what is creative writing can it be taught

Can Writing Be Taught?

Share full article

By Rivka Galchen and Zoe Heller

Aug. 19, 2014

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Rivka Galchen and Zoë Heller discuss whether writing can be taught.

By Rivka Galchen

Is it somehow flattering to feel one’s endeavor is more gift than labor, and are writers more in need of such flattery than others?

I wonder if we can really teach someone to be a biologist. I mean, sure, we can say, This is what a cell is, and here’s this thing called RNA, and here’s this thing called DNA, and here’s this technique called agarose gel electrophoresis that will separate your DNA and RNA fragments by size — but will teaching really produce the next Charles Darwin or Rachel Carson or Francis Crick? A real scientist follows her own visionary gleam. Penicillin was discovered when Alexander Fleming returned to his messy lab after a long vacation and made sense of a moldy petri dish most people would have thrown out as contaminated. The structure of the benzene ring came to the chemist Friedrich August Kekule after a daydream about a snake biting its own tail. You can’t teach that kind of dreaming.

Yet we know we can teach biology, we know we can teach chemistry. Or, at the very least, we teach those subjects every day, in every school system and at every level without finding ourselves in sinusoidal crisis about the subjects’ transmissibility. Somehow, with the sciences — with most every subject — we don’t think that the measure of teaching is its production of masters. I remember learning about RNA transcriptase and about the peppered moth that turned black in adapting to the soot of the Industrial Revolution, and although I never found in myself the inner calling or natural talent that would make me a professional biologist, I didn’t think, What’s the point and to hell with the whole project. And even as these were college-level courses, I didn’t get the sense that my teachers were agonized as to why they were teaching this not-a-prodigy-in-biology person. It was as if interest and pleasure were reason enough.

I take the sciences, and in particular the less glorified of the sciences, as an example here not only to counter the common misconception among bookish people that the sciences are for grinders with no imagination, but also because I think it’s illuminating how relatively unconflicted we are in this country about teaching the teachable part of the sciences. I don’t think that’s explainable simply by “usefulness,” since so few Americans work in areas that require scientific expertise. With a similar calm, we teach the magic-infused fields of music, soccer, mathematics, history, even ethics.

They say that Milton wrote much of “Paradise Lost” from a kind of sleep, and I believe it. But I believe that in most every intellectual endeavor, the extremes of its work come from an unteachable dark. A discipline like mathematics, known especially for its young prodigies who have less to offer as they get older, seems more dominated by the dark than writing does, yet there’s still a substantial teachable remainder.

So the question of whether writing can be taught for me metamorphoses into the question of why it is, when thinking about writing, we are disproportionately detained by the question of teachability. Is it just that it’s somehow flattering to feel one’s endeavor is more gift than labor, and are writers more in need of such flattery than others? Possibly.

But maybe it’s an older, simpler story. Our species has spent so long thinking of the word as the Word. Even the simplest of words, with their uncanny resemblance to the Word, can seem suffused with outsize meaning. (I confess, for example, to having at times been strangely moved by the phrase “Caution: Contents May Be Hot.”) Maybe especially for the least religious among us, who rarely read a designated holy book, this holy sense can go general. Like the children of Depression-era parents unthinkingly filling cabinets with canned food, we latter-day non-saints are still waiting for a message. Unbelieving in teachers, we expect to hear this message directly. Why doesn’t this ever change? “Let’s go,” says one of the two clowns in Samuel Beckett’s most famous play.

“We can’t.”

“We’re waiting for Godot.”

Rivka Galchen is a recipient of a William J. Saroyan International Prize for Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a Berlin Prize, among other distinctions. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s and The New Yorker, which selected her for their list of “20 Under 40” American fiction writers in 2010. Her debut novel, the critically acclaimed “Atmospheric Disturbances,” was published in 2008. Her second book, a story collection titled “American Innovations,” was published in May.

By Zoë Heller

No one at my daughter’s school has ever told her that the use of the word “incredibly” is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

The other night I took a look at my daughter’s English essay and suggested that she try excising the words “extremely,” “totally” and “incredibly” wherever they appeared in her prose. She did this and was surprised to discover that not only were the intensifiers superfluous, but that her sentences were stronger without them.

The question of whether writing can be taught is often framed as a “great” or “perennial” debate, when in fact it is neither. No one seriously disputes that good writing has certain demonstrable rules, principles and techniques. (All writers, insofar as they are readers, have been “taught” by the example of other writers.) What passes for controversy on this issue turns out, in most cases, to be some smaller and more specific disagreement — usually having to do with the efficacy of creative writing courses and whether they foster false hope in students without literary promise.

This is a reasonable subject for discussion; it is certainly useful to point out that an M.F.A. is not a passport to becoming a great novelist, or even a published one. (The former depends on something numinous called talent; the latter has to do with the exigencies of the marketplace.) But the transformative capacity of teaching in any discipline has its limits: A ballet school undertakes to teach ballet, not to invest its students with the genius of Darcey Bussell or to give them all jobs in the corps. And to focus on what one rarefied branch of postgraduate tuition cannot do for aspiring artists is to ignore all the things that writing instruction can do for everyone else.

Modern educators often talk of wanting to encourage “critical thinking” in students. A crucial part of that mission is — or should be — teaching young people how to organize and present their ideas in lucid prose. Most people will not end up writing essays or novels for a living, but at some point they will probably want to write a job application, send a condolence letter (O.K., perhaps just a condolence text), or compose an email to a colleague explaining why something went wrong at work. Knowing how to write — understanding the basics of what used to be called “rhetoric” — still matters, even in the Internet age. So it’s a sad thing that in a great many American public high schools, writing instruction amounts to little more than inculcating the dreary requirements of the SAT essay.

No one at my daughter’s school has ever mentioned to her that the use of the word “incredibly” is subject to the law of diminishing returns. No one has ever talked to her intelligently about structure or style. Instead, she has been given a single, graceless formula for writing a book report and told that any departure from it will result in the automatic subtraction of marks: “In the first sentence, state your general theme; in the second sentence, state your thesis; in the third sentence, provide a road map of how you will advance your thesis throughout the rest of the essay and make sure that all subsequent paragraphs correspond accordingly.”

Composing an essay that conforms to this sort of template is the prose equivalent of wearing a too small, too stiff bridesmaid’s dress: It’s a joyless exercise, and the results are never pretty. Writing can be taught, but it deserves to be taught better than this.

Zoë Heller is the author of three novels: “Everything You Know”; “Notes on a Scandal,” which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and adapted for film; and “The Believers.” She has written feature articles and criticism for a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Review of Books.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

How did fan culture take over? And why is it so scary? Justin Taylor’s novel “Reboot” examines the convergence of entertainment , online arcana and conspiracy theory.

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker unearth botany’s buried history to figure out how our gardens grow.

A new photo book reorients dusty notions of a classic American pastime with a stunning visual celebration of black rodeo.

Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading . Here’s what made Lord Byron so great.

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

Bus stations. Traffic stops. Beaches. There’s no telling where you’ll find the next story based in Accra, Ghana’s capital . Peace Adzo Medie shares some of her favorites.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

Can It Really Be Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Can It Really Be Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy First Edition

workshop practices
the canon of creative-writing craft books
the criteria for grading (including the myth of the easy A)
ways to use the mythologized presence of the writer in film.
ISBN-10 0867095881
ISBN-13 978-0867095883
Edition First Edition
Publisher Heinemann
Publication date February 28, 2007
Language English
Dimensions 6 x 0.29 x 9 inches
Print length 136 pages
See all details

Amazon First Reads | Editors' picks at exclusive prices

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Heinemann; First Edition (February 28, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 136 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0867095881
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0867095883
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.29 x 9 inches
#771 in Creative Writing & Composition
#1,622 in Arts & Humanities Teaching Materials
#7,314 in Fiction Writing Reference (Books)

About the author

Stephanie vanderslice.

Stephanie Vanderslice's was born in Queens, NY in 1967 and grew up there and in the suburbs of Albany. Her essays have appeared in Mothers in All But Name, Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in their 40's and many others. In addition to The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life, she has also published Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? 10th Anniversary edition (co-edited with Rebecca Manery) with Bloomsbury. Other books include Rethinking Creative Writing and Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates (with Kelly Ritter). Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Arkansas Writer's MFA Workshop at the University of Central Arkansas, she also writes novels and has published creative nonfiction, fiction, and creative criticism in such venues as Ploughshares Online, Easy Street and others. Her column, The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life appears regularly in the Huffington Post.

Recommended reads include Simon Van Booy's Father's Day, Nicole Krauss's Great House, Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, and Jesse Lee Kercheval's The Museum of Happiness (all time favorite). Stephanie lives in Conway, Arkansas with her husband, writer John Vanderslice (no, not the indie songster) and two sons. She can also make a mean loaf of french bread.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top review from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Amazon Newsletter
About Amazon
Accessibility
Sustainability
Press Center
Investor Relations
Amazon Devices
Amazon Science
Sell on Amazon
Sell apps on Amazon
Supply to Amazon
Protect & Build Your Brand
Become an Affiliate
Become a Delivery Driver
Start a Package Delivery Business
Advertise Your Products
Self-Publish with Us
Become an Amazon Hub Partner
› See More Ways to Make Money
Amazon Visa
Amazon Store Card
Amazon Secured Card
Amazon Business Card
Shop with Points
Credit Card Marketplace
Reload Your Balance
Amazon Currency Converter
Your Account
Your Orders
Shipping Rates & Policies
Amazon Prime
Returns & Replacements
Manage Your Content and Devices
Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
Your Ads Privacy Choices

What Is Creative Writing? (Ultimate Guide + 20 Examples)

Creative writing begins with a blank page and the courage to fill it with the stories only you can tell.

I face this intimidating blank page daily–and I have for the better part of 20+ years.

