Creative Writing

  • Language
    • Dense: Spare but Concrete
    • Musical: Sound and Sense
  • POV
    • Personal: Grounded in Life
    • Individual: Quirky or Perceptive (or both)
  • Character
    • Made real through suggestive details
    • Grounded in reality-composites
  • Dialogue
    • Focused on essentials
    • Fragmented (text without subtext)
  • Form
    • Content driven rather than form driven
    • Subtle rather than obvious
  • Art and Craft
    • Discovery and Control
    • "Inspired"

    • Writing is a craft, which means learning the rules, but it is also an art, which means that good writers learn when to break the rules.

    "The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules."
    - Captain Barbosa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

    Writers on Writing