21 Creative Writing Principles (feat. love letters to friends)
Good writing is about finding the right words. And love letters.
Creative writing is the craft of stories, real or fictional.
Storytelling is also useful in copywriting, which is part creative writing, part psychology, part sales.
... and a worthy endeavor if you love writing. As any skill, creative writing can begin with minimalism and a simple structure.
1. Good writing is about finding the right words
When in doubt, remember good writing is about finding the right word at the right moment - not the simplest, not the quirkiest.
The best word is sometimes the simplest or the most complex - it matters not.
Focusing on simplicity and the right words is the best way for beginners to start writing.
2. Start with a simple sentence
Relax, find the right words, write a simple sentence. Follow with another one which flows naturally. Continue until you have a paragraph.
It's essential to begin, to connect with the mood of your topic or story, and to deliver work. Dreams of grandeur and perfection can wait.
If a story is stubborn, see its core idea, event or character and write a simple sentence. Evoke mood or action, define your protagonist or provide characterization for the world.
For content writing, beginners need one "hard rule": introduce your topic, support it with arguments and march on.
Write short paragraphs, between one and three phrases, and short chapters and headings, between three to five reading minutes.
3. Start with vignettes, write short form often
A vignette is a scene or mix of scenes of anything we want them to be.
Vignettes include action, dialogue, lore, description, stories, whatever tickles your pen or keyboard.
If nothing else, vignettes are useful for worldbuilding, because they escape the three-act structure.
4. Learn vivid words to write vivid prose
Vivid words are wonderful to convey stronger impressions in a limited space.
Vivid words and power words are not always the same. Examples like free, best, improve, may create a strong impression based on context.
Vivid words carry a potent sensation regardless of context. They get to the point faster, offer clearer impressions, and help avoid rambling.
Even if your style or genre deny them, pulpy words sustain brevity, saying more while writing less - any medium can benefit from their magic.
Specific styles or genres which rely on vivid words are noir and pulp.
More of a genre, Noir delights in pulp, but it's doable with simple words.
Pulp may be both, but we can adapt the writing style to any genre - noir, fantasy, sci-fi, maybe less to realism.
Learn vivid words. Make the thesaurus your friend.
Read and watch pulp fiction. The writing style, not the movie. The movie excels at pulp dialogue, but don't limit yourself. Read and watch hard-boiled prose regardless of medium and genre.
Write symbolism in all its forms. Pepper your writing by not revealing explicit ideas. Let cool dialogue do the talking.
5. You must create your own style
If you love writing, you inevitably move toward shaping your own style - essential to give your writing its identity and write what you love.
Emulating other writers works for beginners, but it's essential to turn your writing into a process and set it free.
Read and write literature, cinema, media which inspire you.
Write in a space you feel relaxed. The more relaxed the more you focus. the more you immerse yourself and the reader in your work.
Experiment with style and genre, mix them based on setting and lore.
Write something you love.
Consider: if your work would be written by someone else, would it inspire you?
6. Imagination and creativity need time-space
The mind is a machine primed for discovery, and yearns for inspirational ideas and dreaming.
Imagination, creativity, inspiration depend on relaxation and letting go. Their optimal state is a mind devoid of pestering, with time and space to bubble with ideas and connect them.
Reading and watching media which inspires is important, but daydreaming is just so.
Give yourself time and space - write in an environment where you feel safe and relaxed.
Let go to make space for imagination.
Phase out the surrounding world and connect to the mood, the feeling of your story and words.
7. Write what you love
"Write what you know" is an ever-lasting cliche of the craft. The natural principle which sustains writing is "Write what you love."
"Write what you know" is a soft rule for novice writers. For beginners, it's best to choose a subject or story you love and use a simple style.
"Write what you love" is the unspoken principle of writers who are doing it for the love of writing, for the sake of storytelling.
'Write what you know' can be misunderstood as requiring expertise. Novice writers who bump into this "rule" may think they should stop unless they're experts in their topic.
'Write what you love' skips the expertise "necessity" straight into passion. If you love something, write with simplicity, edit and refine the feeling after.
8. Paint pictures
Write vivid words to instill strong impressions on the senses. Show, don't tell to help place the reader in a more active role.
Showing means describing a place, idea, event, character, lore through implicit means: behavior, feeling, impression. Through showing, readers experience the joy of deciding meaning on their own.
When writing a scene - especially fantasy and sci-fi or their offshoots - see it as a photo, painting, or cinematic shot.
Let the scene breathe on its own, without forcing an impression.
Feel and "paint" the scene - light, colors, mood, aroma, sound, feeling, movement.
Maintain brevity and write details in vivid words - essential impressions only.
9. How to write dialogue
Dialogue in stories speaks Naturalism first, Realism second.
"Realist" dialogue is the one spoken in our world in different cultures with specific vernacular.
Naturalism is a world's ability to create its own identity, organic rules connected logically across the story.
Naturalism speaks with a patois of realism, but adapted to story and world. Not every story uses our brand of realism. Doing so makes fictional worlds sound similar and lose their identity.
Fictional "realism" is curated - the writer decides what form it takes. Otherwise, we find raw realism in documentaries.
Begin with simple statements.
Use words specific to the style, culture, period you're writing.
Mix implicit and explicit language - let characters talk to each other, not reveal everything to the reader.
10. Write love letters to friends - conversational writing
Imagine you have a great friend.
Your friend asks about something you love, and will listen enraptured, like no one has listened before.
Behold conversational writing - accessible language and focus on essential details.
The principle has limits:
Creative writing is conversational until it bumps naturalism, because dialogue and prose defy realistic chatter - language must be natural, accessible, not simplified for a technical manual.
