Six Tips To Creativity for Writers Artists and Readers

A writer writes – right? 

And what could be more important to writing than creativity. 

So, here are just six tips to being more creative. 

1. Keep a journal. Don’t think this is ‘written in stone’. Some people love them, some people hate them, even writers. If it’s something that works for you, jot things down. Doesn’t have to be all the time, every day, every hour. Any time is good. Not at all works as well if you’re the ‘hate it’ kind who’d rather simply be writing a story, an article, a screenplay and not bothering with a journal.

2.  Write everything down. Don’t trust your memory when you have a good idea, especially at night. I don’t care who you are, you’re gonna forget. Yes, you are. This kind of follows the journal keeping but it’s different. This is making note of your ideas. You don’t have to get all touchy-feely, just for God’s sakes write it down. 

3. Go hang out in nature and allow it to wash simile ideas over you like a wave on a sun-kissed shore. Okay, okay, you get it. Nature is a great resource when you’re looking for ideas to get your idea across. Open your eyes and ears, smell the air and think about the feel of the breeze on your skin. We’ve all heard “slow as a snail”; stale, yes. However there are millions of possibilities out there. Come up with something new and fresh and you’ll suck those readers in. Yes, you need it for your scriptwriting as well. By virtue of it's very tautness a script must be engaging in order to attract what's needed to actually produce it.

4. Look, if you’re writing or creating anything, if you’re in the flow, if everything is clicking along for you, then keep at it. Keep writing. Keep painting. Keep clicking the camera. Keep creating. I will add one thing for writers. Many times it’s best to pause at a peak when break time comes along so you can dive right in when you begin again instead of finding yourself in a valley from which you must crawl upward. 

5. Ever try to convey an emotion in a story or for that matter to paint it on a canvas or draw it and you just can’t seem to get a hold of what you need? Can’t quite make it happen. Try listening to music that stirs that emotion within you. Let it flow through you and absorb. If you actually feel the emotion you’re trying to put across odds are it will come through in your creative work. New words and idas will sprout. Trust me on this.

6. Doodle. Haven’t you heard this before? Amazing what doodling can do. The brain seems to take a little vacation, but not a non-productive one. Doodling can accomplish a lot. Don’t believe me? Check out doodling and learn how amazing it can really be.   Oh, and you can try writing with your non-dominant hand. The sheer awkwardness of trying this, the difficulty you’ll experience in writing words, then sentences with that hand give you more room to think and spurs those thoughts to flow. It slows you down too which can be a good thing!

That’s it. Six suggestions. Try them out and let me know how they work for you when skipping down the creative path.

Writers And Readers Websites Wednesday - Creative Writing Widgets

Creative Writer? 

Looking for those helpful little widgets - things like translator, character name generator, Title-o-matic, writing prompts and a bunch more? Then run over to Writing Is A Virus and find them all in one place, well a bunch of them anyway. 

Check it out now and have fun.

Writers Thinking About Settings

If you don’t think much about it and just sort of throw settings in as you need there, just for color and background, then maybe you need to pause and think about that again…..

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Okay, done thinking? Hope you’ve come to some good conclusions, namely just how important settings can be to novel or script. In fact, setting can become so central to a story that it’s almost another character. Think about it – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian series – he created his own Mars.  Settings and characters to go with it. There were precise and detailed settings full of color and life on  their own. And when the movie was made all that detail became real on the screen. And, the director didn’t need to have pages and pages of written instruction to get there. 

He also didn’t need a lot of those pages when he has at his fingertips the ability to project lots and lots of images for the ‘reader/watcher’ to absorb.

Novelists are at a disadvantage when compared with their counterparts of movie world. It’s true, novelists must create the setting with words, passion and emotion that scatter across the written page. Screenwriters however, have a different disadvantage in that they must learn to put the same across on the page in very short passages.

