10 Simple Rules For Good Writing By Lianne Martha Maiquez Laroya

Have you ever stopped and thought about the quality of your writing? Are you sure it’s
considered to be good writing? Are you getting the right message across, or are your
readers confused as to what you’re trying to accomplish?
Worry no more, dear writer. We have just the solution for you! Whether you’re writing
fiction or non-fiction, the rules for good writing are fundamentally the same.

1. Express, not impress.

Good writing is not about the number of words you’ve produced, the quality of the
adjectives you’ve written or the size of your font–it’s about the number of lives you’ve
touched! It’s whether or not your reader understands you. It’s about expression, not
impression.

2. Simple sentences work best.

– The only possible option in order to accelerate the growth of the food industry is to
focus on the fact that the target market of this business demands convenience,
competence and cost-effectiveness.
– Better: The food industry can grow faster if food trucks focus on convenience,
competence and cost-effectiveness.

3. Active, rather than passive.

– The offering price was established by the real estate vendor and the negotiation
process was initiated by the real estate buyer.
– Better: The real estate vendor set the offering price, and the real estate buyer started
negotiating.

4. Know who your target audience is.

Who are you writing for? Who do you expect to read your article, your book, or your
blog post? Will they care about what you’re talking about? Will they understand the
message that you’re trying to get across? Good writing isn’t generic; it’s specific because
it’s targeted towards a group of people with something common binding them.

5. Read it aloud.
Reading your works out loud allows you to notice something that you might not have
noticed if you were just reading it silently. Go on, read them out loud now. Also, try to
listen to your work objectively as you read it. Are you making sense? Or are you simply
stringing a couple of words together just to fill a gap?

6. Avoid using jargon as much as possible.

Not everyone in your audience will know what a “bull market” is. Not everyone knows
that “pyrexia” is basically the same thing as “a fever”. And surely you can come up with a
better term for high blood pressure than “hypertension”?

7. In terms of words, size matters.

Please, don’t strain yourself by browsing the Internet, looking for complicated and
fancy-sounding words. Less is always more.
– The man gave a me look so sharp that I sincerely believed it could pierce my heart and
see my innermost fears.
– Better: The man glared at me.
8. Being positive is better than being negative–even in writing!
– I did not think that the unbelievable would not occur.
– Better: I thought the unbelievable would happen.

9. Set aside time for revising and rewriting–after you’ve written the whole content.
I’m not suggesting that you should edit each time you’ve finished a paragraph–that
would just be tedious. What I’m telling is that you should first give yourself some time to
finish the content prior to editing. Write away. Don’t edit yet. Don’t focus on the
grammar yet. Don’t worry about the syntax, the synonym, the antonym or the order that
you’re using.

Write for yourself, but mostly, write for your target audience. Write the message clearly
and don’t be afraid to express your thoughts. Don’t censor yourself yet. Let the words
flow. Don’t erase what you’ve written yet.
Right now, it’s all about expression, about art and about your imagination.
All the editing and the fixing will come later.

10. Write. All the time.

Good writing is simply always writing. Write when you’re sad. Write when you’re
scared. Write when you don’t feel like writing.

INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING

 Define Creative Writing
Creative writing is an art of sorts - the art of making things up.
The most important thing is to use your imagination! The ability or the power
to create. To be original and self-expressive.
 In the academic setting, creative writing is typically divided into fiction writing,
expression writing, poetry, narrative article classes, with a focus on writing in an
original style.
 Creative writing is generally defined as writing that is imaginative, created,
productive and original.
This generally covers all areas of fiction, such as novels, short stories, poetry etc.
but can also include non-fiction, such as feature articles for magazines.
 Creative writing can technically be considered any writing of original composition.
It is writing that is done in a way that is not academic or technical but still attracts
an audience.
 Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature
stories to be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism,
because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character
development.
 A news article, for example, cannot be considered creative writing because its main
goal is to present facts and not to express the feelings of the writer. While a news
article can be entertaining, its main purpose is to present the facts.
The purpose of creative writing is to both entertain and share human experience, like
love or loss. Writers attempt to get at a truth about humanity through poetics and
storytelling. When you are trying your hand at creative writing, just keep in mind that
whether you are trying to express a feeling or a thought, the first step is to use your
imagination.
  PROFESSIONAL WRITING v/s CREATIVE WRITING
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional
writing, professional literature, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of
literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character
development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions
of poetry and poetics.
 Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms
as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. Writing for the screen and
stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the
creative writing category as well.
Types of creative writing include:
1. Poetry
2. Plays
3. Movie and television scripts
4. Fiction (novels, novellas, and short stories)
5. Songs
6. Speeches
7. Memoirs
8. Personal essays
As you can see, some nonfiction types of writing can also be considered creative
writing. Memoirs and personal essays, for example, can be written creatively to
inform your readers about your life in an expressive way. And because these types
are written in first person, it's easier for them to be creative.

