Thoughts about creative writing

Creative writing is as much craft as art, and as much art as craft. The art consists of imagination and self knowledge. Most writers already have an overactive imagination. Many, to the point that their imaginative writings are about as coherent as a monkey would be, playing with a keyboard. Self knowledge is harder to come by. Without it, we have no framework on which to hang our imagination. It's like a Christmas tree. The tree itself, sitting in the middle of the living room without decorations, is beautiful but plain; not very exciting. The decorations without the tree are flashy, but lying in a box or on the floor, they are entirely without purpose. Combine the two and you have a thing of beauty. The tree, like self knowledge, provides structure and symmetry for the sparkle and flash of imagination. The craft of writing is another thing entirely. Journalists by the tens of thousands around the world do a credible job of reporting using the five "Ws": Who, What, When, Where, and Why. But without a murder or a kidnaping to report, it's all academic. The same goes for technical writers. Give them some information to convey, and they can do a great job of writing. But what do all those words tell us about the person writing them? Simply combining imagination and self knowledge does not guarantee excellent, or marketable, creative writing. The truly great creative writer has to be a world-class liar. She has to be able to spin a convincing whopper with no internal contradictions. That means making a fantastic yarn plausible. That means making it taste the same throughout all its layers, like an onion. And yes, well-written fiction has layers. Imagine a pool of water, smooth as glass. Drop in a pebble, and you have concentric ripples centered on where the pebble went in. Now, throw in two pebbles. The concentric ripples from each pebble will intersect those from the other pebble, forming a complex pattern. Now, throw in three, then four, then six pebbles. The pattern of those intersecting ripples will reach a complexity almost beyond imagination. Each of those pebbles is a character or a plot element. If you had to keep track of each intersection of each ripple of each character and plot element, you'd go bonkers trying and still not catch them all. And even if you could, you'd loose your readers in short order. This is where the art and the craft of creative writing tie together. The story's overall impression, not capturing the intricacy of minute detail, is where its beauty lies. The story needs enough detail to seem real, and that detail must be consistent enough to seem authentic, but the key to its success lies in furnishing enough, but not too much. To achieve that end, one must step back from the work long enough to gain a fresh perspective. Then, read it anew with openness to change.It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature. From the Introduction to William Strunk’s The Elements of Style. Remember, your imagination is your servant, not the other way around. Crack the whips of structure and style, to make your imagination express its dark stories in beautiful prose. That doesn't happen automatically.