Creative Writing: Ideas and Inspiration (1 Viewer)

[~*Bec S*~]

what my teacher has said is that if you are an uncreative person than choose either a significant period or person in history, do a little research, and then pretend you were there (sorta as if you were a pole in nazi germany etc.). personally i'm not doing this unless it is an interview. i think that the best thing to do is the 'magic if'. take a what would happen if this happened or that happened approach. as in a what would happen if there was a nuclear war and we were thrown into a nuclear winter, or take stimulus from a book or movie and ask yourself what you would do in that depicted situation. what NOT to do is:

write stories about school or the HSC
dying from or fighting cancer
childish stories with no depth
stories about growing up

there are more but i cant find the sheet. it is better that your story has a point to it, a social comment or issue so that you don't need to state transformation; the expression of what has shaped your opinions is the journey and change. and you do this with expressive language and techniques (the whole point is that you have learned something from studying how texts shape meaning and incoperated this into your response with flair and originality)

 

[Wohzazz]

How about the idea of a child going on a holiday and describing the significance of what the journey meant to the child?

Is an adult persona, or an old person persona better than a child? How about the inanimate object idea or animal person idea?

 

[Happeninchick]

Say, for example, we were to get the question in a text type of a Journal Entry. Would it be absolutely ridiculous if you wrote it from an inanimate objects perception? Would the markers think you were tripping because for a start, the object really can't WRITE a so-called "Journal Entry?" Would you be digging yourself into a bigger hole than if you were to write from a human perspective?

 

[anti]

Say, for example, we were to get the question in a text type of a Journal Entry. Would it be absolutely ridiculous if you wrote it from an inanimate objects perception? Would the markers think you were tripping because for a start, the object really can't WRITE a so-called "Journal Entry?" Would you be digging yourself into a bigger hole than if you were to write from a human perspective?

No, they won't think you're trippin

Actually I'll explain: the personification of an inanimate object is a plausible creative story idea, but it does require you to be very discerning with your word choice and structure - you can't just write 'i am a banana.' and expect that a marker will say 'ohhh they're being creative'.

Also (although I'm sure you know this already), when you write from this viewpoint you must adapt the voice for the duration of the piece - don't slip into a more normal narration style.

 

[Happeninchick]

Oh ok! Thanks. That makes it a little clearer now.

 

[Seraph]

this may work for some people

okay obviously we cannot mindfuck a story and remember it and produce it ... i mean well we can but geez the stimulus could be anythign the question could eb ANYTHING , its not like an essay

but we can still remember partiuclar ideas and the general strucutres for them , because this way for the people that really cant conjure anything up in the test , viola you got your idea's and you just twist them around wahtever stimulus you get

personally i have numerous idea's i dotn exactly remember the plot's but they just come when i write

oh and what are your opinions on perspective (e.g 1st or 3rd)?

 

[Jase]

don't go for mindfuck. I wrote a story about a talking duck except that you don't find out its a duck until the end. The marker said , "your language is florid but it lacks physicality and meaning".

Get some feature articles from National Geo or Readers digest, get inspired and write a human inspiration story about some arduous journey to do some random stuff like fund raising. The highlight of my story is when i kill off one of my characters with a ice stagmite which impales him through the chest.. for some reason. Death is a powerful trigger, and marks love a good cartharsis..

 

[azn_boy]

You all got good ideas, wish i could be like you guys!

 

[pirate]

Pirate - that sounds like a gud story, mind me asking what you got for it?

I've done 2 so far, got a 10/15 (trials) and a 12/15 (other assesment)... i'm not complainin since i did the one i did for my trials was rushed off in about 10-15 minutes.

i got 14/15 which i was happy with. basically i can retell the same story line under any sort of question and in any text type which is good, thats what i've been practising so yeah. i can usually polish it off it 25-30mins

 

[hotcocoababe]

For our trial, we had some quote, something about "we don't take a journey, the journey takes us".

My friend, who is a very sciencey-person and not really all that good at english, just took it literally, and made the journey into a persona! She had the journey waking up and thinking about all the different 'journeys' it was going to give people that day - a woman having a baby, a child riding a bike for the first time etc.

It was quite simple, yet brilliant - very postmodern, and my friend didnt even realise My teacher gave it full marks, and couldn't stop praising her!

Only prob is, I think my whoe class is planning to use that idea now LOL

 

[tanya_17]

Creative Writing-Imaginative journeys

I've noticed that many people seem to be worried about creative writing (like i recently was) but i found a good way of choosing inspiration for imaginative journeys is to find a visual text-eg a painting, and create a story based on the actions of the persona's portreyed through the visual. Then just elaborate on the ideas with dialogue and use as many techniques as possible.

P.S THE MOST OUT THERE CREATIVE WRITING WILL GRAB THE MARKER'S ATTENTION SO MAKE IT AS INDIVIDUAL AS POSSIBLE.

(My sister's friend recently shared her creative writing from last year's HSC. Her focus was transformations and she based the story on a frog who came home from work one day and there was another frog's car there.)

She received a Band 6 so i think a very good idea!

Feel free to respond anyone.

 

[hotcocoababe]

You all got good ideas, wish i could be like you guys!

LOL - *hotcocoababe demands that azn_boy bows down and cleans her shoes* Mwahahhahaaaaa!

 

[foxster]

hey

hey--could ppl please tell me if im on the right track?
not quite sure what will happen next, journey of somesort

thnx a lot
foxster

 

[sueshi]

thought

hey, im not that great at english, so i took a look at what you got so far and i rekon you establish the setting a little too early.. it doesn't give me a wow sort of feeling to have this setting sort of chucked at you in the first paragraph. i think its more interesting when setting, characters and major motifs or whatever are established through a couple of paragraphs in the beginning. just a little too abrupt...