Techniques used in creative writing include:

1. Character development
2. Plot development
3. Vivid setting
4. Underlying theme
5. Point of view
6. Dialogue
7. Anecdotes
8. Metaphors and similes
9. Figures of speech
10. Imaginative language
11. Emotional appeal
12. Heavy description

TIPS TO START WRITING CREATIVELY

1. WRITE: It sounds obvious, but it might be so daunting.

The question always is where do you get your ideas from?
The paradox is that in order to get ideas to write, you must write!
HOW TO LEARN ABOUT CREATIVE WRITING:
Attend writing classes, find writing prompts online, and do writing exercises, read creative
writing textbooks
20 PERCENT IS THE WRITING, 80 PERCENT IS THE EDITING AND MAKING IT BETTER. (You
cannot edit till you get at least some words down on paper – so START WRITING!)
The faster you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard- whatever you prefer) the better; the
sooner you will have something worth reading.
The sooner you start writing then you have some words on paper to edit, and you continue
from there.
Initially when you write, there may be fragmented scenes of stuff that really happens to
you…but over time as you continue writing more and more, and honing your writing skills,
characters emerge, storylines emerge, things emerge that is more than just the fragmented
autobiography.

2. READ: This is the opposite of writing, but most writers read to get better at writing.
Generally, those who want to write books, love reading, and they love books, or films (or
whatever medium you prefer writing in, that you feel a passion for that medium).
Consume as much as you can, learn your art, get to know your genre so you have a good sense
of what’s going on contemporarily, the classics in your genre, read as widely as you can.
What do some people worry about with regards to reading?
They feel or have a concern that if they read too much, or if they read while they are writing,
they might be influenced too much by what they are reading. It can happen, but there’s less
danger if you’d be intuitive and if you are reading widely. Then you know what’s going on, what
other people are doing, so there are more chances of doing something different and original.
Read quietly, enjoy your reading and learn from it.

3. KEEP A NOTEBOOK: Writers have a common thread, wherein they love stationary. Folder,
notebooks, pens and the like.
A Notebook is a very handy device. Ancient technology; but so powerful because what you can
do with these notebooks is you can keep those pesky ideas from wriggling away and vanishing
into thin air as they are prone to do.
For example, you’ve had the most amazing dream, with all these kind of amazing characters
and what a story line, it needs to be in a novel or in a screenplay, and you wake up and you’re
kind of taking in that you’re awake and that you stop dreaming or you’re checking that you are
awake. Then you think that you’ll write the dream down later, it will be great and then later
comes and you’ve forgotten the dream.
This generally happens with dreams, but this may not happen with ideas that you have when
you’re fully conscious. Some ideas stick around, some ideas don’t. The only safe way to make
sure they do stick around is to pin them down in that notebook a little bit like butterflies in a
case or Example: Lady Gaga recording a new melody on a little recorder every time a new one
pops in her head.
Buy yourself a notebook or there is an alternative. What Hilary Mantel, Twice Booker Prize
Winner uses index cards. They are rectangular cards with a little hole on a corner, so that you
can put them in a folder, or bunch or wedge up a couple and put them on your table, beside
your bed, wherever you spend time, so that you never need to worry about losing an idea
again. You can use Index cards or a notebook; but you need a primitive device in order to make
sure that those ideas don’t go fluttering away on the wind.

4. SET YOURSELF A TARGET: Setting targets now, particularly to start off with this, can be
something as simple as going to your writing desk for an hour or half-an-hour, however much
time you have to spare. Going to do writing exercises or responding to some internet writing
prompts or whatever, but just something that is a regular routine that gets you right in as you
go along.
You might find that its really helpful to set yourself a daily target. A lot of people writing novels
found this useful because when you write your first novel or your second or even your fifth, you
can get tied up with re-editing the same parts over and over again in a deadly horrible loop that
you can’t get out of; and it is very difficult to look for the project and it stops you from getting
into that last 10000 or 20000 words; so you don’t want to do that.
It can be a good idea to set yourself a daily writing target. A lot of people find a thousand
words a day as a useful target that’s very doable. It’s like about three and a half pages of A4,
double-spaced with a normal typeface.
You can space out your writing, you don’t have to do it all in one go. You could do different
shifts as well. However, a thousand words a day it works a quite nicely.
The National Novel Writing month that happens every November is a challenge where you can
join other like-minded individuals who are trying to write a novel. The target is quite high for
that one thousand six hundred and sixty-six words daily that’s quite challenging even for old
timers. But it’s only one month, and normally you can do anything for one month if you’re
motivated.
There is another writing challenge that starts on 1st January and/or 1st July that is called 100k in
100 days. It’s a bunch of people who all want to write; not necessarily novels in this case, it can
be short stories or blogs anything at all counts. Apart from emails and Facebook comments -
you don’t get away with that but your creative writing counts and there is also a nice supportive
community. This could help you to push forward in your writing.

