The Gryphon Gazette

By Sydney G. ‘27

I love creative writing. It is one of my favorite things to do. But while creative writing is very fun, it can be challenging too. In this article, I will go over important elements and tips to make your creative writing the best it can be.

Inspiration

Every piece of writing needs inspiration, but especially creative stories. Without inspiration, you will just stare at a screen forever, beating your head over an intense case of writer’s block. Ways to counter that are to look up writing prompts and claim one that seems like something you would like, dream journaling and reading a lot. A fun activity is to use a random object generator, like this one, and write a story that centers around that object. I have suffered from long periods of writer’s block, only to wake up at 3 am with a fully fleshed-out story in my head. In addition, draw on your experiences, but not to a fault. This is a fiction, not a self-insert story. Do your best to put elements of real humans into the story (after all, we write what we know), but don’t put entire personalities into the story. Instead, how should you write about characters? Continue reading below.

Characters

Characters are the main part of the story, but no one wants to read about flat characters. Each character needs a distinct personality, and they cannot rely too heavily on “The Breakfast Club”-esque stereotypes (such as the conventional popular girl, jock, and nerd). Instead, you can take one of those tropes and add your creative nuances to it. For example, what if the nerd feels extreme pressure to keep up his grades? Or what if the sporty guy actually wants to do theater? So think: What makes your character unique? Take a second to visualize your character in your mind and describe them with as many details as possible.

A note: Don’t worry about their names. When writing, my characters rarely end with the same names I originally chose. Once, I wrote a whole story using “_____” and “***” as character name placeholders and went back to change it afterwards. This is because the characteristics are much more important to the bigger picture of your story than their names. Whatever happens next, you have your characters. The next question is, what happens to them?

Plot

I am sure many of you have seen this graphic: Freytag’s pyramid. It is used to chart out the plot of a story. Almost every story uses a version of this pyramid, and I cannot think of many that do not. Use this pyramid to plot out the events of your story by placing them around the pyramid. This will naturally help with creating story arcs.

Most creative stories have a romantic subplot, where in addition to the main plot there is romance. Writing romance can be difficult, but in my opinion, it makes the story more fun to write and read.

Setting

The setting refers to the time and place where the story happens. Here are a few examples of settings:

• A post-apocalyptic world–so dysfunctional that dictators do not allow usage or articulation of fifth symbol in our language (in short, no letter “E”).

• A private school where students begin to receive ominous messages on post-its by an enigma who signs their notes “The shadow.”

• A fantasy world with dragons. (Or not, there are way too many dragon stories)

Reading these blurbs, you can see the setting, but also hints of the plot and genre. Now, you should have a skeleton outline of your story and know when, where, and how the story happens. But how do you make writing actually sound good?

Style

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “show not tell” before, but what is more compelling? Consider this example: “She was happy,” or “She couldn’t concentrate, her head buzzing with excitement.” You want to describe what happens and elaborate on it to make it compelling. However, be careful not to overdo the adjectives. Strong, specific verbs will do the job.

Also, be sure to have a distinct voice for each character, so readers don’t get confused. Like if a character has a particular personality, such as 

But, the most important thing is to keep writing. Many people start writing a story but don’t finish it due to fear. Don’t let your fear stop you. Although you may doubt yourself, people want to read your writing. But they can’t do that unless you finish your story.

Note: If you would like to get published, submit your work to Crystal Visions, or www.bluefire.org, a 1000 word essay contest open between December and February each year.