In this guide, you’ll learn all the ins and outs of creative writing with tons of examples.

What Is Creative Writing (Long Description)?

Creative Writing is the art of using words to express ideas and emotions in imaginative ways. It encompasses various forms including novels, poetry, and plays, focusing on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes.

Bright, colorful creative writer's desk with notebook and typewriter -- What Is Creative Writing

Table of Contents

Let’s expand on that definition a bit.

Creative writing is an art form that transcends traditional literature boundaries.

It includes professional, journalistic, academic, and technical writing. This type of writing emphasizes narrative craft, character development, and literary tropes. It also explores poetry and poetics traditions.

In essence, creative writing lets you express ideas and emotions uniquely and imaginatively.

It’s about the freedom to invent worlds, characters, and stories. These creations evoke a spectrum of emotions in readers.

Creative writing covers fiction, poetry, and everything in between.

It allows writers to express inner thoughts and feelings. Often, it reflects human experiences through a fabricated lens.

Types of Creative Writing

There are many types of creative writing that we need to explain.

Some of the most common types:

Short stories
Screenplays
Flash fiction
Creative Nonfiction

Short Stories (The Brief Escape)

Short stories are like narrative treasures.

They are compact but impactful, telling a full story within a limited word count. These tales often focus on a single character or a crucial moment.

Short stories are known for their brevity.

They deliver emotion and insight in a concise yet powerful package. This format is ideal for exploring diverse genres, themes, and characters. It leaves a lasting impression on readers.

Example: Emma discovers an old photo of her smiling grandmother. It’s a rarity. Through flashbacks, Emma learns about her grandmother’s wartime love story. She comes to understand her grandmother’s resilience and the value of joy.

Novels (The Long Journey)

Novels are extensive explorations of character, plot, and setting.

They span thousands of words, giving writers the space to create entire worlds. Novels can weave complex stories across various themes and timelines.

The length of a novel allows for deep narrative and character development.

Readers get an immersive experience.

Example: Across the Divide tells of two siblings separated in childhood. They grow up in different cultures. Their reunion highlights the strength of family bonds, despite distance and differences.

Poetry (The Soul’s Language)

Poetry expresses ideas and emotions through rhythm, sound, and word beauty.

It distills emotions and thoughts into verses. Poetry often uses metaphors, similes, and figurative language to reach the reader’s heart and mind.

Poetry ranges from structured forms, like sonnets, to free verse.

The latter breaks away from traditional formats for more expressive thought.

Example: Whispers of Dawn is a poem collection capturing morning’s quiet moments. “First Light” personifies dawn as a painter. It brings colors of hope and renewal to the world.

Plays (The Dramatic Dialogue)

Plays are meant for performance. They bring characters and conflicts to life through dialogue and action.

This format uniquely explores human relationships and societal issues.

Playwrights face the challenge of conveying setting, emotion, and plot through dialogue and directions.

Example: Echoes of Tomorrow is set in a dystopian future. Memories can be bought and sold. It follows siblings on a quest to retrieve their stolen memories. They learn the cost of living in a world where the past has a price.

Screenplays (Cinema’s Blueprint)

Screenplays outline narratives for films and TV shows.

They require an understanding of visual storytelling, pacing, and dialogue. Screenplays must fit film production constraints.

Example: The Last Light is a screenplay for a sci-fi film. Humanity’s survivors on a dying Earth seek a new planet. The story focuses on spacecraft Argo’s crew as they face mission challenges and internal dynamics.

Memoirs (The Personal Journey)

Memoirs provide insight into an author’s life, focusing on personal experiences and emotional journeys.

They differ from autobiographies by concentrating on specific themes or events.

Memoirs invite readers into the author’s world.

They share lessons learned and hardships overcome.

Example: Under the Mango Tree is a memoir by Maria Gomez. It shares her childhood memories in rural Colombia. The mango tree in their yard symbolizes home, growth, and nostalgia. Maria reflects on her journey to a new life in America.

Flash Fiction (The Quick Twist)

Flash fiction tells stories in under 1,000 words.

It’s about crafting compelling narratives concisely. Each word in flash fiction must count, often leading to a twist.

This format captures life’s vivid moments, delivering quick, impactful insights.

Example: The Last Message features an astronaut’s final Earth message as her spacecraft drifts away. In 500 words, it explores isolation, hope, and the desire to connect against all odds.

Creative Nonfiction (The Factual Tale)

Creative nonfiction combines factual accuracy with creative storytelling.

This genre covers real events, people, and places with a twist. It uses descriptive language and narrative arcs to make true stories engaging.

Creative nonfiction includes biographies, essays, and travelogues.

Example: Echoes of Everest follows the author’s Mount Everest climb. It mixes factual details with personal reflections and the history of past climbers. The narrative captures the climb’s beauty and challenges, offering an immersive experience.

Fantasy (The World Beyond)

Fantasy transports readers to magical and mythical worlds.

It explores themes like good vs. evil and heroism in unreal settings. Fantasy requires careful world-building to create believable yet fantastic realms.

Example: The Crystal of Azmar tells of a young girl destined to save her world from darkness. She learns she’s the last sorceress in a forgotten lineage. Her journey involves mastering powers, forming alliances, and uncovering ancient kingdom myths.

Science Fiction (The Future Imagined)

Science fiction delves into futuristic and scientific themes.

It questions the impact of advancements on society and individuals.

Science fiction ranges from speculative to hard sci-fi, focusing on plausible futures.

Example: When the Stars Whisper is set in a future where humanity communicates with distant galaxies. It centers on a scientist who finds an alien message. This discovery prompts a deep look at humanity’s universe role and interstellar communication.

Watch this great video that explores the question, “What is creative writing?” and “How to get started?”:

What Are the 5 Cs of Creative Writing?

The 5 Cs of creative writing are fundamental pillars.

They guide writers to produce compelling and impactful work. These principles—Clarity, Coherence, Conciseness, Creativity, and Consistency—help craft stories that engage and entertain.

They also resonate deeply with readers. Let’s explore each of these critical components.

Clarity makes your writing understandable and accessible.

It involves choosing the right words and constructing clear sentences. Your narrative should be easy to follow.

In creative writing, clarity means conveying complex ideas in a digestible and enjoyable way.

Coherence ensures your writing flows logically.

It’s crucial for maintaining the reader’s interest. Characters should develop believably, and plots should progress logically. This makes the narrative feel cohesive.

Conciseness

Conciseness is about expressing ideas succinctly.

It’s being economical with words and avoiding redundancy. This principle helps maintain pace and tension, engaging readers throughout the story.

Creativity is the heart of creative writing.

It allows writers to invent new worlds and create memorable characters. Creativity involves originality and imagination. It’s seeing the world in unique ways and sharing that vision.

Consistency

Consistency maintains a uniform tone, style, and voice.

It means being faithful to the world you’ve created. Characters should act true to their development. This builds trust with readers, making your story immersive and believable.

Is Creative Writing Easy?

Creative writing is both rewarding and challenging.

Crafting stories from your imagination involves more than just words on a page. It requires discipline and a deep understanding of language and narrative structure.

Exploring complex characters and themes is also key.

Refining and revising your work is crucial for developing your voice.

The ease of creative writing varies. Some find the freedom of expression liberating.

Others struggle with writer’s block or plot development challenges. However, practice and feedback make creative writing more fulfilling.

What Does a Creative Writer Do?

A creative writer weaves narratives that entertain, enlighten, and inspire.

Writers explore both the world they create and the emotions they wish to evoke. Their tasks are diverse, involving more than just writing.

Creative writers develop ideas, research, and plan their stories.

They create characters and outline plots with attention to detail. Drafting and revising their work is a significant part of their process. They strive for the 5 Cs of compelling writing.

Writers engage with the literary community, seeking feedback and participating in workshops.

They may navigate the publishing world with agents and editors.

Creative writers are storytellers, craftsmen, and artists. They bring narratives to life, enriching our lives and expanding our imaginations.

How to Get Started With Creative Writing?

Embarking on a creative writing journey can feel like standing at the edge of a vast and mysterious forest.

The path is not always clear, but the adventure is calling.

Here’s how to take your first steps into the world of creative writing:

Find a time of day when your mind is most alert and creative.
Create a comfortable writing space free from distractions.
Use prompts to spark your imagination. They can be as simple as a word, a phrase, or an image.
Try writing for 15-20 minutes on a prompt without editing yourself. Let the ideas flow freely.
Reading is fuel for your writing. Explore various genres and styles.
Pay attention to how your favorite authors construct their sentences, develop characters, and build their worlds.
Don’t pressure yourself to write a novel right away. Begin with short stories or poems.
Small projects can help you hone your skills and boost your confidence.
Look for writing groups in your area or online. These communities offer support, feedback, and motivation.
Participating in workshops or classes can also provide valuable insights into your writing.
Understand that your first draft is just the beginning. Revising your work is where the real magic happens.
Be open to feedback and willing to rework your pieces.
Carry a notebook or digital recorder to jot down ideas, observations, and snippets of conversations.
These notes can be gold mines for future writing projects.

Final Thoughts: What Is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is an invitation to explore the unknown, to give voice to the silenced, and to celebrate the human spirit in all its forms.

Check out these creative writing tools (that I highly recommend):

Why the teaching of creative writing matters

Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Bolton

Disclosure statement

Simon Holloway lectures in Creative Writing at The University of Bolton

View all partners

For the last 30 years or so the rise of creative writing programmes in universities has been met with seemingly unending howls of derision from all quarters. Hanif Kureishi, novelist, screenwriter – and professor of creative writing at Kingston University – described them as a “waste of time”. But universities around the world beg to differ, as the increasing number of courses and students testify.

The recent Sunday Times league tables for universities ranked the quality of teaching in creative writing at The University of Bolton as the best in the country. The programme there also boasts the highest ranking in terms of student experience.