5. KEEP THE FAITH: Most important of all tips. What does it mean?
YOU sometimes thinking, ‘What am I doing? What am I going to achieve with all this writing?’
And you may feel silly, about spending all of the time and all this energy on this activity that
might not come to anything, You may not have had a poem published, a flash fiction published,
no story published not even a whisper of interest from an agent….. BUT you find the strength
from somewhere.
Think that if you don’t try, you’ll never know! And continue to work hard.
Its hard to get to the end of a book, to write a novel, its difficult to get to the point where you
are ready to write a novel but the only way you’ll ever know is by trying.
Have a bit of confidence in yourself, have a belief, hard as it is or may be; just keep going and
get writing.
Good Luck, and Happy Writing.

BRIEF HISTORY OF CREATIVE WRITING

Programs of study: 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.

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 unblocking writer's block .

A Brief History of Creative Writing

There are hundreds of new programs, websites, and apps to help with your creative writing, but
it might help you put them into perspective by examining the history out of which these
technologies have emerged.
Like all technology, new tools are built on the foundation of the ones that came before them.
Let’s take a quick journey through the history of creative writing tools so that we can
evaluate modern creative writing tools in a historical context.
Oral Storytelling traditions.
Originally, stories were passed from generation to generation through oral storytelling
In these traditions, the primary “writing” tool was the storyteller’s memory and voice, though
stories were often augmented by instruments and dance. Stories were imbued with the
personality of the teller and took on color in the creative exchange with the audience.
Stories evolved over time through the retelling. They improved, were embellished, or
were transformed into myth and legend.

The Written Word

It wasn’t until (relatively) recently, with the invention of the written word (archaeologists place
its formation around 3200 BC, depending on location) that we started writing stories down.
This is where the history of creative writing really begins.
Some of the earliest examples of written stories in the Western tradition are the Bible and
Homer’s Odyssey; in the Eastern Tradition, the Indian Vedas and Sanskrit poems; in central
America, the Mayan Codices.
The Odyssey is Homer's epic of Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War.
While Odysseus battles mystical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods, his wife Penelope and his
son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand and Ithaca's throne long enough
for Odysseus to return.

Maya codices (singular codex) are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization
in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of
professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such as the Tonsured Maize God and the
Howler Monkey Gods.

It’s likely that many of these early texts were simply being transcribed from the oral tradition.
The legend that Homer was blind—whether it’s true or not—gives us a symbolic link connecting
the oral and written storytelling traditions.

In any case, storytellers started writing their stories down. Once that happened, the process of
creative writing evolved.
Instead of telling and retelling stories orally and making them better over time, written
language gave storytellers the ability to tell themselves the story over and over again using a
drafting process. It gave them a way to record more stories by providing them a physical
extension of their memory: ink and paper.

The art of writing was an esoteric discipline for a long time. At first, only monks and the rich
and educated classes were taught how to write. Inks and quills were expensive. Paper was hard
to come by and difficult to make. World literacy skyrocketed in the second half of the 20th
century. As late as 1950, world literacy was estimated at a mere 36%.
Today, 83% of people can read and write.
Average literacy rate in Goa in 2019 is 89.6 per cent

The Printing Press

Apart from the expense of writing in ancient times, many obstacles to distribution had to be
surmounted. The Bible is an example of a collection of stories that found early success and
popularity. But access was limited. Bibles were copied out by hand and manually bound.
This laborious process continued for several hundred years, until Gutenberg came along in 1450
and invented the printing press. Though it was not the first printing press (the Chinese are often
given credit for inventing the first moveable type), it changed everything.
The printing press made the first mass production of books possible. It’s important to
understand that Gutenberg’s press led not to an improvement of the writing process, but to the
distribution process. This is an important distinction. Writing a story was still laborious as ever,
but now a writer could reach their readers in a more affordable way.

Typewriters
Around the late 1800s, the invention of the typewriter began to develop the creative writing
process in earnest.
The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for writers. Instead of writing a story by
hand, then having it typeset by a printing press, a writer could now push buttons to get their
words printed directly on the page. It made the writing process faster and more efficient, and
the wide and rapid adoption of the typewriter proved its worth.
It’s not a novel thing to you and I that a writer can push buttons and see their words appear
before them—we grew up with computers. Yet, to writers at the tail end of the 19th century,
it must have been a magical experience.

Computers
A hundred years later, computers were invented and another dramatic shift in the writing
process was made possible. Instead of typing a story on paper, writers could type it on a
screen—no more white out, no more wasted paper.
The invention of computers, and the writing software developed for them, marks the next
evolutionary step in writing tools. A Brief History of Word Processing explains: “With the
screen, text could be entered and corrected without having to produce a hard copy. Printing
could be delayed until the writer was satisfied with the material.”
This was followed by increased storage capacity, which upped the volume and number of works
which could be edited or worked on simultaneously, spell check, instantly accessible
dictionaries, and other innovations.

