Do not go where a path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph

Waldo Emerson.

According to Oxford English Dictionary – Creativity means - to use / involve one’s own
thought or imagination to create something new as work of art, an invention

Webster’s Dictionary: Artistic or intellectual inventiveness Creativity involves the

generation of new ideas Brings into existence something new

Features of Creativity
• Creativity is not the product but the process

• Creativity involves both conscious and subconscious thinking

• Creative thinking can be stimulated at individual as well as group level.

• Creative thinking can be both systematic and unsystematic.

• Creativity is about thinking something new and whenever this new idea is
implemented it brings change

• Creativity is not a one-time / isolated activity. Creativity is somewhat regular

activity. Chance / accidental discovery of new idea does not mean creativity.

• Creativity requires high degree of awareness.

• Creativity involves pattern breaking.

• Creative thinking involves seeking answers to questions or problems. Open-

ended questions are very helpful for idea generation as these elicit a wide range
of answers.

Creativity Needs:

Skills:

 Choosing- To select from a number of possibilities and pick by preference

 Predicting - To state, tell about, or make something known in advance, on the

basis of special knowledge

 Interpreting- To explain and understand the meaning of something and to

conceive the significance of it.
  Translating- To transform something from one state to another

 Recalling - To remembering and bringing back to mind a previous subject or

situation.

 Manipulating- To handle, manage, or use (sometimes with skill) an object in a

process or performance.

Creative writing is writing that expresses the writer’s thoughts and feelings in
an imaginative, often unique, and poetic way

What is a Narrative?

It is a way of telling a story. This story may be fact or fantasy. A narrative is not
a recount. The main purpose of a recount is to retell past events or experiences.
Recounts usually retell events in the order they occurred. Narratives do more
than retelling a series of events. They try to create experiences that are shared
with the reader. The writer uses many literary techniques to capture the reader’s
attention.

Rhetorical Questions

The rhetorical question is a device that fiction writers can incorporate into their
writing to hold the attention of the reader. We use them all the time in our
everyday conversations e.g. “Why didn’t I think of that

By using rhetorical questions the writer can put the reader into the character’s
mind and share his/her emotions

Repetition

Repetition is another technique favoured by competent writers but like most

techniques you can have too much of a good thing. Repetition must have
purpose.

Words can be repeated for emphasis. How does repetition strengthen meaning?
Repetition of a sound, alliteration helps to create atmosphere in your writing. It
does not have to be the sound that starts the word.

Challenges to writers

a. Indifference –

The world’s indifference to the creative writing is remedied by the

corrective action of producing and publishing only the best writing, and
even then nothing is guaranteed. The trait of remaining calm and seeming
not to care; a casual lack of concern

b. Rival media – Technological development and proliferation of media

c. Kitsch – Writing considered to be in poor taste because

of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in
an ironic or knowing way:
d. Displacement activity- If a writer is stimulated to express a basic drive
but the action is frustrated, the drive may find an outlet by inducing
fragments of the pattern of behavior properly belonging to another drive.
This is known as displacement activity
e. Fantasy and Perfectionism- some writers do not fulfil their promise for
a number of reasons , such as their addiction to a fantasy idea of
themselves , spinning daydreams of success , while not comprehending
that creative life involves exceptional levels of attention. A parallel
enemy is perfectionism. Many creative writers strive for perfection in
their work and working practice, but not enough of them achieve it.

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection”-

George orwell

f. Sexist and disordered language- Despite decades of feminist

consciousness-raising, sexist language still exists in our culture. Gender-
specific titles and pronouns can subtly influence sexism as well as our
thoughts and expectations about gender roles and appropriate occupations
and goals for the sexes.
g. Multicultural Writing-
 Elements of Creative Writing

The powerful fours of creative writing

Fluency: the ability to generate LOTS of ideas, not necessarily different.