Given that I am the only full-time lecturer in creative writing at Bolton – and also led the programme for two of the three years the recent figures cover – I should be able easily to explain our success, and why our students rate our teaching so highly. I say “should”, because I’m not sure of the answer.

There are easy ways to get students to rate teaching highly. We can tailor the classes to their personal needs and wants, and give them all high marks. Or we can teach them at a lower level than we should so that they feel a greater sense of achievement. But at Bolton we do none of these. So what’s the secret?

The measure of a mark

How you actually go about judging the quality of teaching – particularly with a subject like creative writing – is tricky. There are the normal ways that universities use: peer-assessment, student feedback, the evaluation of staff by professionals who specialise in methods of teaching and learning and staff development programmes. And as Bolton is a teaching intensive, research informed university we do a lot of these things, and I think we do them very well.

But I wonder whether what is being measured or evaluated in these assessments is more the style of the teacher, rather than the content. Most assessors are experts in teaching methods and practices – and it’s unreasonable to expect them to have detailed knowledge of every subject.

As non-specialists they are able to measure the levels of student engagement, of academic challenge, of whether the “learning outcomes” which plague university teaching in creative writing are being met. And if you measure it this way, then it’s quite possible that detractors such as Kureishi are right.

A place for play

Except that the teaching of creative writing, when done well, is about more than the skills and craft and technique, important as these things are. And as the writer and lecturer Liam Murray Bell describes, writers must find and use a consistency of tone, style and voice.

It’s also about encouraging students to play, to move beyond their normal styles and subjects of writing, beyond their use of traditional structural, narrative and poetic forms – and to ask them to see what happens. In this sense university is a place for play . Teacher and game designer Eric Zimmerman has defined play as:

The free space of movement within a more rigid structure. Play exists both because of and also despite the more rigid structures of a system.

If students are not actively encouraged to play then we are simply encouraging them to remain as static as they were when they entered higher education – even if they are more adept at using “writerly” skills and techniques.

The secret of success

To me it seems there is no “secret” to good teaching. You do the basics, and you do them as well as you possibly can. You limit class numbers. You give student-writers the individual attention they crave. You make sure that your teachers are good writers and that your writers are good teachers, so that expertise can be shared effectively.

And you make students read widely. They should read the classics, I suppose, but they should also read the “non-classics” – what many academics see as trash fiction. And they should read their peers and contemporaries too.

Importantly, they should read things such as advertising billboards and street signs, the shapes of buildings, the colour of the pavement, the weather, the look in people’s faces. Writers need to breathe in so that they can breathe out their own individual reactions and responses. At Bolton we spend time reading and breathing, and that helps students find voices and interactions which can blend with the craft of writing to produce work which means something to them.

Very few students will earn a living as a writer. But writing is about more than that, and the ability to communicate effectively is a rare and precious thing. Good teaching should not be measured in the texts which students produce, then, but in the knowledge gained through the actions of writing – knowledge which lasts forever.

In the end, if students enjoy their studies, and believe that they’re gaining skills which are transferable in the workplace and will last them well beyond university, then perhaps that is what they see as ‘good teaching’. And perhaps too they’re the best ones to judge.

Universities
Creative writing
Hanif Kureishi
Sunday Times University rankings

Program Manager, Teaching & Learning Initiatives

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Earth System Science (School of Science)

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

Deputy Social Media Producer

Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy

Creative Writing: Can It Be Taught?

Cite this chapter.

Rudy Wiebe

14 Accesses

For 21 years I have been working in creative writing classrooms in schools, colleges and universities, both in the United States and Canada; if I don’t think that creative writing can be taught, I’m either a charlatan or an idiot. Now it is quite likely that persons (perhaps even academics) exist who believe me to be either, or both, but I would here like to explain that the teacher — who showed me it could be taught was Dr F. M. Salter, for some time the head of the English Department at this university.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

About this chapter

Wiebe, R. (1986). Creative Writing: Can It Be Taught?. In: Demers, P. (eds) The Creating Word. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07954-4_8

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07954-4_8

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London

Print ISBN : 978-1-349-07956-8

Online ISBN : 978-1-349-07954-4

eBook Packages : Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies Collection Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Inspiring Ink: Expert Tips on How to Teach Creative Writing

The world of creative writing is as vast as it is rewarding. It’s a form of expression that allows the writer to explore different worlds, characters, and narratives – all within the power of their pen.

But what exactly is creative writing and why is it important? Let’s explore the value of creative writing and how to inspire young (or old!) minds to embark on the curious and exciting journey of writing creatively – it’s easier than you think!

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing, in its simplest form, is writing that goes beyond the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature.

It’s characterized by its emphasis on:

narrative craft
character development
the use of literary devices

From poetry to plays, scripts to sonnets, creative writing covers a wide range of genres . It’s about painting pictures with words, invoking emotions, and bringing ideas to life . It’s about crafting stories that are compelling, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Whether you’re penning a novel or jotting down a journal entry, creative writing encourages you to unleash your imagination and express your thoughts in a unique, artistic way. For a deeper dive into the realm of creative writing, you can visit our article on what is creative writing .

Benefits of Developing Creative Writing Skills

The benefits of creative writing extend beyond the page.

It’s not just about creating captivating stories or crafting beautiful prose. The skills developed through creative writing are invaluable in many aspects of life and work.

1. Creative writing fosters creativity and imagination.

It encourages you to think outside the box, broaden your perspective, and explore new ideas. It also enhances your ability to communicate effectively, as it involves conveying thoughts, emotions, and narratives in a clear and compelling manner.

2. Creative writing aids in improving critical thinking skills.

It prompts you to analyze characters, plotlines, and themes, and make connections between different ideas. This process activates different parts of the mind, drawing on personal experiences, the imagination, logical plot development, and emotional intelligence.

3. Creative writing is also a valuable tool for self-expression and personal growth.

It allows you to explore your feelings, experiences, and observations, providing an outlet for self-reflection and introspection. By both reading and writing about different characters in different situations, readers develop empathy in a gentle but effective way.

4. Creative writing skills can open up a host of career opportunities.

From authors and editors to content creators and copywriters, the demand for creative writers is vast and varied. You can learn more about potential career paths in our article on creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

In essence, creative writing is more than just an art—it’s a skill, a craft, and a powerful tool for communication and self-expression. Whether you’re teaching creative writing or learning it, understanding its value is the first step towards mastering the art.

The 3 Roles of a Creative Writing Teacher

Amongst the many facets of a creative writing teacher’s role, three vital aspects stand out: inspiring creativity , nurturing talent , and providing constructive criticism . These elements play a significant role in shaping budding writers and fostering their passion for the craft.

1. Inspiring Creativity

The primary function of a creative writing teacher is to inspire creativity.

They must foster an environment that encourages students to think outside the box and explore new possibilities . This includes presenting students with creative writing prompts that challenge their thinking, promoting lively discussions around various topics, and providing opportunities for students to engage in creative writing activities for kids .

Teachers should also expose students to a range of literary genres , styles, and techniques to broaden their understanding and appreciation of the craft. This exposure not only enhances their knowledge but also stimulates their creativity, encouraging them to experiment with different writing styles .

2. Nurturing Talent

Nurturing talent involves recognizing the unique abilities of each student and providing the necessary support and guidance to help them develop these skills. A creative writing teacher needs to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each student and tailor their approach accordingly.

This means:

offering personalized feedback
setting realistic yet challenging goals
providing opportunities for students to showcase their work

Encouraging students to participate in writing competitions or to publish their work can give them a confidence boost and motivate them to improve. Furthermore, teachers should educate students about various creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree . This knowledge can inspire students to pursue their passion for writing and explore career opportunities in the field.

3. Providing Constructive Criticism

Providing constructive criticism is a critical aspect of teaching creative writing. It involves assessing students’ work objectively and providing feedback that helps them improve .

Teachers should:

highlight the strengths of the work
address the areas that need improvement
suggest ways to make the piece better

Constructive criticism should be specific, actionable, and encouraging . It’s important to remember that the goal is to help the student improve, not to discourage them. Therefore, teachers need to communicate their feedback in a respectful and supportive manner.

In essence, a teacher’s role in teaching creative writing extends beyond mere instruction. They are mentors who inspire, nurture, and shape the minds of budding writers. By fostering a supportive and stimulating environment, they can help students unlock their creative potential and develop a lifelong love for writing.

3 Techniques for Teaching Creative Writing

When it comes to understanding how to teach creative writing, there are several effective techniques that can help inspire students and foster their writing skills.

1. Encouraging Free Writing Exercises

Free writing is a technique that encourages students to write continuously for a set amount of time without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or topic. This type of exercise can help unleash creativity, as it allows students to freely express their thoughts and ideas without judgment or constraint.

As a teacher, you can set a specific theme or provide creative writing prompts to guide the writing session. Alternatively, you can allow students to write about any topic that comes to mind. The key is to create an environment that encourages creative exploration and expression.

2. Exploring Different Genres

Another effective technique is to expose students to a wide range of writing genres. This can include fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, fantasy, mystery, and more. By exploring different genres, students can discover their unique writing styles and interests. This variety also offers the chance to expand their writing skills and apply them to various writing formats.

To facilitate this exploration, you can assign writing projects in different genres, conduct genre-specific writing workshops, or invite guest speakers who specialize in different genres. You can also encourage students to critically analyze how different authors approach their work.

3. Analyzing Published Works

Analyzing published works is a powerful way to teach creative writing. This technique allows students to learn from established authors by studying their:

writing styles
narrative structures
use of language.

It also provides a practical context for understanding writing concepts and techniques.

As a teacher, you can select diverse pieces of literature for analysis , ranging from classic novels to contemporary short stories. Encourage students to identify elements they admire in these works and discuss how they can incorporate similar techniques into their own writing.