Non-Linear Word Processing Software

This brief history of creative writing tools brings us to the present day.
And yet, word processing software has not changed all that much in recent years. Modern
versions of Microsoft Word, for example, are almost identical to the version from 1997 on
which I first learned word processing. That annoying paperclip fellow is gone, but the interface
of the software and its core functionality remains the same. Namely, the writer is presented
with a single vertical column of digital “pages” on which to type. In most word processing
software, that linear structure cannot be changed.

The well-informed among you are now thinking about the exceptions to this rule, or what I like
to call the next milestone in creative writing tool history: non-linear creative writing
programs like Scrivener and Ulysses.

Instead of trying to imitate the typewriter, these programs approach writing from a structural
angle. They allow you to write out of order and rearrange components (pages, scenes,
chapters, etc.) in a hierarchical tree structure. They also give you the ability to apply meta-data
to your work—things like point of view, draft status, etc.—in an effective, tangible way that
increases understanding and, if used correctly, productivity and enjoyment in the writing
process.

In the history of creative writing tools, non-linear word processing software is the cutting edge.

Digital Publishing
Digital publishing is the conversion of portable document format (PDF) files into a digital format.
The digital files are to be displayed and read online. A digital publishing platform allows the creator
to
house documents on a website as well as offer users the option to download.

MSWORD v/s SCRIVENER

Modern authors also need tools that gives them a leg up on the digital first approach. Anyone
who has ever tried to convert a Microsoft Word document into an ebook will sympathize with
this challenge—Word has a penchant for adding hidden formatting tags and making it difficult
for writers to convert their stories into publishable digital formats.
Tools like Scrivener help remove that pain by giving you a compile process that is designed to
export for all the modern e-book formats.

Is Scrivener better than Word?

 Pros: Made specifically for writing books. While Microsoft Word gets more and more
difficult to use the bigger your document gets, Scrivener gets more and more useful as
your document grows. That's mainly because of its “binder feature,” which is a simple
but game-changing advance for word processors.

Electronic Publishing:
 Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and
the development of digital libraries and catalogues.
 It also includes an editorial aspect, that consists of editing books, journals or
magazines that are mostly destined to be read on a screen.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDS:

Semantics (meaning) relationships between words

1. Homonyms
Homonyms are words that have the same pronunciation and spelling,
but have different meanings.
Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs, Synonyms And Antonyms
 Bat (animal)
Bat (baseball object)
 Can (be able)
Can (put something in container)
 Ball (object)
Ball (dance)

2. Homographs/ Heteronyms
Homographs are words that have the same spelling, but different
pronunciation and meaning, also called heteronyms.
 Live (living)
Live (of a broadcast)
 Desert (land)
Desert (to leave)
 Close (to shut)
Close (near)
Common English Homographs/ Heteronyms
Below you can see a list of homographs/ heteronyms which are
confusing for ESL learners. Learn about them to avoid common errors in
spoken and written form.
• Close => close: Adj (near) cloze: verb (shut)
• Live => live: verb (living) lie-ve: Adj (live broadcast)
• Alternate => al-ter-net: Noun (different option) al-ter-nate: verb
(interchange, substitute)
• Content => con-tent: Noun (information) con-tent: Adj (satisfied)
• Desert => de-zert: Noun (dry land) de-zert: Verb (to leave)
• Dove => duv: Noun (bird) dove: Verb (past form of dive)
• Lead => leed: Verb (to direct) led: Noun (kind of iron)
• Minute => min-it: Noun (a period of time) my-nute: Adj (very small)
• Polish => pah-lish: N,V (brush) poh-lish: Adj (from Poland)
• Tear => teer: Noun (liquid from eye) tare: Verb (rip)
• Separate => sep-ret: Adj (different) Sep-a-rate: Verb (To divide)
The words above are the most common homographs that have the
same spelling, but different pronunciation and different meaning. The
words which are colored in blue show the pronunciation, we recommend
you to check the pronunciation of those words once at dictionary.

3. Homophones
Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation, but have
different spelling and meaning.
 Meet (to see)
Meat (the flesh of an animal)
 Weak (not strong)
Week (a period of seven days)
 See (to watch)
Sea (water)
Commonly Confused Homophones
 Affect vs. Effect => Affect (verb) Effect (noun)
 There vs. Their vs. they’re => There (location) Their (possessive)
They’re (they are)
 You’re vs. Your => You’re (you are) Your (possessive)
Other Commonly Confused Homophones
 Accept/ except
 Allowed/ aloud
 Ant/aunt
 Ball/bawl
 Bear/bare
 Board/bored
 Brake/break
 By/bye/buy
 Capital/capitol
 Clothes/close
 Dear/deer
 Die/dye
 Fare/fair
 Flea/flee
 Hoarse/horse
 Idle/idol
 Its/it’s
 Knight/night
 Meet/meat
 No/know
 Pair/pare/pair
 Right/write
 Read/reed
 Scene/seen
 Sight/site/cite
 Tail/tale
 taught/taut
 Threw/though
 Which/witch
 Loose/lose
 Principle/principal
 Weather/whether
Each pairs of words above have same pronunciation, but different
meaning and different spelling.

