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Creative Writing - The Lesson

Today we were learning about the key steps to creative writing, it was something definitely worth learning especially as I always find writing and finding the right words difficult. So the following are the key steps and some more tips with them.

  1. Generating Ideas
  • Research - finding the information that will inspire you and will help strengthen your idea. These could include; film, images fiction, history, ect.
  • Brainstorm - This could include things like notes and mindmaps. Another good idea is to exchange and develop ideas with the help of others.
  • Experiment - challenge yourself with exercises to get yourself going, also make a few drafts to find the 'right' one. 
     2. Writing as Communication
  •  As a writer you need to COMMUNICATE your MESSAGE to the READER
  • Need to understand what you are trying to write otherwise it's probably not going to make sense to anybody else. 
  • Consider the following; content, narrative, plot, tone, style, dialogue, and character. 
We also learnt what it takes to write a screenplay; I assume this was the main focus of our lesson due to being on a film course. It was actually rather useful and accentuated some things that I'd never quite thought about before. 
  1. Writing a Screenplay - the key stages
  • The obvious one is that you need an idea
  • It needs to develop into a basic story - at least one paragraph
  • Then transformed into a one A4 page story outline/proposal
  • Next to come is the Treatment - 3/4 pages that describe the tone, style and contextualise the film
  • Onto the scene outline - script without dialogue that describes each scene objective
  • Finally the actual screenplay - starting with the first draft and then experimenting further with drafts until you eventually complete the final draft. 
     2. Building the Structure
  • Needs a beginning, middle and an end - not necessarily in that order
  • Then a variety of; conflicts; setting up expectations; confounding expectations; building in ambiguity; and not always resolving everything
  • Denouement - whether to tie up the loose threads at the end or not. 
     3. Character Development
  • Base it around a main character/protagonist and can follow their struggles/dilemmas.
  • You don't always need to reveal the backstory but to make the character stronger you as a writer should know the backstory. 
  • Helps to be able to visualise the character as it means it's probably more realistic to the reader/viewer. Also when writing a screenplay you could have a particular actor in mind for the role. 
  • The protagonists needs do not always need to be fulfilled
  • Use contrasting characters so that conflict can arise. 
  • Don't just stay in the head of one character  
     4. Dialogue
  • It's sometimes better to show than to say - use gestures, actions and if possible looks where possible
  • It helps to move the storyline forward; also knowing how the scene will end and the characters objectives can help it flow
  • Aim to overwrite so that you can cut, condense and tighten the screenplay instead of needing to add unnecessary extras

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