Fluent thinkers can also “hitchhike” on one idea to come up with many more
ideas. Fluency ability to generate many ideas, solutions, or possibilities

 Flexibility – the ability to create different categories of ideas, and to perceive an

idea from different points of view. The ability to easily abandon the old ways of
thinking, adopt new ones and produce ideas in a variety of categories. It is the
ability to look at something from a different angle or point of view, shifting to
an opposing viewpoint, angle, direction, chronology, modality, putting yourself
“in someone else’s shoes."

 Originality – the ability to generate new, different, and unique ideas that others
are not likely to generate. E.g. oxymorons, juxtapositions, unprompted shifts in
time/place/role/capabilities, unique combinations.

Originality is the pinnacle of creativity. Often it is a someone's spontaneous

originality that makes us call him/her "creative." Of the four FFOE skills,
originality is most difficult to force but can be reinforced. Originality by
definition means producing ideas and products that have not existed before, but
we judge it in relative terms. If a second grader has never been exposed to an
idea before and comes up with it on her own, she is displaying originality

 Elaboration – the ability to expand on an idea by embellishing it with details or

the ability to create an intricate plan. The ability to add details

These four components of creative thinking work in harmony with each other,
and rarely occur as isolated thought processes
Redefinition: the ability to give up old interpretations of familiar objects and
use them in new improved ways.

In addition to these powerful fours of creative writing, many other

elements are also considered to be the elements of creative writing. They
are:-
a. Character.
b. Point of View.
c. Plot.
d. Setting.
e. Dialogue (fiction)
f. Style (fiction)
g. Theme and Motif.

h. Narration

Processes of creative writing

Preparing- the creative writing begins in preparation, which includes active
reading, imitation, research, play and reflection: all conscious actions. At this
stage, motivation helps, and discipline and habit will keep striking that light
inside you every day
Planning – planning of creative writing can include research, but can also
include other factors, especially acts of premeditation.
Incubation- planning and preparation overlap with the incubation stage, which
can seem a contradiction: languishing action. Incubation creates an incoming
wave of the sub conscious that washes over the pages we will write. We have
already the importance of dreams, daydreams, unconsciousness, and writing
badly; these are aspects of a ‘life carried on without the knowledge even of the
writer’.
Beginning – a final work begins, as it were, literally in the middle.
Flowing- Creative flow has been described as a state of total absorption, a
superfine focus in which the writer has clear goals but is writing at a stretch.
This is the stage where writing can become addictive.
The silence reservoir- The writing process is not unidirectional, but a total, an
organic process. It is unwise to imagine that ‘incubation’ wakes one evening;
‘beginning’ rises with the moon; and ‘flowing; follows like sunrise. Give
yourself the time to recover your eloquence through silence. Silence is itself a
type of eloquence, for thinking about writing is writing. Idleness itself is also
conducive, but less easy to get away with it. You will find, as you do so, that the
reservoir fills quickly, and words and phrase rise through it in shoals.
Breakthroughs and finish lines- One of the matters we will begin to
apprehend is not progress, but a feeling of completion, when form and structure
click together sweetly in our mind. However, once a writer ha ‘jumped’ a stage,
and made a breakthrough, they very rarely fall back to their former. The whole
landscape of the writing has altered forever.
On titles – we must make our title work as hard as all the words in our piece-
harder, in fact, for the title is the door for the reader to open, or a little window
through which they peep at the interior. A lazy or imprecise title can damn an
entire book. Spend a great time of conscious time on our titles.

Issues in Creative Writing

o Deadlines as lifelines
o Restrictions of an Open field
o Reflective criticism
o Creativity and Resistance
o Art and Propaganda.

Literary Fiction

Novella – A novella is a short novel, commonly to a fifty to a hundred pages

long. This allows greater character and theme development than a short story,
without the intricate structural exigencies of a novel. It offers the concentration
of a short story and the wider compass of the novel’s form.

Flash Fiction – flash fiction (short-short) is a sub genre of the short story
characterised by limited word length of anything between 250 and 1,000 words.
Indeed, the entire action may take place within the space of a page. Think of
them as prose-haiku. The shortest versions are called nano-fictions and are
popular on internet publishing sites.

Short story-

Novel-