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I
expect that we all start out the same. When I first tried my hand at
writing a story, I made all the usual mistakes, the biggest of which is
not spending enough time planning out where your story is going; the start, middle and end.
I'm assuming that you have a reasonable vocabulary and understanding of
grammar, which if you don't, rewind slightly and get that under your
belt if you can. Check out the Utube tutorials - they are pretty much
spot on.
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems. Writing for the screen and stage, screenwriting and playwriting respectively, typically have their own programs of study, but fit under the creative writing category as well.
Babylonian legal tablet writing history
Unlike its academic counterpart of writing classes that teach students to compose work based on the rules of the language, creative writing is believed to focus on students’
self-expression. While creative writing as an educational subject is often available at some stages, if not throughout, K–12 education, perhaps the most refined form of creative writing as an educational focus is in universities. Following a reworking of university education in the post-war era, creative writing has progressively gained prominence in the university setting. With the beginning of formal creative writing program:
“ For the first time in the sad and enchanting history of literature, for the first time in the glorious and dreadful history of the world, the writer was welcome in the academic place. If the mind could be honored there, why not the
imagination?”
Programs of study
Creative Writing programs are typically available to writers from the high school level all the way through graduate school. Traditionally these programs are associated with the English departments in the respective schools, but this notion has been challenged in recent time as more creative writing programs have spun off into their own department. Most Creative Writing degrees for undergraduates in college are Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees
(BFA).[citation needed] Some continue to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the terminal degree in the field. At one time rare, PhD. programs are becoming more prevalent in the field, as more writers attempt to bridge the gap between academic study and artistic pursuit.
Creative writers typically decide an emphasis in either fiction or poetry, and they usually start with short stories or simple
poems. They then make a schedule based on this emphasis including literature classes, education classes and workshop classes to strengthen their skills and techniques. Though they have their own programs of study in the fields of film and theatre, screenwriting and playwriting have become more popular in creative writing programs, as creative writing programs attempt to work more closely with film and theatre programs as well as English programs. Creative writing students are encouraged to get involved in extracurricular writing-based activities, such as publishing clubs, school-based literary magazines or newspapers, writing contests, writing colonies or conventions, and extended education classes.
Creative writing also takes places outside of formal university or school institutions. For example, writer Dave Eggers set up the innovative 826 Valencia in San Francisco, where young people write with professional writers. In the UK, the Arvon Foundation runs week long residential creative writing courses in four historic houses.
Write
a story that rocks
In the classroom
Creative writing is usually taught in a workshop format rather than seminar style. In workshops students usually submit original work for peer critique. Students also format a writing method through the process of writing and re-writing. Some courses teach the means to exploit or access latent creativity or more technical issues such as editing, structural techniques, genres, random idea generating or writer's block unblocking. Some noted authors, such as Michael
Chabon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kevin Brockmeier, Ian McEwan, Karl Kirchwey, Rose Tremain and reputed screenwriters, such as David
Benioff, Darren Star and Peter Farrelly, have graduated from university creative writing programs.
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century.
Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The individualism of the presentation makes the personal memoir and the autobiography the two closest relatives among the genres of modern histories.
Definition
The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements (the use of paper and print), a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western (and modern) market of fiction. The separation of a field of histories from a field of literary fiction fueled the evolution of these features in the last 400 years.
A fictional narrative
Fictionality and the presentation in a narrative are the two features most commonly invoked to distinguish novels from histories. In a historical perspective they are problematic criteria. Histories were supposed to be narrative projects throughout the early modern period. Their authors could include inventions as long as they were rooted in traditional knowledge or in order to orchestrate a certain passage. Historians would thus invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political, and personal realities of a place and period with a clarity and detail historians would not dare to explore.
Story
structure
Writing for the market of popular fiction
The contemporary market for trivial literature and popular fiction is connected to the market of "high" literature through the numerous genres that both fields share.
The historic advantage of genres is to allow the direct marketing of fiction. While the reader of "high" literature will follow public discussions of novels, the low production has to employ the traditionally more direct and short-term marketing strategies of open declarations of their content. Genres fill the gap the critic leaves and work as direct promises of a foreseeable reading pleasure. The very lowest stratum of trivial fiction is based entirely on genre expectations, which it fixes with serializations and identifiable brand names. Ghost writers hide behind collective pseudonyms to ensure the steady supply of fictions that will have the very same hero, the very same story arc, and the very same number of pages, issue after issue.
Though a production not promoted by secondary criticism it is trivial literature that holds the big market share. Romance fiction had an estimated $1.375 billion share in estimated revenue of the US book market in 2007. Religion/inspirational followed with $819 million, science fiction/fantasy with $700 million, mystery with $650 million and classic literary fiction with $466 million according to data supplied by the Romance Writers of America
homepage.
The most important subgenres were in this period, according to Romance Writers of America data given on the basis of numbers of releases:
Contemporary series romance: 25.7%
Contemporary romance: 21.8%
Historical romance: 16%
Paranormal romance: 11.8%
Romantic suspense: 7.2%
Inspirational romance: 7.1%
Romantic suspense (series): 4.7%
Other (chick-lit, erotic romance, women's fiction): 2.9%
Young adult romance: 2.8%
In a historical perspective one could be tempted to see modern trivial literature as the successor of the early modern chapbook. Both fields share a focus on readers in search of accessible reading satisfaction. Early modern booksellers stated a reduced vocabulary and a focus on plots as the advantages of the abridgements they sold. The market of chapbooks disappeared, however, in the course of the 19th
century. The modern trivial production had by that time developed out of the once so elegant – early modern belles
lettres.