These techniques for teaching creative writing are effective ways to inspire creativity, encourage self-expression, and develop writing skills. As a teacher, your role is crucial in guiding students through their creative journey and helping them realize their potential as writers.

Creative Writing Workshops and Exercises

One effective method on how to teach creative writing is through the use of targeted workshops and exercises. These interactive sessions can stimulate creativity, foster character development , and help in understanding story structures .

Idea Generation Workshops

Idea generation is a crucial aspect of creative writing. It is the starting point that provides a springboard for writers to explore and develop their narratives. Idea generation workshops can be an interactive and fun way to help writers come up with fresh ideas.

Workshops can include brainstorming sessions , where writers are encouraged to think freely and note down all ideas, no matter how unconventional they may seem. Another method is the use of writing prompts , which can serve as a creative spark.

A prompt could be:

even an image

Editor’s Note : Encourage children to create a big scribble on a scrap piece of paper and then look for an image in it (like looking for pictures in the clouds). This can be a great creative writing prompt and students will love sharing their writing with each other! Expect lots of giggles and fun!

Character Development Exercises

Characters are the heart of any story. They drive the narrative and engage the readers. Character development exercises can help writers create well-rounded and relatable characters.

Such exercises can include character questionnaires , where writers answer a series of questions about their characters to gain a deeper understanding of their personalities, backgrounds, and motivations. Role-playing activities can also be useful, allowing writers to step into their characters’ shoes and explore their reactions in different scenarios.

Story Structure Workshops

Understanding story structure is vital for creating a compelling narrative. Story structure workshops can guide writers on how to effectively structure their stories to engage readers from start to finish .

These workshops can cover essential elements of story structures like:

rising action
falling action

In addition to understanding the basics, writers should be encouraged to experiment with different story structures to find what works best for their narrative style. An understanding of story structure can also help in analyzing and learning from published works .

Providing writers with the right tools and techniques, through workshops and exercises, can significantly improve their creative writing skills. It’s important to remember that creativity flourishes with practice and patience .

As a teacher, nurturing this process is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching creative writing. For more insights and tips on teaching creative writing, continue exploring our articles on creative writing .

Tips to Enhance Creative Writing Skills

The process of teaching creative writing is as much about honing one’s own skills as it is about imparting knowledge to others. Here are some key strategies that can help in enhancing your creative writing abilities and make your teaching methods more effective.

Regular Practice

Like any other skill, creative writing requires regular practice . Foster the habit of writing daily, even if it’s just a few lines. This will help you stay in touch with your creative side and continually improve your writing skills. Encourage your students to do the same.

Introduce them to various creative writing prompts to stimulate their imagination and make their writing practice more engaging.

Reading Widely

Reading is an essential part of becoming a better writer. By reading widely, you expose yourself to a variety of styles, tones, and genres . This not only broadens your literary horizons but also provides a wealth of ideas for your own writing.

Encourage your students to read extensively as well. Analyzing and discussing different works can be an excellent learning exercise and can spark creative ideas .

Exploring Various Writing Styles

The beauty of creative writing lies in its diversity. From poetic verses to gripping narratives, there’s a wide range of styles to explore. Encourage your students to try their hand at different forms of writing. This not only enhances their versatility but also helps them discover their unique voice as a writer.

To help them get started, you can introduce a variety of creative writing activities for kids . These tasks can be tailored to suit different age groups and proficiency levels. Remember, the goal is to foster a love for writing, so keep the activities fun and engaging .

Have Fun Teaching Creative Writing!

Enhancing creative writing skills is a continuous journey. It requires persistence, curiosity, and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone. As a teacher, your role is to guide your students on this journey, providing them with the tools and encouragement they need to flourish as writers – and most of all – enjoy the process!

For more insights on creative writing, be sure to explore our articles on what is creative writing and creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

Brooks Manley

Creative Primer is a resource on all things journaling, creativity, and productivity. We’ll help you produce better ideas, get more done, and live a more effective life.

My name is Brooks. I do a ton of journaling, like to think I’m a creative (jury’s out), and spend a lot of time thinking about productivity. I hope these resources and product recommendations serve you well. Reach out if you ever want to chat or let me know about a journal I need to check out!

Here’s my favorite journal for 2024:

Gratitude Journal Prompts Mindfulness Journal Prompts Journal Prompts for Anxiety Reflective Journal Prompts Healing Journal Prompts Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Journal Prompts Mental Health Journal Prompts ASMR Journal Prompts Manifestation Journal Prompts Self-Care Journal Prompts Morning Journal Prompts Evening Journal Prompts Self-Improvement Journal Prompts Creative Writing Journal Prompts Dream Journal Prompts Relationship Journal Prompts "What If" Journal Prompts New Year Journal Prompts Shadow Work Journal Prompts Journal Prompts for Overcoming Fear Journal Prompts for Dealing with Loss Journal Prompts for Discerning and Decision Making Travel Journal Prompts Fun Journal Prompts

Enriching Creative Writing Activities for Kids

You may also like, what is creative intelligence an introduction.

Is a Degree in Creative Writing Worth it?

Planner review: legend planner pro, leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Productivity
Favorite Journals

Creativity and Innovation in the Writing Classroom

Learn more about how to teach creativity and innovation along with, and as an important part of, traditional writing and research skills.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” —Maya Angelou

Creativity is fundamental to the teaching of writing. Although WR 153 focuses specifically on creativity and innovation, all WR courses ask students to approach their reading, viewing, writing, and research in creative ways. One important approach to creativity is “design thinking,” which emphasizes that creativity is a non-linear, iterative process. Design thinking is based on two foundational assumptions:

Everyone can be creative.
Creativity can be taught.

The principles of design thinking can be used in any WR course to teach students that creativity is a process of asking questions, using multiple strategies and approaches in answering those questions, taking risks in conceiving and executing original work, developing and refining ideas in response to feedback, and learning from productive failure. The metacognitive aspects of design thinking invite students to think about their own creative processes and identify factors that promote creativity.

Although WR 153 is structured by the steps of the design process (understand, empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, assess/reflect), all WR courses can benefit from incorporating elements of design thinking and an emphasis on creativity and innovation. Approaching writing instruction in this way can:

Increase student engagement by focusing on creative responses to problems that students care about;
Give students a sense of agency as a result of greater choice in what to write and how to write about it;
Encourage taking intellectual risks and reward productive failure as a means of learning;
Help students develop skills that are transferrable to other academic situations and their professional lives; and
Enhance students’ personal lives by allowing them to learn about themselves and their own creative potential.

Principles of Design Thinking

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative approach to creativity that involves between three and seven steps. Although it is based on theories of design practice that go back to the early twentieth century, it has most recently been popularized by the design firm IDEO and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school. The process involves understanding the issues involved in a design project, empathizing with the audience for an end product, defining the scope of the project, generating ideas for and creating prototypes of the product, testing and assessing those ideas and prototypes, and revisiting the steps of the design process until a final product is created.

The complete set of seven steps can be applied to the writing process in a WR course:

Understand: Students develop a foundation for their work by exploring issues and approaches relevant to the course topic, as well as previous work in the field.

Empathize: Students practice empathy by demonstrating their awareness and understanding of the audience for whom they write or create.

Define: Based on their observations and insights, students articulate a problem or question that will motivate their work over the course of the semester.

Ideate: Students generate new ideas and possible solutions by challenging assumptions and engaging in a variety of creative activities.

Prototype: Students start to create solutions and implement their ideas into written, digital or other forms in order to capture ideas, but also redefine choices.

Test: Students share drafts with others in order to gain feedback and insight into improving final versions.

Assess/Reflect: Students reflect on and evaluate their peers’ and their own processes and final outcomes.

The steps of the design thinking process are not meant to be followed in a rigid way. They should be flexible and customizable to the particular project: students may need to define, ideate, and prototype multiple times and in various modes/genres before they are ready to create a final draft. The skills students gain in going though these steps should be transferrable to other projects and courses.

Learn more about design thinking:

“What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?” by Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang provides an overview of design thinking.
David Kelly of IDEO explains the history of design thinking in “How to Design Breakthrough Inventions,” an interview with 60 Minutes .
“How to Solve Problems Like a Designer,” which includes an interview with Tim Brown of IDEO, explains the basic principles of design thinking.

Understand and Empathize

The first step of the design process asks students to understand not only the course material, but also the resources necessary for their particular project. Since this usually involves additional reading/viewing, the “understand” step is part of the research and information literacy component of WR15X. Assignments that focus on this step may include conducting library or online research, categorizing research material using BEAM/BEAT, and creating annotated bibliographies.

Define, Ideate, and Prototype

Before they begin the process of generating ideas, it is often useful for students to define, at least in a preliminary way, what question or problem their paper/project is addressing. Assignments that help students define their projects may include questionnaires that ask students to state what they intend to work on and why, as well as more formal paper/project proposals.

In the IDEO design process, the goal of ideation is to generate a multitude of ideas without rejecting those that may seem impractical or even silly. Ideas can be rejected later, after a sufficient number of ideas have been generated. The most common ideation assignment involves various forms of brainstorming, often in teams. Ideas should be written down in some way, such as on sticky notes or index cards. To encourage divergent thinking in the brainstorming process, consider posting some fundamental principles in the classroom, such as these from IDEO:

Defer judgment.
Encourage wild ideas.
Stay focused on the topic.
Build on the ideas of others .

In the IDEO design process, prototypes are models that can be easily revised and even discarded if necessary. Prototypes for writing courses might include outlines, storyboards, slide decks, oral or video presentations, and preliminary drafts. Prototypes should be tested and assessed in some way that allows for reconsideration and revision before students turn in their final products.

