Creative Writing

Completing the creative writing course on Coursera gave me an interesting insight on how writers think. Although my motivation to take the course was to improve my business writing skills, taking this course helped my pickup the habit of writing every week. Since I no longer have assignments :wink: I will try to post a blog on random topic every week. Hope this helps me improve my writing and probably increase my – very low – online presence :smiley:

In this blog I’ll write what I learned from the course and rant about some of my thoughts around it.

Building a Character

Every story has a character – let’s take superman’s story as an example here – and while building a character you should ask yourself the following questions

  • What do they want?

Superman wants peace, love and want to keep his identity hidden to protect his loved ones.

  • What are their weakness?

Kryptonite duh!? Without a weakness your character will not pique interest for the readers.

  • Where are they from? Physically and emotionally?

This is a very important questions. Where the character is from explains his behaviors and actions. In our example, Superman is from another planet that is why he has super powers.

  • Where are they going?

He wants to save the planet from enemies. And for some odd reason all the enemies show up in his city. They are asking for it.

  • What can the character do to surprise you?

Okay this is a cliche incase of superman. Everytime he gets hit by kryptonite, at the climax, he gets up and saves the planet.

Rising Action

Rising actions can simply be defined as “obstacles to what the character wants”. In the case of Superman, he wants to know who is he, where is he from and he is different from others on planet earth.

  • Superman was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent in a spaceship and raised him as their own. (Rising Action) Superman finds out he is not from planet earth and his super powers are normal among humans on earth.
  • (Rising Action) Superman moves to city to become a journalist where he hides his identity as superman.
  • (Rising Action) Superman, while fighting villans, eventually comes to know about his weakness – kryptonite – and he is from a planet called Krypton.

ABDCE structure

The overall structure of the story should be

  • A for Action - Superman was found by the Kent family in a spaceship and they took him to raise him as their own.
  • B for background - The spaceship came from a planet called Krypton which was under attack. Superman’s original parents decided to sent him to other planet before Krypton was destroyed.
  • D for development - Superman learns about his powers and that he is not born on earth. He moved to the city to become a journalist where he found his love of life. Villans show up in the city threatning thousands of lives and kidnaps Superman’s love to lure him into the trap. Superman uses his powers to fight them.
  • C for Climax - Superman defeats the villans after a heroic fight.
  • E for ending - The city is saved, he saves his love and people celebrates the victory over evil.

What is a Scene?

There is a lot going on in this chapter and I didn’t quite got my head around this topic. Maybe because I have never written a book. The gist of the chapter is – while writing a novel, describe the specific intimate details of the scene which would justify the actions of your character. Describe the time and place where the event occurs and have a definate starting and ending point.

Show don’t Tell

Don’t do the readers thinking. Show them and let them think. Instead of “The Villans took out a kryptonite and was experiencing excruciating pain” write “The Villans took out a kryptonite and superman fell onto his knees and both of his trembling hands are on the floor as if struggling to get up” – Show don’t tell

21 point checklist

Finally, the course gives you specific 21 points checklist to help you clean your work and how to know that your work is ready to publish. The course also recommends reading “The Elements of style”.

Overall the course has 4 assignments which are fun and kick start your creative mind.