for the same resources who lived pretty much the same
- The first group gossiped and told stories during their leisure time while the second group continued working
- We know the first group survived because that’s us! So why is story telling so evolutionarily beneficial? It’s a form of simulation (see also: behaviourist approaches to consciousness)

Freytag’s Pyramid
- Exposition
- Rising Action
- Climax
- Falling Action
- Denouement
Kurt Vonnegut’s Shape of Stories
Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” (story wheel)
- Character is in a zone of comfort
- But they want something
- They enter an unfamiliar situation
- Adapt to it
- Get what they wanted
- Pay a heavy price for it
- Then return to their familiar situation
- Having changed
Three Act Structure
- Act I: Get your guy up a tree
- Act II: Throw rocks at him
- Act III: Get him outta the tree

McGuffin: an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself.
The universal grammar for stories: character + conflict = change
Plot: the how of the story. Explicit. A series of actions, taken by characters, towards their wants, needs or desires
Theme: the why of the story, the “so what”. Should be
- Universal
- Specific
- Implied
Summary (general information, tell) vs Scene (specific descriptions, show)

Structural ambiguity: missing important story beats (e.g. Four undramatic plot structures) — you need character, conflict, and change

Cliché/Familiar phrasing: don’t do things that are incredibly overdone
Awkward exposition: having conversations that characters would never actually have for the sake of reader understanding
Abstractions: don’t invoke abstractions, make it concrete, reify it

Vagueness (unclear) vs Ambiguity (up to interpretation)
Deus Ex Machina: god from the machine, heavy handed use of magic or coincidence to solve a conflict
Characters: be aware of your defaults
- There not always a person but instead an element of storytelling — a vehicle on which the action of the story plays out

Voice
- How your characters speak, their voice and diction
- The language you use as the author
Irony
- Verbal irony: the device by which we say one thing and mean another
- Dramatic irony: the device by which the audience has crucial information that the characters do not
- Cosmic irony: our understanding of the human condition, in which efforts are thwarted despite our best intentions

Assonance: repetition of a vowel sound between consonants that may or may not match
Consonance: repetition of the consonant that concludes a word or syllable
Alliteration: repetition of an initial consonant sound
Rhyme
- True rhyme: both the vowel and consonant of the last accented syllable correspond
- Internal rhyme: the end of one line rhymes into the beginning or middle of noather
- Off-rhyme: near-rhyme, slightly discordant or ‘not quire there’ rhymes (four-inch, door hinge)
Line: a typographical break representing a slight oral pause or hesitation
- It adds a kind of emphasis both to the last word of the line and the first of the next line

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