Learn more about brainstorming and prototyping:

“What is Brainstorming?” by Rikke Friis Dam and Teo Yu Siang provides helpful information and ideas for the ideation step of the design process.
This example of “Brainstorming at IDEO” shows one popular way of brainstorming with sticky notes.

Test and Assess/Reflect

The final steps of the design process, testing and assessing/reflecting, are not meant to be the final steps in completing a student’s paper/project. After testing and assessing a prototype, students will likely need to reconsider and revise their papers/projects, which will take them back to earlier steps—they may need to conduct further research, generate additional ideas, or refine their prototypes. The design process is meant to be iterative, with students returning to steps in the process as needed until they have completed a final draft.

Just as designers test their prototypes, students should test drafts of their papers/projects by sharing them with others. Assignments that focus on this step usually involve workshopping with one or more peers, but testing may also include making an oral or video presentation to the class, meeting with the professor or a writing tutor, or sharing the student’s work with any other reader/viewer capable of providing feedback. Students may also test their papers/projects using techniques such as reverse outlining to assess the strength and clarity of their arguments.

The final step in the design process, assessing the student’s work, may lead back to any earlier step as students come to understand what they still need to work on to complete their papers/projects. This step may also involve the broader metacognitive task of reflecting on the student’s creative process. Assignments that focus on this step may include a variety of reflective exercises, including a final reflection for the course.

A Note on Assessment

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett

Because WR 153 courses can include such a wide range of papers and project, contract grading is recommended. Other WR courses that incorporate creativity and innovation may also wish to use contract grading, either for specific assignments or the course as a whole. More information on contract grading can be found here .

An important component of creativity and innovation is productive failure. We learn to create new things or develop new skills by failing and trying again until we succeed. Productive failure is failure that leads to new knowledge, insight, or innovation. Courses that focus on creativity can encourage productive failure by requiring prototypes that will be reconsidered and revised extensively, asking students to share examples of failure as valuable learning experiences, and assigning reflective work on how students have grown through failure over the course of the semester.

Learn more about productive failure:

Both readings below argue for the importance of productive failure. The Burger article contains specific examples of how to validate and reward productive failure in the classroom.

“Next Time, Fail Better” by Paula M. Krebs, The Chronicle of Higher Education , May 11, 2012.

Search form

P&W on Facebook
P&W on Twitter
P&W on Instagram

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Every week a new publishing professional shares advice, anecdotes, insights, and new ways of thinking about writing and the business of books.

Find publishers ready to read your work now with our Open Reading Periods page, a continually updated resource listing all the literary magazines and small presses currently open for submissions.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Our series of subject-based handbooks (PDF format; $4.99 each) provide information and advice from authors, literary agents, editors, and publishers. Now available: The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion, The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal, The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents, The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs, and The Poets & Writers Guide to Writing Contests.

Find a home for your work by consulting our searchable databases of writing contests, literary magazines, small presses, literary agents, and more.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Get the Word Out is a new publicity incubator for debut fiction writers and poets.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.

Let the world know about your work by posting your events on our literary events calendar, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

Find a writers group to join or create your own with Poets & Writers Groups. Everything you need to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other poets and writers—all in one place.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Search for jobs in education, publishing, the arts, and more within our free, frequently updated job listings for writers and poets.

Establish new connections and enjoy the company of your peers using our searchable databases of MFA programs and writers retreats, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

The Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award introduces emerging writers to the New York City literary community, providing them with a network for professional advancement.

Find information about how Poets & Writers provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops.

Bring the literary world to your door—at half the newsstand price. Available in print and digital editions, Poets & Writers Magazine is a must-have for writers who are serious about their craft.

View the contents and read select essays, articles, interviews, and profiles from the current issue of the award-winning Poets & Writers Magazine .

Read essays, articles, interviews, profiles, and other select content from Poets & Writers Magazine as well as Online Exclusives.

View the covers and contents of every issue of Poets & Writers Magazine , from the current edition all the way back to the first black-and-white issue in 1987.

Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.

In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Every week a new author shares books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired and shaped the creative process.

Listen to original audio recordings of authors featured in Poets & Writers Magazine . Browse the archive of more than 400 author readings.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Start, renew, or give a subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine ; change your address; check your account; pay your bill; report a missed issue; contact us.

Peruse paid listings of writing contests, conferences, workshops, editing services, calls for submissions, and more.

Poets & Writers is pleased to provide free subscriptions to Poets & Writers Magazine to award-winning young writers and to high school creative writing teachers for use in their classrooms.

Read select articles from the award-winning magazine and consult the most comprehensive listing of literary grants and awards, deadlines, and prizewinners available in print.

Subscribe Now

The Teachable Talent: Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught

Printable Version
Log in to Send
Log in to Save

A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Can Creativity Be Taught?

August 27, 2014 • 14 min read.

Can creativity be fostered in the workplace, and if so, how can it be managed?

Human Resources

The usual image of how creativity happens: A composer inadvertently hears a melody rising from a babbling brook, or an ad agency creative director crumples page after page of aborted ideas ripped from the typewriter until the right one lands. But creativity, some claim, can come from a far less elusive muse — from a structured process, one that opens up the ranks of the creative to a wider swath than the Steve Jobs, Jonas Salks and Franz Schuberts of the universe.

“I think there are individual differences in our propensity to be creative,” says Wharton marketing professor Rom Schrift, “but having said that, it’s like a muscle. If you train yourself, and there are different methods for doing this, you can become more creative. There are individual differences in people, but I would argue that it is also something that can be developed, and therefore, taught.”

Wharton marketing professor Jerry (Yoram) Wind has in fact taught a course in creativity at Wharton for years, and says that “in any population, basically the distribution of creativity follows the normal curve. At the absolute extreme you have Einstein and Picasso, and you don’t have to teach them — they are the geniuses. Nearly everyone else in the distribution, and the type of people you would deal with at leading universities and companies, can learn creativity.”

Does creativity need the right conditions to flourish? Jennifer Mueller, a management professor at the University of San Diego and former Wharton professor who has researched creativity, sees evidence that it does. “Every theorist that exists today on the planet will tell you creativity is an ability that ranges in the population, and I think in a given context, creativity can be shut off — or turned on, if the environment supports creativity.”

John Maeda, former president of Rhode Island School of Design, believes creativity can be taught — though he qualifies that belief. “I wouldn’t say it can be taught in the normal sense of adding knowledge and wisdom to someone. I would say instead it can be re-kindled in people — all children are creative. They just lose their capability to be creative by growing up,” notes Maeda, now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and chair of eBay’s design advisory board. Creativity in a child, he adds, “is the ability to diverge. In a productive adult, it’s the ability to diverge and converge, with emphasis on the converging.”

Anyone called upon to tap creativity has his or her own method, but photorealist painter and photographer Chuck Close suggests the matter is actually less mysterious than the muse-chasers might believe. “Inspiration,” he has said, “is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Working with Boxes, Inside and Out

In whatever the sector or discipline — product development, exploitation of networks, music or education — creativity shares certain traits, experts say. Jacob Goldenberg, professor of marketing at the Arison School of Business at the IDC Herzliya in Israel, says creativity has more than 200 definitions in the literature. “However, if you ask people to grade ideas, the agreement is very high,” he notes. “This means that even if it is difficult to define creativity, it is easy to identify it. One of the reasons why it is difficult to define is the fact that creativity exists in many different domains.” Still, he says: “Most creative ideas share a common structure of being highly original and at the same time highly useful.”

“If you train yourself, and there are different methods for doing this, you can become more creative.” — Rom Schrift

In Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results , Goldenberg and co-author Drew Boyd make the case that all inventive solutions share certain common patterns. Working within parameters, rather than through free-associative brainstorming, leads to greater creativity, the book says. This method, called Systematic Inventive Thinking, has found application at Procter & Gamble and SAP, among others. “We shouldn’t confuse innovation and creativity,” Goldenberg says. “Creativity refers to the idea, not to the system [product, service, process, etc.] that was built around it. For example, online banking is a great innovation, but the idea [of using the Internet to replace the branch] was not creative. It was expected years before it was implemented.”

Similarly, he adds, “cell phone technology is one of the most innovative developments, but the need was defined years before, and we just waited for the technology. In my view, a creative idea that is still changing our lives is the concept of letting users develop the software they need on a platform [that a particular] firm sells: the apps concept. This means that consumers develop and determine the value of the smartphone and tablets.”

This example, Goldenberg says, fits one of the templates for creativity described in Inside the Box : “Where you subtract one of the resources” — such as engineers and marketers — “and replace them with a resource that exists inside a closure (box), in this case your consumers.”

Schrift has used a different template from Inside the Box in his classes: The idea of building a matrix of characteristics of two unrelated products, and creating new dependencies. Such examples, he says, include an air freshener that changes scent every 10 minutes (remixing the concepts of time and fragrance), or a gym with a fee that is structured to increase if you don’t work out enough (fitness and incentive). “A lot of the time, looking for a new dependency gives you a creative idea,” Schrift notes.

Wind says that in whatever discipline, creativity is primarily “an ability to challenge the status quo and come up with new and better solutions. In art, the most creative figures are those who came up with new perspectives — Brancusi, who broke away from Rodin; Picasso, who broke away from the Impressionists; Duchamp, who took readymades [ordinary manufactured objects, a porcelain urinal being the most infamous] and said, ‘this is art.’ Anyone who primarily breaks the current status quo and creates a new dimension — the first person to think about understanding medicine in terms of a person’s DNA; in advertising it is [William] Bernbach, who came up with the slogan for Volkswagen, [or] Frank Gehry, who basically broke the tradition of the four-wall museum and came up with a dramatically different structure in Bilbao.”