However it’s done, by whoever is writing, setting dictates the need for detailed and precise descriptions of locals. And that means the writer must have a good grip on possibly a police station, a morgue or a rough city street for mysteries.  If it’s a thriller being written it might call for a more confining setting like an airplane, a small down, a haunted house or an island.  

A setting immediately takes the reader where the writer needs him to be. Without that immediately grounding in surroundings the reader loses his center and that’s definitely a negative for the writer.

So think about your settings and make it easier on yourself by realizing there are types of setting. Some are definitive in that the action MUST be set in a certain local. By that I mean if your book or script has a historical setting and something well-known that happens there then THERE can only be one specific setting.  The Gunfight at the OK Corral can’t be set in modern day New York City. So the writer is going to have to bone up on Tombstone Arizona in the 1800’s and get the details right.

On the other hand some scenes don’t necessarily need a specific setting. A guy asking a girl to marry him can be pretty much anywhere the writer wants to put it if it’s current history; whatever fits the story, or takes it in a new direction.

So what I’m saying is sometimes a scene is deeply rooted in the story and MUST contain a number of pre-determined elements. Other times, when you create a scene and that scene is not inherent many opportunities open up. There are possibilities to add an unexpected setting. You could use that to add tension and perhaps allow angles to emerge that help you create story additions you hadn’t thought of.

Play with your settings, even ones that may seem relatively minor. You might be able to add a whole new angle to your story.

What’s Holding You Back? -Six Things That Could Be Keeping You From Writing Success

So, what holds you back? What keeps you from writing what you want to write, from getting it out there and being published? Recognizing what might be holding us back as writers could well be key in helping us to move forward. 

You want to create worlds, right? Whole new places in space, time, and experience for readers to go. And readers, that’s the experience you’re in it for, right? Those new places, those new adventures.

Worthy goals to be sure. 

The tripwires for the writer can be things like;

1.  A writer can be so motivated, so in love with the process of writing and, indeed, perfecting the work in progress that that writer revises while writing each chapter, after writing sections of the novel, again when the novel is complete. Constantly revising, constantly second-guessing.

Now, I’m not saying revision and rewriting aren’t important elements of creating an outstanding novel. However, there comes a time when the writer has to step away from the keyboard, put down the pen and decide it’s as good as it’s going to get. That if it’s tinkered with further at that stage it’ll just begin to go down hill.  Really, it’s like egg whites beaten too long. You can reach a peak – and then it just gets ‘watery’.

2.  Then there’s the opposite. The writer who’s so excited, so juiced that he or she rushes to complete the book, doesn’t bother much with editing or even checking for typos and blasts through to publication.

 

 Whoops.

3.  Some writers are so delighted, so stroked, so awash in joy when getting a good review for their book that suddenly completing the next one doesn’t seem so important. Sort of like, hey, I done good! Wow, look at those words of praise. I don’t have to market, promote, work to get my work out before the reading public. It’s just going to happen. In fact, I don’t even have to push forward to complete my second because they’ll just be hanging on, panting to read it when it’s released. Any time will do.

Nope, not even close. Always be looking forward to your next project. Always be alert to promotional possibilities and follow through on them.

4.  There are writers who want to make a splash, have a big impact, really rattle their readers. They can go too far, cross the line and end up alienating readers. Shock can be good, but too much can be off-putting and cost the writer readers. The good writer, while being true to the story being created, must keep the target audience in mind, the reader. Shake ‘em up, but don’t toss ‘em out.

5.  Be sure to listen to your gut. Sometimes too much planning can get in the way of a good story. There needs to be a balance. What ‘feels’ right? Where is the story going? Just because one thing is planned doesn’t mean it can’t be changed for another. Being too rigid, fighting character and story created, can be a factor holding a writer back.

6.  Don’t be the writer so focused on performance, turning just the right phrase, in just the right way, in just the right scene to the point where you’re so self-critical you ultimately decide you’re ‘just not good enough’.  Writers evolve and change. Writing evolves and changes. So will you. Create, revise, move forward.

Oh, and trust your gut.