Copywriting is conversational by knowing your topic and audience, speaking to them in friendly language - familiar, informational, functional, not demeaning and patronizing.
For copy and content, remember how your target audience speaks, and tailor your writing to make it understandable.
For creative writing, imagine you're chatting to a good friend. Write as if your friend is enraptured and listens to your every word.
11. Be your readers' friend
You have a friend who loves you, but you keep ignoring him or her. You meet your friend to narrate all the adventures you've been through, all the fun you've had.
Your friends may listen enraptured, but wish they would've been alongside for the adventure.
Instead of telling your friends what a spicy life you live, you should invite them in.
But, don't tell readers everything about the world and its characters explicitly. Pepper details everywhere, let readers divine the meaning and personality on their on. Plant bits of information - how characters act and speak, how events unfold, how the world feels.
Pester not your readers with detail dumps. They'll thank you for accepting them as active participants to the story, because our minds are natural exploration machines and delight in discovery.
Skip over-explaining - let characters, dialogue and mood do the talking
Practice replacing adjectives and adverbs with vivid nouns and verbs
Pepper symbolism everywhere
12. Kickstart characters by making them cliches and archetypes
Starting characters as cliches is well if you maintain key principles to shape their own destiny.
Interesting people - and characters - have basic features in common:
They are smart or become smarter.
They are determined or learn to be so.
They may start as pawns in someone else's story but grow to direct their own path.
13. Cool characters exist through relationships and dimensionality
Relationships are the way characters feel and interact with each other and lore elements.
Dimensionality is the time and space characters occupy, and their impressions about past, present, future. Characters may not exist across the story timeline but they have an opinion, a relationship with every facet of time.
Imagine relationships as a web, constellation or branching tree. Draw characters and ideas as stars, and their relationships as connecting branches. Between the stars, note core ideas which define their relationship.
14. Complexity from simplicity
Complex projects and ideas can be overwhelming at first glance, so we must understand what makes them tick.
Complex storytelling results from mixing simple words, character traits, bits of lore.
Efface worry about writing by focusing on component parts: topic, mood, chapters, theme, headlines.
Stories are assembled from simple ideas:
Three major acts. For needed complexity, split each act into three more until you have a story.
One core trait for each character. Characters may begin as archetypes.
Lore - simple ideas, events, locations. Spread them through the story, no scenes crowded with details.
One central theme for story, one for each character.
Style - short sentences built on simple words.
15. Brevity
... means getting to the point, not simplifying needlessly.
Brevity has multiple applications:
Brevity of style - how simplistic or complicated the mode of expression is.
Brevity of story - one or multiple threads and themes.
Brevity of plot - moment to moment action, number of events which ravel the story.
Get intimate with brevity:
Write short-form content often - copywriting, vignettes, short stories.
Study examples of brevity-obsessed writing: ads, social captions, emails, pulp scripts etc.
Learn vivid words to say more in a shorter space.
When in doubt, write a simple sentence.
Refine to let shine the mood and story.
16. Focus on naturalism
Naturalism is a story's ability to create its own world and consistent rules.
For brevity's sake, we'll define naturalism as in-world realism.
Worlds and characters are enticing and natural by flowing through self-evolution, guided by consistent rules.
Use language to fit the setting. Hear and feel how characters speak naturally in their world.
People should speak to each other, not the reader (challenging).
When in doubt, write simple dialogue. Let it simmer, edit with fitting words.
In truth, realism is an impression in fiction. Whether you write from inspiration or plan everything, a story should diverge from the rules of our world to create its own and evolve.
17. The eternal cliche of persistence and higiene
... is true because we want to integrate writing in the daily life of fleshy creatures.
Your writing flows with your mind and body. To keep writing and imagination flowing, stay in motion with short breaks.
Write short form - vignettes, plot ideas, copywriting etc.
Write often, write what you love, write in focused bursts.
Spend under 35 minutes on the chair. Get up, stretch, daydream, watch the horizon, take deep breaths.
18. Do stories matter?
Yes and no, depending on context.
The purpose of good art is to be inspirational. A picture may speak 1000 words (language conversion rate applies) but a pulpy story may stir emotions and inspire action.
Stories impress us when relevant to a personal goal, or when well told and intriguing - balanced between stimulation, downtime and wisdom.
In copywriting, stories matter to reveal the benefits of what we're writing about - often bent on selling.
If you want a story - fictional, real or content - to matter, make it relevant by knowing your topic and your audience. Fictional stories may skip relevancy if they balance stimulation, downtime and the bit of wisdom we gain at the end.
19. Break rules with glee
Rules, principles and technicalities are useful for beginners. Good writing is about finding the best words, but rules can prove obstacles and limit imagination.
The more rules we maintain, the more we sound like everyone else, or like AI - standardized, formulaic, cliched.
The road to better writing is paved with passion, persistence and letting go. To be an effective wordsmith, write what you love until breaking rules feels natural.
20. Is creative writing worth it?
If you're doing it for the love of writing and storytelling, yes.
If you write to expand your financial opportunities, yes. In the age of AI and info saturation, good writers can find a suitable niche, especially if there's a quirky human behind the words.
If you find a better creative outlet to express yourself, perhaps. Writing remains potent for self-expression, mind-expansion and to enhance imagination. And you'll need it to apply to all the jobs you may or may not love.
21. Be playful - do it for the love of writing
If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Fiction or not, focus on it as if nothing else exists.
Be playful - play with words, meaning, symbolism, lore, weird stories.
A story or a piece of copy flows better if you ignore external influences and focus on the writing, on how the world or the topic feels and evolves naturally.