Making Space for the Troublemakers

Corporate culture is no less hungry for creative leaders. Or is it? Any company would eagerly embrace the next iPhone, but it is far from clear that companies tolerate the cost of doing business when it comes to generating creativity. In an IBM survey of 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries in 33 industries released in 2010, creativity was cited as the most important organization-wide trait required for navigating the business environment. And yet, as Mueller found in a 2010 study published in Psychological Science , people often espouse creativity as an abstract goal, but then, when presented with it, spurn it. In The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas , co-authored by Mueller with Shimul Melwani and Jack A. Goncalo, experiments suggest that the desire for creativity is often overshadowed by a need to reduce uncertainty — even as subjects rate their attitudes toward creativity as positive. Moreover, this bias contributes toward people being less able to even recognize creativity.

Additional research underway by Mueller suggests that creative personalities are often dismissed as trouble. “They are seen as difficult, not as efficient or able to present their ideas with focus, and are also seen as naïve,” she says. “People, either rightly or wrongly, have this stereotype that creative people are high maintenance and emotionally volatile. And where it gets problematic, the moment the organization suffers, is when creative people are discounted for not being seen as team players. And that is the dark side of being tagged as a creative type.” And yet: “Why would you want somebody who doesn’t produce creative work [just because] they are less trouble to manage?”

“The stereotype is that creativity just has to be unleashed, and it’s not true. It has to be tightly managed. You have to know how to foster it.” –Jennifer Mueller

The bias against creativity even extends to the classroom, Mueller says. “There is the reality that any teacher needs a rubric in order to give a good grade, and creativity in being new or different creates uncertainty in the mind of the students about whether it fits the answer the teacher is looking for,” she notes. “Teachers think of creative students as disobedient. There is lots of focus on reducing ambiguity, especially in college where the student is your customer. You now have to answer to what the customer wants, and what the customer wants is to get a good grade — and the best way to get a good grade is to reduce ambiguity.”

Americans are not showing the kind of creative expression that might otherwise be bubbling away — in college, but also grade school. Scores from the widely administered Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking have been declining since 1990 among the nation’s youngest students, according to a study by College of William & Mary assistant professor Kyung-Hee Kim of nearly 300,000 test scores between 1968 and 2008. “The decline is steady and persistent, from 1990 to present, and ranges across the various components tested by the TTCT,” the study finds. “The decline begins in young children, which is especially concerning as it stunts abilities which are supposed to mature over a lifetime.”

“There is an understanding that this is happening in China and India as well,” Mueller adds, “and the fact that it is happening in the U.S. is troubling people, but I don’t think they know what to do about it. I, myself, have tried to do stuff students don’t like, and they will hate you. If student ratings aren’t high, then you’re not going to get tenure.”

One environment Mueller admires for its healthy creative process is IDEO, the multinational design consulting firm. Creativity is begun in brainstorming sessions — which is certainly not novel — but it is then shepherded through a more structured route. “They have their initial session, called ‘deep dive,’ and that session is very short. Then they break the problem apart by assigning people specific pieces. Then there is a focus session, so there is chaos and focus, and interplay between these two things is always going on. There is a person whose full responsibility is to structure it, and I think in that process you learn, you ask the customer certain things, you tweak it some more,” Mueller notes. “The stereotype is that creativity just has to be unleashed, and it’s not true. It has to be tightly managed. You have to know how to foster it.”

Creative Safe Haven

The willingness to “foster it” is a challenge in many corporate environments. According to Schrift, one way to manage creative forces is to manage talent wisely. “Maybe we don’t want creative people in certain positions,” he says. “One of the obstacles for innovation is not necessarily the process of coming up with the idea, but is more cultural — a lot of companies do not incentivize employees to do things differently.” Sometimes, workers are evaluated on a relatively short cycle, and “when you are innovating, that involves a lot of failure.”

“Mind-wandering seems to be essential to the creative process, and I don’t think a lot of businesses are aware of that fact.” — Scott Barry Kaufman

Changes in corporate culture, such as giving workers permission to question authority, can be efficacious, says Scott Barry Kaufman, scientific director of the Imagination Institute at Penn’s Positive Psychology Center . The salient question isn’t whether creativity can be taught, notes Kaufman, since everyone is creative, but rather demonstrating faith in the creativity of workers. “I am not talking about rebelliousness, but giving people time for constructive internal reflection and even daydreaming. A lot of research is suggesting that the more that you demand people’s external attention, the less chance you are allowing them to dip into the default mode where daydreams and reflection happen — and lot of great ideas are not going to come from the brute force of work but from personal life experience. Mind-wandering seems to be essential to the creative process, and I don’t think a lot of businesses are aware of that fact.”

Neither are most multitaskers — which means, these days, most people. In a recent New York Times op-ed piece , neuroscientist and musician Daniel J. Levitin made the case that tweeting, Facebooking and emailing your way through the day saps creativity. “Daydreaming leads to creativity, and creative activities teach us agency, the ability to change the world, to mold it to our liking, to have a positive effect on our environment,” wrote Levitin, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload . In other words, we need time to hear the music in a babbling brook.

Measuring Creative Success

Is commercial viability the only gauge of creativity’s success? Wind points out that there are innovations in the arts whose value is best judged by other artists, and Goldenberg says peer expertise is sometimes required. “The only way to measure creativity is to use judges who grade many cases including the idea you want to grade,” notes Goldenberg. “This is a complex process and usually done in a research setup and not in practice. This means that a creative person repeats his or her success, and this is not an after-the-fact judgment of one random event.”

But Wind points out that in general, newness and usefulness are the main indicators of acts of great creativity. “I would take the extreme position that creativity has to have value to be successful,” he says. “You can come up with a lot of ideas, but if you are not adding value to the stakeholders, then they are not creative ideas.”

Airbnb certainly meets the criterion of adding value to stakeholders, and, according to Maeda of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the self-listing lodging clearinghouse stands an example of spectacularly creative thinking. “There are more people staying in Airbnb lodgings on any given night than all Hilton hotels combined,” Maeda notes of the company founded by the young and now-wealthy trio of Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia. “It showed plasticity in their creativity that went beyond their design training in making physical goods. They recognized the excess capacity available in everyone’s home, and they designed a scalable service to enable anyone to access that capacity. Their successful design for a service solved the trust barriers inherent to a peer-to-peer economy.”

Wind cites Uber as his example. “Uber is a truly creative approach as opposed to the traditional taxi,” he says. “How wonderful it is that you could leverage the network idea and create a new business.” The Uber model is now being emulated and adapted to other sectors — Ubers for laundry, snowplows and even wine delivery. But while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, Uber’s success is actually a cue for the genuinely creative types to move on to other ideas. Says Wind: “The first one [to establish the model] is the example of creativity. The secondary companies following Uber — they are not.”

More From Knowledge at Wharton

What Is the Role of Customers in the Gig Economy?

What does the labor side of manufacturing need over the next decade.

Can Intrapreneurship Help Close the Racial Wealth Gap?

Looking for more insights.

Creative Writing Can Be Taught: Creative Writing Professors Answer More Important Questions

Certified Writing Geek

Space Writer, Poet, Teacher

Dianne Donnelly, Anna Leahy, Tom C. Hunley, Tim Mayers, Dinty W. Moore, Stephanie Vanderslice. Compiled by Anna Leahy and Stephanie Vanderslice

On January 11th, 2012, Anis Shivani published a screed called " Can Creative Writing Be Taught? Therapy for the Disaffected Masses ."

We usually don't engage with him, in part because he doesn't engage with the work we do in creative writing. We're responding now because we think Anis Shivani is asking the wrong question, which he himself must know, because he answers his triggering question in the first sentence of his post (a familiar rhetorical strategy.)

When he writes of the workshop, "the student sits quietly while his work is read in front of him, not allowed to intervene as peers shred his work or occasionally praise it," he's not accurately portraying what we do in creative writing. We invite him and others to take a closer look at the exciting things that are happening in our field.

To begin, we offer some of the more important, more complex questions here.

Is there a crisis in literature?

TIM MAYERS: Those of us with even a cursory knowledge of literary criticism know that literature as a concept, as a canon, or as a term has been contested throughout its existence. To assert that a stable notion of literature has persisted throughout the history of writing is a spectacularly ignorant claim. Alexander Pope, for example, penned broadsides against the so-called hacks populating Grub Street. Not only does literature change in meaning over time, but it also is--and has been--the subject of deep disagreement among contemporaries. Yes, of course, literature is in crisis. That's its very nature. And that has little to do with the rise of creative writing in the academy.

ANNA LEAHY: Literature suggests a host of assumptions, including genius, isolation, and inspiration that only partially capture the writing life--then or now. Charles Darwin claimed that his idea of natural selection came to him in a flash, but Steven Johnson points out that Darwin's notebooks indicate he'd worked it out over almost three decades.

In a New Yorker article a few years ago , Malcolm Gladwell highlighted that the experimental innovator is at least as important as the precocious genius when we look at artistic talent and production. Creative writing is about doing the work of writing, and the experimental innovator benefits from time, support, and guidance. That's what creative writing classes and programs provide. That's what novelist John Irving said to John Stewart on The Daily Show , namely that a creative writing program and his mentor Kurt Vonnegut showed him, "You do these things better than those things. Why don't you do more of these things and fewer of those?" Irving remains grateful for the time this saved him in his development as a novelist.

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE: Conflating creative writing and literature doesn't serve a useful purpose, especially if the main issue is teaching. Thousands of creative writers--some publishing during their time, some not (Emily Dickinson)--aspire to write work of literary merit that will transcend their own era, or perhaps they merely aspire to a writing life because they are compelled to do so, just as a painter is compelled to paint. Most of these artists have evolved past the desire to simply express themselves. In fact, as studies like Greg Light's "How Students Understand and Learn Creative Writing in Higher Education" in Writing in Education show, realizing that making literary art transcends self-expression is the first step in the writer's development. Like most artists, they struggle to define their own aesthetic and to find their place within any number of literary traditions.