4. Synonyms
Synonyms are words that are spelt and pronounced different but have
the same or nearly the same meaning as another word.
 Big
Large
 Correct
True
 Near
Close
5. Antonyms
An antonym is a word that has opposite meaning of another word.
 Old
Young
 White
Black
 Boy
Girl

• INTERPRETING QUOTES

• (CREATIVE WRITING- INDEPENDENTLY ENGAGE AND INTERPRET TEXTS)

•GODISNOWHERE
• ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’
• ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ is testament to the true power to words as opposed
to force.

‘There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the
valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our
desires.’
• NELSON MANDELA (1918)
• Former President of South Africa (1994 - 1999)
• Apartheid revolutionary, political leader & philanthropist
• Country’s 1st black head of state and the 1st elected in a fully representative democratic
election.

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one
most responsive to change.’
• CHARLES DARWIN (1809)
• English Naturalist, Geologist and Biologist
• Best known for his contributions to science of evolution.
• His proposition that all species of life descended over time from common ancestors is not
widely accepted and considered a foundational concept in science.

‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they
must be felt with the heart.’
• HELEN KELLER (1880)
• American Author
• Political Activist and Lecturer
• She was the first person (deaf-blind) to earn a Bachelors of Arts degree.
‘Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.’
• ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884)
• Former 1st Lady of the U.S. (wife of Franklin Roosevelt)
• American Political Figure and Activist
• Known for her inspirational quotes.

‘Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.’
• MAHATMA GANDHI (1869)
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian Lawyer,
• Anticolonial Nationalist and Political Ethicist.
• He employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s
independence from the British Rule, and in turn, inspired movements for civil rights and
freedom across the world.

‘The best revenge is massive success.’

• FRANK SINATRA (1915)
• American Singer, Actor and Producer
• Most popular and influential artist of the 20th century.
• Best selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide.

‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’
• THOMAS EDISON (1847)
• American Inventor (Light Bulb)
• Business Man who has been described as America’s greatest inventor.
• He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass
communication, sound recording and motion pictures.

‘The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.’
• WALT DISNEY (1901)
• American Entrepreneur, Animator, Voice Actor, Film Producer
• A pioneer of the American Animation Industry
• He introduced several developments in the production of cartoons.

‘Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.’

• OPRAH WINFREY (1954)
• Actress, Talk show Host, Television Producer, Philanthropist.
• Net worth in October 2019 – 2.7 billion dollars.
• Her talk show ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’, broadcast from Chicago, was the highest-rated
television program of its kind in history and ran for 25 years.

‘‘The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do and then do
it.’
• HENRY FORD (1863)
• American Industrialist and business magnate
• The founder of the Ford Motor Company
• He sponsored the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.

‘Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.’
• ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879)
• Theoretical Physicist
• Developed the Theory of Relativity, one of the 2 pillars of modern physics.
• His work is known for its influence on the philosophy of science.

‘Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life -- think of it, dream of it, live on that idea.
Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave
every other idea alone. This is the way to success.’
• SWAMI VIVEKANANDA (1863)
• Indian Hindu Monk, Born Narendranath Datta
• A chief disciple of the 19th century Indian Mystic Ramakrishna
• He is best known for his famous 1893 speech where he introduced Hinduism to the Western
world in Chicago.

CREATING CHARACTERS:

 ONE/THE CORE OF CHARACTER

What's the one key element any major character must have?
The ability to care.
The core of character lies in each individual story person's ability to care about something; to
feel, implicitly or explicitly, that something is important. It doesn't matter whether this
something is major or minor, cataclysmic or trivial, or at any level in between.
It may be money that's important to him, or family, or world peace, or ecology, or a vacation, or
country living. What matters is that he cares about it.
The freaky, the repellent, the boring are unlikely candidates. Indeed, quite possibly they'll alienate
most
readers. Your best bets are sympathetic characters-characters with whom the reader is able to
share and empathize, at least in imagination.

 TWO/SEARCHING OUT YOUR CHARACTERS

How do you find the right character?
You scan the applicants until you locate one who turns you on and fits the part.
You start from a foundation of your own fantasies and feelings. Because the character you can't
fantasize and feel with will fail. One after another, you sort through their assorted possibilities
hunting for one who turns you on - which is to say, fits your private quirks and standards-where
the particular role you're casting is concerned.

