Imaginative Writing

The Imaginative Mode

Definition: Creative writing is writing that expresses the writer's thoughts and feelings in an imaginative, often unique, and poetic way. Creative writing is guided more by the writer's need to express feelings and ideas than by restrictive demands of factual and logical progression of expository writing.

Characteristics of imaginative writing:

1. Clarity: It doesn’t confuse people. (This sounds so obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of writers who think they have to be clever or coy or literary which just leaves the reader in the dark.) 

2.  Form: It has a beginning, a middle and an ending. The beginning draws readers in and the ending is satisfying. This holds true for fiction, memoir, personal essays, autobiographies, and stories for kids. Occasionally a writer who’s a genius ignores this, but most of us aren’t geniuses and can’t ignore it.

3.  Emotion: It’s emotionally charged and the reader cares what happens to the protagonist. We either cry or laugh or are scared or feel something.

4.  Meaning and connection: It’s about people or situations the reader can connect to. Either a story we enter into with the author for entertainment, or a subject or emotion that we too are dealing with or want to learn about, or can find humor in. It is not a story about the author gazing at his or her belly button. In some way the writing connects to the rest of the world.

5. Language: The author cares deeply about words and their power.No overblown adjectives or adverbs (and only those absolutely necessary for information.)No flabby cliches. The author loves language and hones and rewrites every sentence.

Form:

* Short stories

* Poems

* Letters to self (future/past)

* Letters to others

* Scripts

* Diary entries

* Interior monolgues

* Prologues/Epilogues

* Speeches

* Autobiography, etc.

Have you clearly shown:

o  Topic – what you are writing about

o  Tone – how your writing sounds (consistent throughout writing)

o  Structure and Features– what the form you’ve chosen should look like and contain

o Message – what you want to say

o  Purpose – why you want to say it

o  Audience – who do you say it 

o  Language – how you want to say it

Can you:

* Identify the language you’ve used and how it is appropriate for the audience and form?

* Identify the form and why it supports your purpose?

* Express what your overall message is to your audience (explain contention)?

* Discuss how your piece shows an awareness of purpose and audience?

* Link your piece to the text?

* Link your piece to identity and belonging?

* Show that you’ve thought of different perspectives (or interpretations, positive and negative elements, underlying reasons, etc) of the text, context or your written

  piece’s topic?

* Show you have thought about the complexities of the issue/topics in the text and how this is reflected in your piece?

* Discuss how you’ve used ideas/arguments from the context and set text in your writing?

* Show the relation of your piece to the prompt?

* Show that you’ve used a varied but appropriate vocabulary?