What's the role of therapy in creative writing?

DINTY W. MOORE: Creative writing as therapy is an easy charge to make because, to be honest, some folks do use it that way. There are, in fact, so-called memoir coaches who have made an industry out of helping people explore past trauma or family tragedy on the page, as a way to touch and understand hidden feelings. You can judge that as you wish, but that is not what happens in any college classroom I've observed and it is certainly not what happens in our many graduate creative writing programs. Critics of creative writing as an academic pursuit take a small, small part of the whole and attempt to paint the entire enterprise in one, inaccurate color.

TIM MAYERS: It would be silly to deny that some students--and some teachers--view writing as therapeutic. But it would be even sillier to box the entire enterprise of creative writing within the bounds of therapy. Many creative writing teachers actively discourage aspiring writers from focusing on the therapeutic or confessional aspects of writing. For example, I discourage my students from writing fiction that is based extensively on their own personal experiences, and I use story-generating prompts that compel students to write from perspectives different from their own.

ANNA LEAHY: Therapy may be a welcome side effect for some writers or in some workshops. Writing to express yourself? Yeah, you and everybody else. Self-expression is inevitable when we write, but that's not the goal of our classes. Creative writing is a different medium than the other ways we express ourselves, and those differences--the characteristics of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--are our focus. That's why creative writers usually talk about craft, revision, and how a poem or novel works, not merely what it says or means.

DIANNE DONNELLY: Anyone who studies a range of creative writing programs or has witnessed the emergence of new theories and practices over the last three decades or has looked at the books we've written (or even at the indices) will have trouble concluding that therapy is the dominant approach. Many of us are exploring the range of knowledge areas that distinguish the ways in which creative writers read, write, and respond differently than writers in other domains. Pointing to therapy, when discussing creative writing, dismisses the work of creative writing and its contribution to new knowledge.

How do writers in creative writing programs interact and learn?

ANNA LEAHY: In a book called The Creating Brain , Nancy Andreasen (who is a professor of psychology and a former professor of Renaissance literature) argues, "creative people are likely to be more productive and more original if surrounded by other creative people. This too produces an environment in which the creative brain is stimulated to form novel connections and novel ideas."

A creative writing program is this sort of environment. Students in a workshop learn from writing, which is usually done in isolation, but they also learn from interactions over time, whether that's brainstorming ideas, receiving feedback from the instructor and peers, or offering critiques. In fact, my students comment that they learn how to revise from responding to others' work even more than from direct feedback they receive. This process leads each student toward distinguishing her voice. The interactions nudge innovation because, as Andreasen says, "creative people are individualistic and confident." They don't want to be just like everybody else.

TIM MAYERS: In most of the workshops in my classes, I do not ask students to consider how the poem or story in question could be made better; instead, I ask them to consider various ways it could be made differently. I encourage people to see more of the possibilities inherent in their own writing and the possibilities inherent in their classmates' writing. The idea is that the more possibilities the writer sees, the more the writer might be able to make an informed decision about how to change the piece in question or, in some cases, whether or not to continue working on it at all.

TOM HUNLEY: In the poem, "Shatterings," from his new collection, Here and Now , Stephen Dunn writes : "My class is called Whatever I Feel Like / Talking About. No matter what the subject, / over the years it's been the only course / I've ever taught." The speaker of Dunn's poem is describing an old-school approach to teaching creative writing that, happily, is on the way out.

In Colors of a Different Horse , one of the dozens of fine books on creative writing pedagogy, Wendy Bishop recalls a graduate workshop in the 1970s in which students sat at the feet of "a famous white-haired poet" who "returned no annotated texts, gave no tests, shared no grading standards, kept to no schedule or syllabus, designed no curriculum." This kind of old-school teaching has proven unproductive and frequently destructive. That's why it's rare to find these days. Many of us are good teachers who interact with our students and their writing and who work hard to encourage their learning. Good teachers don't just do whatever we feel like.

DINTY W. MOORE: Good creative writing teachers demand that students isolate specific craft-based strengths or flaws in their critique: Is the chronology confusing? Are the characters under-formed? Is the language flat? Are there inconsistencies in tone, voice, plotting, or metaphor? I like to use the metaphor of an auto mechanic: in my workshops, we lift the front hood to see into the engine of a story or essay, study the moving parts, determine which parts are properly aligned, which are slipping, which are leaking oil, and which are perhaps not needed at all. You learn a lot about writing by studying hundreds of narrative engines.

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE: Some serious studies--again, I'm thinking of Greg Light in particular--show that students move through a series of stages as learning writers, stages that demonstrate they are improving, not as imitators of their teachers, but as artists who have gone beyond self-expression to grapple with serious literary and aesthetic considerations, considerations that result in literary accomplishments. Those of us who have taught creative writing over a long period of time--and the six of us have--can probably attest to this development. We see it in our students.

Why don't creative writing professors explain what they're doing?

STEPHANIE VANDERSLICE: We do! Teachers of creative writing are engaged with each other--this post is not our first conversation--and with our students about what we do as teachers in creative writing programs. In the past ten years or so, there has been a great deal written to share and analyze our approaches. Books in creative writing pedagogy include Katherine Haake's What Our Speech Disrupts , MaryAnn Cain's Revisioning Writer's Talk , and Carl Vandermeulen's Negotiating the Personal in Creative Writing . Of course, all six of us in this conversation have published books about writing and teaching.

TOM HUNLEY: The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference recently issued a new version of The Director's Handbook , a compendium of guidelines for creative writing programs. And AWP's annual conference is coming up. Many of us will present on and attend panels about teaching. Topics range from teaching the novel to critiquing the workshop to online teaching strategies to using unconventional methods from other fields to K-12 teaching. And that's just a sampling from the first day. The conference is a month away, but it just sold out, with 9,300 attendees. That's a lot of teachers getting together to examine their teaching.

DIANNE DONNELLY: Indeed, there's a lot going on in creative writing. Graeme Harper cautions us not to moor our students' learning to one specific island when he suggests that the "learning of creative writing" by our students "gains nothing at all from being considered the remit of only one type of learner or one type of teacher." Many writer-teacher-scholars, like Harper, more accurately describe creative writing as fluid and as an academic discipline that does not stand still for very long.

DINTY W. MOORE: In law school, students analyze past cases, construct arguments, and write opinions, so that eventually they can do these things well enough to practice law. Could they do this outside of law school? Yes, but law school facilitates the process, and the law professor offers guiding thoughts along the way. Writing instruction is no different. The goal is to offer the occasional guiding thought or idea, the craft lesson, a few instructive models, and the occasional critical nudge, while all the time encouraging the student to practice writing, practice revising, and practice, practice, practice as a means to improvement. It works.

Dianne Donnelly , Ph.D., is the editor of Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? , the author of Establishing Creative Writing Studies as an Academic Discipline , and co-editor of Key Issues in Creative Writing . She teaches at the University of South Florida.

Tom C. Hunley , M.F.A., Ph.D., is the author of Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach, The Poetry Gymnasium , and the poetry collection Octopus . He is an associate professor at Western Kentucky University.

Anna Leahy , M.F.A., Ph.D., is the editor of Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom and author of Constituents of Matter , which won the Wick Poetry Prize. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University, and co-writes the Lofty Ambitions blog .

Tim Mayers , Ph.D., is the author of (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing , and The Future of English Studies . He teaches at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Dinty W. Moore , M.F.A., is the author of Crafting the Personal Essay and The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life . He directs the graduate creative writing program at Ohio University.

Stephanie Vanderslice , M.F.A., Ph.D., is the author of Rethinking Creative Writing and the co-editor of Can It Really Be Taught? She directs the Arkansas Writers M.F.A. program at the University of Central Arkansas.

Support HuffPost

Our 2024 coverage needs you, your loyalty means the world to us.

At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions. That is why we are committed to providing deeply reported, carefully fact-checked news that is freely accessible to everyone.

Whether you come to HuffPost for updates on the 2024 presidential race, hard-hitting investigations into critical issues facing our country today, or trending stories that make you laugh, we appreciate you. The truth is, news costs money to produce, and we are proud that we have never put our stories behind an expensive paywall.

Would you join us to help keep our stories free for all? Your contribution of as little as $2 will go a long way.

Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.

As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.

Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.

Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.

Dear HuffPost Reader

Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?

The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you’ll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.

Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.

Popular in the Community

From our partner, more in books.

Can creative writing be taught?