 THREE/LABELS, LABELS
Why do you label a character?
Your reader needs some clue or two to help him recognize each of your story people.
The matter of dominant impression - Four basic elements go into it: sex, age, vocation, and
manner.
1. Description, appearance. "The hair was what you noticed. It was bright orange and
stacked on top of her head in what they used to call a beehive."
2. Action. "The man ducked back into the shadows, one-foot scraping on the pavement as if he
couldn't lift his leg."
3. Dialogue.
" 'Look in' for someone?'
"Eleana turned. A woman was standing in the doorway, an old woman a head shorter than she,
with pinched features and squinty eyes. 'Who are you?' she gulped. " 'Me? Depends on who
you are, what you want.' "
4. Thoughts, introspection.
"Edwards pondered, scanning the passersby and trying to define the person called X. A man,
surely -or was it? The note really hadn't given any hint."

 FOUR/FLESHING OUT
How do you make a character real?
You provide him or her with appropriate tags, traits, and relationships.
The Character requires a name.
tags of appearance, ability, speech, mannerism, and attitude.

 FIVE/THE WORLD WITHIN:

How do you motivate a character?
You devise something that he or she must change in order to win happiness.
Happiness is the universal human goal.

 SIX/THE WORLD WITHIN:

How do you keep a character moving? You point that character towards his or her private
future.
You need to give him an appropriate direction, goal, drive, and attitude.

 SEVEN/THE BREATH OF LIFE

How do you bring a character to life?
You make the character reveal emotion.
Our most revealing moments are those in which we are stressed.

 EIGHT/BENT TWIGS
How much background should you give a character?
Only enough to make your reader-and you-believe in him.
To understand the present and future, explore the past. So, you give Character a background.
Where does said background come from?

 NINE/ THE THINGS THEY SAY

How do you write good dialogue?
You pay as much attention to feelings as to words.
The things a person says reflect and reveal his character.

 TEN/ THE ROLE OF ROLES

How do you treat a hero?
You shape the hero to fit the job he or she has to do.
Turn the spotlight on:
• The interesting character
• The memorable character
• The viewpoint character
• The protagonist
• The antagonist
• The love interest character
• The incidental character
• The non-human character

Setting Definition: Lesson

A haunted house. A battlefield during the Revolutionary War. A massive snowstorm. These may
not seem related, but they are all settings. In this lesson, you will learn all about a setting.

 What is a Setting?
'It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling as the Headless Horseman rode his horse
through the dirt roads of colonial New England.'

Yikes! This sentence describes a scene from the tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and definitely
makes you think twice about walking on a dirt road at night! It also describes the setting for a
very creepy tale.

A setting is where a story or event takes place. Stories can have one setting or multiple settings.
A story might take you on a journey through seven continents or never leave a bedroom.
Additionally, settings can be very specific or common. For example, an author could describe
the setting very specifically, like the sentence about the Headless Horseman, or very simply
such as: 'The Headless Horseman rode on the dirt roads.'

 Setting Traits
There are many different characteristics that can be included by an author to describe a setting:
Characteristics of a Setting

1. Geographic location - the continent, region, state, city, or imaginary world where the
setting is located
o Examples: New England; Paris, France; Narnia

2. Time - the place in time when the setting occurs

o Examples: Ancient Egypt; World War II; January 14, 1956; the year 2157

3. Weather - the weather conditions of a setting

o Examples: dark and stormy; inside a tornado; 103 degree heat and humidity in a
cotton field

4. Environment - the natural and manmade surroundings of a setting

o Examples: mountains; the twilight zone of the ocean; a toy store; a cloud above
the Earth
Using what you know about setting, how would you describe the setting of a story if it took
place in the picture?

Example of a Setting
You could describe the setting in a number of ways including:
 The city of Manhattan, New York, on a summer night
 A city in the dark
 Superman's enemy's building glowing with green kryptonite in Metropolis

What is story setting? Mastering writing time and place

What is the setting of a story? Setting has two broad elements: Place and time. In a novel, it’s
where and when the events of your chapters unfold. Read on for tips on creating detailed,
involving settings in your story:

Why is setting important? The functions of time and place in fiction

Setting is more than simply a geographical location or time period that serves as a backdrop to
characters’ actions. Fictional settings have many uses:

 Using place in story settings:

‘Place’ in a story has multiple purposes and effects:

1. The places you set your scenes contribute mood and tone (a dark, eerie wood creates a
very different sense of danger or mystery compared to a bright, open plain)

2. Places restrict (or open) possibilities for your characters’ lives and actions (a character
living in a small mining town might have very different perceptions and
options compared to a character who lives in a large city)

3. Places can evolve and change as your story progresses. You can use their evolution to
show the changing circumstances affecting your characters’ views and options (for
example, in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, the narrator visits a grand manor he
knew in his youth. He finds it crumbling due to the onslaught of the war. This creates
melancholic nostalgia. Waugh uses changing physical setting to convey the idea of loss.)