Book
inside blogspot
The 20th-century love romance is a successor of the novels Madeleine de Scudéry, Marie de La Fayette, Aphra Behn, and Eliza Haywood wrote from the 1640s into the 1740s. The modern adventure novel goes back to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its immediate successors. Modern pornography has no precedent in the chapbook market; it goes back, again, to the libertine and hedonistic belles lettres, to John Cleland's Fanny Hill (1749) and its companions of the elegant 18th-century market. Ian Fleming's James Bond is a descendant of the anonymous yet extremely sophisticated and stylish narrator who mixed his love affairs with his political missions in La Guerre d'Espagne (1707). Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon exploits Tolkien, as well as Arthurian literature and its romantic 19th-century reflections. Modern horror fiction also has no precedent on the market of chapbooks – it goes back into the high market of early 19th-century romantic literature. Modern popular science fiction has an even shorter history, hardly dating past the 1860s.
The modern trivial production can be said to be the result of the 19th-century constitution of "high literature". Where "high literature" rose under the critical debates of literature, the production that failed to receive the same critical attention had to survive on the existing markets.
The emerging field of popular fiction immediately created its own stratifications with a production of bestselling authors such as Raymond Chandler, Barbara Cartland, Ian Fleming, Johannes Mario Simmel, Rosamunde Pilcher, Stephen King, Ken Follett, Patricia Cornwell, and Dan Brown who enjoy the potential to attract fans and who appear as role models in author-fan relationships. The lowest market segment does not develop any mythologies of authorship. It hardly differentiates between hero and author: one buys the new Perry Rhodan, Captain Future, or Jerry Cotton.
Trivial literature has been accused of promoting escapism and reactionary politics. It is supposedly designed to reinforce present divisions of class, power and gender. Nonetheless, popular fiction has dealt with almost any topic the modern public sphere has provided. Class and gender divisions are omnipresent in love stories: the majority of them harp on tragic confrontations that arise wherever a heroine of lower social status falls in love with a doctor, the wealthy heir of an estate or company, or just the Alpine farmer whose maid she happens to be. It is not said that these aspirations lead to happy endings. They can be read as escapist dreams of how one could change ones social status by marriage; they are at the same time constant indicators of existing or imaginary social barriers. All major political confrontations of the past one hundred years have become the scenery of trivial exploits, whether they focused on soldiers, spies or on civilians fighting between the lines. Conspiracy theories have mushroomed under the covers of trivial fictions from Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (1980) to Dan Brown's The
Da Vinci Code (2003): they mirror a widespread feeling that the electorate of the Western democracies receive at best an illusion of freedom, an omnipresent picture presented in the media, while those who pull the strings hide in the
dark.
The authors of trivial fictions–and that is the essential functional difference between them and their counterparts in the sphere of "high" literature–tend to proclaim that they have simply exploited the controversial topics. Dan Brown does this on his website answering the question whether his Da Vinci Code could be called an "anti-Christian" novel:
No. This book is not anti-anything. It's a novel. I wrote this story in an effort to explore certain aspects of Christian history that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate. Even so, a small but vocal group of individuals has proclaimed the story dangerous, heretical, and anti-Christian. While I regret having offended those individuals, I should mention that priests, nuns, and clergy contact me all the time to thank me for writing the novel. Many church officials are celebrating The Da Vinci Code because it has sparked renewed interest in important topics of faith and Christian history. It is important to remember that a reader does not have to agree with every word in the novel to use the book as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our
faith.
The author of popular fictions has a fan community to serve and satisfy. He or she can risk rebuffing both the critical public and its literary experts in their search for interesting readings (as Dan Brown effectively does with his statement on possible readings of his novel). The trivial author's position towards his text is generally supposed to be relaxed. Authors of great literature are by contrast supposed to be compelled to write. They follow (says the popular mythology) their inner voices, a feeling for injustice, an urge to face a personal trauma, an artistic vision. The authors of trivial fictions have their own call: they must not fail the expectations of their audiences. A covenant of loyalty and mutual respect is the basis on which the author of popular fictions continues his or her work. The lower branches of the production have no contact to mythologies of authorship.
The boundaries between the so-called high and low have blurred in recent years through the explorations of postmodern and poststructuralist critics and through the exploitation of trivial works by the film industry. The present landscape of media – with television and the Internet indiscriminately reaching the entire audience – has a potential to destabilize boundaries between the fields. The division lines are, on the other hand, likely to stay intact as the critical discourse continues to need and to produce privileged objects of debate.
Stephen
King
LINKS:
History
of Writing. historian.net
Alphabet
& protoalphabet the manifest of astrologic doctrine?
The
New Post-Literate
Denise
Schmandt-Besserat HomePage
Children
of the Code: A Brief History of Writing – Online Video
Broadcasts
Cracking
the Maya Code. NOVA, Public Broadcasting Service. (Timeline
(flash))
BBC
on tortoise shells discovered in China
Fragments
of pottery discovered in modern Pakistan
Egyptian
hieroglyphs c. 3000 BC
Wikipedia
NOVELIST
INDEX
A - Z
GRAPHIC
NOVEL INDEX
A - Z
Many
traditional rules of publishing have been superceded by the long awaited
advent of electronic publishing (e-books), such as for the ipad or e-kindle readers.
New
energy drinks for performers
..
Thirst for Life
330ml
Earth can - the World in Your Hands
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