By Michelle Barker

It’s a question that strikes anxiety into the hearts of all writers who make a living teaching writing, and doubt into the wallets of all MFA students who spend a fortune on their creative writing degree. Some people believe the answer is, fundamentally, no. There is this intangible quality called talent that you either have or you don’t. It’s true of every skill, be it piano, carpentry, or tennis. But just because some people have more talent than others, I don’t think it follows that a person cannot learn to become a better writer. Writing is a craft. The craft has rules. The rules have exceptions. All of these things can be taught, and it’s essential to learn them if you want to write well. Can everyone become a great writer? No. Not everyone who learns to play the piano is going to be Mozart. Not everyone who learns to play tennis will be Nadal. So what? Just because you might not end up being Mozart, does this mean you shouldn’t take piano lessons? How do you know you’re not Mozart unless you do take lessons? Even if it turns out you’re not Mozart, you can still derive joy from playing the piano. Writing is no different. I believe a writing teacher’s (and an editor’s) job is to take whatever his or her students start with and shape it into the best thing it can be. Each writer is unique. They bring their own material to the table. What they should leave with is the best possible version of that unique material. I would go so far as to say talent is an overrated component. If I was a gambler, I’d put my money on an average writer who knows how to work hard over someone who is supposedly talented but doesn’t know how to apply the AOC rule (Ass On Chair). Talent is a trickster. It makes you think you can get it right the first time—and sure, that might work for a little while. But sooner or later every writer encounters a manuscript that threatens to kill them. They get it wrong, and must revise. It’s wrong again; more revision. Still wrong. In fact, so wrong, the writer must start again. And so it goes, until you want to throw your laptop out the window. If you have not learned how to work hard, this is where you quit. Because it’s hard. It’s hard, and it’s frustrating and demoralizing and it makes you think that in all your years of writing you have actually never learned anything. And if you haven’t learned how to work hard, I would argue that you didn’t learn the most important aspect of writing. Working hard means being open to revision, being humble enough to accept criticism, and being willing to keep working until you get it right. But here’s the problem with writing. At a basic level, we all know how to do it, which makes it unlike learning how to play the violin or becoming a master carpenter. No one would pick up a violin expecting to be able to play it well the first time they try. No one would expect to build a beautiful cabinet without undertaking a long apprenticeship. Yet, because we can write an essay or a letter, we figure we can also write a short story or even a novel. I have heard people say, “I’d like to write a novel one day,” in the same tone they’d say, “I’d like to go to Paris one day,” as if writing a novel was a simple matter of picking up a pen and investing in a notebook. Unfortunately, in one sense, writing is exactly like the violin or carpentry. It requires a long apprenticeship before you can expect to sell your work. If it’s a novel we’re talking about, the apprenticeship is even longer. I believe you have to write a number of novels before you figure out how to write a good one. One million words of crap, one teacher told me. That’s how many it takes before the words start coming out good. Writing isn't only taught in the classroom. I like to think of editing as a form of one-on-one teaching. And as a bonus, I learn just as much from editing as I do from being edited, because quite often the issues I see in other people’s manuscripts also pop up in my own. I don’t think there will ever come a time where I’ll be able to say I know all there is to know about writing. Every time I attend a conference, or edit a manuscript, or have my own work edited, I learn something new. Every time I read a brilliant novel, I realize I need to study more, practice harder, keep working. Writing is a lifelong pursuit of learning how to get it right. As soon as you’ve figured it out, your manuscript is done and you get to start again—invariably with new challenges and at least one character who is determined to turn your hair grey.

Michelle Barker, senior editor and award-winning novelist

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and poet. Her most recent publication, co-authored with David Brown, is Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling . Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in literary reviews worldwide. She has published three YA novels (one fantasy and two historical fiction), a historical picture book, and a chapbook of poetry. Michelle holds a BA in English literature (UBC) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). Many of the writers she’s worked with have gone on to win publishing contracts and honours for their work. Michelle lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada.

Immersion & Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling

Share Share on Facebook
Tweet Tweet on Twitter
Pin it Pin on Pinterest

About the Darling Axe

Our editors are industry professionals and award-winning writers. We offer narrative development, editing, and coaching for every stage of your manuscript's journey to publication.

Work with a professional fiction editor from the Darling Axe: manuscript development and book editing services

Book Broker: an interview with Eva Scalzo

Story Skeleton—To the Lighthouse

Inside Job: What is an Inner Conflict and Why Does Your Protagonist Need One?

IMAGES

Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? : Resisting Lore in Creative
Creative Writing For Beginners: Unlock Your Creativity
Primary Creative Writing Classes
What is Creative Writing and How to Use it for Specific Academic Level
Creative Writing Tips: A Beginner’s Guide to Creative Writing

VIDEO

What Shield Hero Can TEACH You About Trust (hopefully)
Creative writing can be difficult. Especially if you’re a beginner writing a novel or book #writing
Reader is Leader #Shorts #Motivation #success
Reader is Leader #Shorts #Motivation #success
Episode 9
"Can Creative Writing be Taught?"

COMMENTS

Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught?
Revised and updated throughout, this 10th-anniversary edition of Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? is a significantly expanded guide to key issues and practices in creative writing teaching today.Challenging the myths of creative writing teaching, experienced and up-and-coming teachers explore what works in the classroom and workshop and what does not.
Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught?
Revised and updated throughout, this 10th-anniversary edition of Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? is a significantly expanded guide to key issues and practices in creative writing teaching today. Challenging the myths of creative writing teaching, experienced and up-and-coming teachers explore what works in the classroom and workshop and ...
PDF 7 Creative Writing: Can It Be Taught?
the writing courses at the University of Alberta in 1939 and he taught them until his death in 1962; it was my great fortune to be in his class on both Shakespeare and creative writing - a superb combination - and to have him as a supervisor for my master's thesis. Ifhe felt an argument or a sentence had to be taken apart,
Can Writing Be Taught?
Writing can be taught, but it deserves to be taught better than this. Zoë Heller is the author of three novels: "Everything You Know"; "Notes on a Scandal," which was shortlisted for the ...
What is Creative Writing? A Key Piece of the Writer's Toolbox
5 Key Characteristics of Creative Writing. Creative writing is marked by several defining characteristics, each working to create a distinct form of expression: 1. Imagination and Creativity:Creative writing is all about harnessing your creativity and imagination to create an engaging and compelling piece of work.
Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
When someone asks, "Can creative writing be taught?" the. questioner is usually a self-made writer or a critic, like John W. Aldridge who in the current issue ofAmerican Scholar ("The New American Assembly-Line Fiction/An Empty Blue Cen. ter") blames the contemporary low estate of literature on the safety and homogenization of writers' workshops.
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered by some academics (mostly in the US) to be an extension of the English discipline, even though it is taught around the world in many languages. The English discipline is traditionally seen as the critical study of literary forms, not the creation of literary forms. Some academics see creative writing as a ...
Can It Really Be Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy
Creative writing in America is only now discovering itself as a discipline that not only produces literary texts but also knowledge about how texts are written and received and how creative writing is and can be taught. This book is a move in the right direction toward exploring the scholarship of creative writing in the university.
PDF Introduction to Prose & Poetry: the Practice and Craft of Creative Writing
to talk about how writing can't be taught, and this is partly true: creative writing does involve vision and self-motivation, which put together people often call talent. But it's only partly true that creative writing can't be taught, and it's even less true that it can't be learned. Think of the writer you most admire right
What Is Creative Writing? Types, Techniques, and Tips
Simply put, creative writing is any writing that falls outside of technical, journalistic, or academic writing. You can think of it as classic storytelling. It can be written with a number of intentions: to entertain us, comfort us, or teach us a lesson; most importantly, good creative writing speaks to our shared human experience.
What Is Creative Writing? (Ultimate Guide + 20 Examples)
Creative writing is an art form that transcends traditional literature boundaries. It includes professional, journalistic, academic, and technical writing. This type of writing emphasizes narrative craft, character development, and literary tropes. It also explores poetry and poetics traditions.
Why the teaching of creative writing matters
The recent Sunday Times league tables for universities ranked the quality of teaching in creative writing at The University of Bolton as the best in the country. The programme there also boasts ...
Can Writing Be Taught?
Ira Glass, award-winning radio host of This American Life, storyteller, producer, writer, and all around talent, has a very clear message.When you first start writing, you're going to suck, but ...
Creative Writing: Can It Be Taught?
Abstract. For 21 years I have been working in creative writing classrooms in schools, colleges and universities, both in the United States and Canada; if I don't think that creative writing can be taught, I'm either a charlatan or an idiot. Now it is quite likely that persons (perhaps even academics) exist who believe me to be either, or ...
Inspiring Ink: Expert Tips on How to Teach Creative Writing
1. Creative writing fosters creativity and imagination. It encourages you to think outside the box, broaden your perspective, and explore new ideas. It also enhances your ability to communicate effectively, as it involves conveying thoughts, emotions, and narratives in a clear and compelling manner. 2.
Creativity and Innovation in the Writing Classroom
Creativity is fundamental to the teaching of writing. Although WR 153 focuses specifically on creativity and innovation, all WR courses ask students to approach their reading, viewing, writing, and research in creative ways. One important approach to creativity is "design thinking," which emphasizes that creativity is a non-linear ...
The Teachable Talent: Why Creative Writing Can Be Taught
Can creative writing be taught? I've always hated the question, in part because of its passive construction, which omits both students and teachers.It has always seemed to me to imply some abstract learning scenario wherein a generic would-be writer is acted upon by unnamed forces and thereby caused to understand the obscure codes and formulas of creative writing.
Can Creativity Be Taught?
The salient question isn't whether creativity can be taught, notes Kaufman, since everyone is creative, but rather demonstrating faith in the creativity of workers.
Is Creative Writing a Talent, Or Can It Be Learned?
Synonymous with the word potential, talent is defined as a natural ability or skill. Just as most people can read a book, do basic mathematics and write sentences, writing is a skill most educated ...
What is Creative Writing? (Definition + Tips for Getting Started)
Creative writing is as much about showing as it is about telling. Practicing descriptive writing brings your characters, settings, and scenes to life. Try to engage all the reader's senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. This helps to create an immersive experience for your reader and make your writing more memorable.
Creative Writing Can Be Taught: Creative Writing Professors ...
In a New Yorker article a few years ago, Malcolm Gladwell highlighted that the experimental innovator is at least as important as the precocious genius when we look at artistic talent and production.Creative writing is about doing the work of writing, and the experimental innovator benefits from time, support, and guidance. That's what creative writing classes and programs provide.
Can Writing Be Taught? The Beginning Writer Learns To Write
Zoe Heller put it well, when she said that, "No one seriously disputes that good writing has certain demonstrable rules, principles and techniques." In so far as that is true, then absolutely writing can, and should, be taught. Writers and writing teachers often mistake the goal of the creative writing class. It is not to create masters.
Can creative writing be taught?
Can creative writing be taught? April 18, 2019. By Michelle Barker. It's a question that strikes anxiety into the hearts of all writers who make a living teaching writing, and doubt into the wallets of all MFA students who spend a fortune on their creative writing degree. Some people believe the answer is, fundamentally, no.