 Time is an equally important element of setting:

Using time in setting

It would be incomplete to answer ‘what is story setting?’ without including time. Time in a
story, for example the historical period or epoch the story spans, is equally vital:

1. Like place, time (for example, the social attitudes in the Victorian era) restricts or rather
determines, to some extent, possibilities for your characters. The time setting of your
novel impacts what types of lives your characters can lead and what choices they can
make. Characters living in Victorian England will have very different choices and
lifestyles available to them compared to characters living in contemporary England
(women, for example, are far less pressured to marry and be homemakers)
 2. Time in your novel’s setting determines what kind of technology is available (historical
fiction often describes old-fashioned tools such as manual clothes washers that most
modern city-dwelling readers wouldn’t know)

3. Time in your story setting is equally useful for showing and underscoring changes that
contribute to character and plot development (e.g. changes of government, scientific
discovery, social beliefs and customs)
Now that we’ve clarified some of the functions of time and place in fiction, here are five tips on
getting these elements of setting right:

Let’s unpack these ideas:

1: Research and plan places in your story

Research the place you are writing about thoroughly, if it’s a real-world location. If, for
example, you’re writing about Ancient Rome, find books or websites that outline Ancient
Roman architecture, society, customs and beliefs.

One way to form a deeper sense of where your story will take place is to draw a rough map of
primary locations. This document could give you an idea of how characters will get from place
to place.

Even if you are inventing your own fictional world entirely, gain a keen sense of how your world
is laid out to aid your imagination. Many fantasy novels begin with maps of peninsulas or
continents, lending the mythical world a stronger sense of tangible, measurable reality.

2: Use place like you would a character

We give characters individual voices to make them feel real, so that the cast members of our
novels don’t feel like two-dimensional carbon copies of each other. Just like a character, a place
in your novel should have its own ‘voice’. Write place like you would write a character:

 Create physical descriptions that make place memorable and distinctive: What is the
setting of your story famous for? Are there significant landmarks? Is there a general
atmosphere of decay, or is your setting a thriving, young village or city?
 Develop place: How will your setting change over the course of your story? Do
characters’ actions and choices affect their surrounds and vice versa? How does society
as a whole relate to its surrounds? Is there climate change? What effects will time have
on place and how will this affect your characters in turn?

3: Use Google Street View and other tools to plan story settings
This advice comes courtesy of Suzannah Windsor Freeman’s excellent post on writing about
place, ‘7 tips for writing about places you’ve never been’. As Freeman cautions, writing about a
real world place you haven’t visited is risky. You might use outdated place information or
settings that are tourists traps and not places actual locals would visit.

Freeman suggests several useful strategies for writing about a place setting you’ve never seen
in person:

 Use Google Street View to take your own virtual walking tour
 Conduct email interviews with locals (Freeman suggests finding people to interview via
local blogs and social media)
 Read local government websites that provide information and statistics on local ways of
life
If you’re creating a made-up place for your novel, imagine what Google Street View would show
you if you moved along main streets or alleyways of your setting.

4: Combine factual and fictional sources

When you are writing about a bygone era or lost civilization, you can’t exactly take a Google
Street View tour. In this case, borrow from factual books about the lives, art and architecture of
your chosen place and time period. If possible, find books written by people who inhabited your
chosen place in the time you’re writing about.

If, for example, you were writing about ancient Greece in the year 350 BC, you could read the
writings of people who lived during this time (Aristotle, for example) to get a sense of how
people expressed themselves and felt about their world.

When archival materials are scarce, you can also rely on the work of good authors who have
based their fiction in the same setting. Even if writing about invented settings, look for details
and ideas you can borrow from other places.
5: Build individual elements of place and time
To create a believable setting for your novel, plan each element of setting consciously.
Courtney Carpenter’s blog post for Writer’s Digest on the basic elements of setting in a
story gives the following list of basic setting elements:
 Locale: E.g. country, region, city as well as smaller locations (a school, a hospital, or
another specific setting)
 Time of year: This may be seasonal (e.g. Christmas in Dickens’ novella A Christmas
Carol)
 Time of day: Think about how the time of day in which a scene is set can influence the
tone and atmosphere. Nighttime can be more ominous or eerie than the day
 Climate: Think about the natural elements of your setting as well as the man-made ones
Make notes on the most important elements of setting for each scene before you draft it, so
that you can keep these details in mind and furnish your scene with extra, vivid detail.
Stories that are mostly characters’ inner monologue or dialogue with no sense of their
surrounds can feel adrift, without anything to anchor them. Use the suggestions above to place
your characters in the world and show the two-way effects between characters and their
environment.

PAR stands for Problem – Action – Result.

PAR TECHNIQUE (WORK) / IN GENERAL

The PAR technique is a way to build strong answers to behavioural interviewing questions.
The idea is to provide a specific example or “story” of how you have performed well on the
job in the past. This can help the employer see how you might do a good job for them.

PAR TECHNIQUE (STORYTELLING)

PROBLEM: Is the core conflict the main character must tackle.
ACTION: Is the smaller steps the hero takes to resolve the conflict.
RESULT: Is the end accomplishment.

Writing a critique

What is a critique?
A critique is a genre of academic writing that briefly summarizes and critically evaluates
a work or concept.

Critiques can be used to carefully analyze a variety of works such

as:
 Creative works – novels, exhibits, film, images, poetry
 Research – monographs, journal articles, systematic reviews, theories
 Media – news reports, feature articles

Like an essay, a critique uses a formal, academic writing style and has a clear structure,
that is, an introduction, body and conclusion. However, the body of a critique includes
a summary of the work and a detailed evaluation. The purpose of an evaluation is to
gauge the usefulness or impact of a work in a particular field.

Why do we write critiques?

Writing a critique on a work helps us to develop:
 A knowledge of the work’s subject area or related works.
  An understanding of the work’s purpose, intended audience, development of
argument, structure of evidence or creative style.
 A recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

How to write a critique

Before you start writing, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the work
that will be critiqued.
 Study the work under discussion.
 Make notes on key parts of the work.
 Develop an understanding of the main argument or purpose being expressed in the
work.
 Consider how the work relates to a broader issue or context.
There are a variety of ways to structure a critique. You should always check your unit
materials or blackboard site for guidance from your lecturer.
The following template,
which showcases the main features of a critique, is provided as one example.

Introduction
Typically, the introduction is short (less than 10% of the word length) and you should:
 Name the work being reviewed as well as the date it was created and the name of
the author/creator.
 Describe the main argument or purpose of the work.
 Explain the context in which the work was created. This could include the social or
political context, the place of the work in a creative or academic tradition, or the
relationship between the work and the creator’s life experience.
 Have a concluding sentence that signposts what your evaluation of the work will be.
For instance, it may indicate whether it is a positive, negative, or mixed evaluation.

Summary
Briefly summarize the main points and objectively describe how the creator portrays
these by using techniques, styles, media, characters or symbols. This summary
should not be the focus of the critique and is usually shorter than the critical evaluation.

Critical evaluation
This section should give a systematic and detailed assessment of the different elements
of the work, evaluating how well the creator was able to achieve the purpose through
these.
For example: you would assess the plot structure, characterization and setting of
a novel; an assessment of a painting would look at composition, brush strokes, colour
and light; a critique of a research project would look at subject selection, design of the
experiment, analysis of data and conclusions.

A critical evaluation does not simply highlight negative impressions. It should

deconstruct the work and identify both strengths and weaknesses. It should examine
the work and evaluate its success, in light of its purpose.

Examples of key critical questions that could help your assessment include:
 Who is the creator? Is the work presented objectively or subjectively?
 What are the aims of the work? Were the aims achieved?
 What techniques, styles, media were used in the work? Are they effective in
portraying the purpose?
  What assumptions underlie the work? Do they affect its validity?
 What types of evidence or persuasion are used? Has evidence been interpreted
fairly?
 How is the work structured? Does it favour a particular interpretation or point of
view? Is it effective?
 Does the work enhance understanding of key ideas or theories? Does the work
engage (or fail to engage) with key concepts or other works in its discipline?
This evaluation is written in formal academic style and logically presented. Group and
order your ideas into paragraphs. Start with the broad impressions first and then move
into the details of the technical elements.
 For shorter critiques, you may discuss the strengths of the works, and then the weaknesses.
 In longer critiques, you may wish to discuss the positive and negative of each key critical
question in individual paragraphs.

To support the evaluation, provide evidence from the work itself, such as a quote or
example, and you should also cite evidence from related sources. Explain how this
evidence supports your evaluation of the work.

Conclusion
This is usually a very brief paragraph, which includes:
 A statement indicating the overall evaluation of the work
 A summary of the key reasons, identified during the critical evaluation, why this
evaluation was formed.
 In some circumstances, recommendations for improvement on the work may be
appropriate.

Reference list
Include all resources cited in your critique. Check with your lecturer/tutor for which
referencing style to use.
Checklist for a critique
Have I:
 Mentioned the name of the work, the date of its creation and the name of the
creator?
 Accurately summarized the work being critiqued?
 Mainly focused on the critical evaluation of the work?
 Systematically outlined an evaluation of each element of the work to achieve the
overall purpose?
 used evidence, from the work itself as well as other sources, to back and illustrate my
assessment of elements of the work?
 formed an overall evaluation of the work, based on critical reading?
 used a well-structured introduction, body and conclusion?
 used correct grammar, spelling and punctuation; clear presentation; and appropriate
referencing style?