Creative Writing Grammar

[Aide Broeckel]

Creativewriting is writing meant to evoke emotion in a reader by communicating a theme. In storytelling (including literature, movies, graphic novels, creative nonfiction, and many video games), the theme is the central meaning the work communicates.

But what about things like blog posts? Or personal essays? These are broad categories, and specific pieces in these categories can be considered creative writing if they meet the criteria listed above. This blog post, for example, is not a piece of creative writing as it aims to inform, but a blog post that walks its reader through a first-person narrative of an event could be deemed creative writing.

Short stories are fictional stories that fall generally between 5,000 and 10,000 words. Like novels, they tell complete stories and have at least one character, some sort of conflict, and at least one theme.

Plays are meant to be performed on stage. Screenplays are meant to be made into films, and TV scripts are meant to be made into television programs. Scripts for videos produced for other platforms fit into this category as well.

Maybe, though, writing programs and workshops could train writers to focus their energy somewhere other than assessment, prizes, and reviews. Maybe, in refusing to take aesthetic values for granted, in uncovering and starting conversations about the ethics these aesthetics manifest, creative writing classrooms could become spaces for considering the role of writers and the work they create as actors in a public space, agents of the sort of social change that begins when a reader is changed.

As part of code switching, we frequently modify our register without conscious thought; however, as with many writing skills, bringing a dose of intentionality to all aspects of our writing can help us make thoughtful decisions to achieve the precise effects that we desire.

The most obvious place to consider register in fiction or other narrative writing is in character dialogue. In different situations, different characters speak differently, and register as much as anything else is part of that language shift. A character who speaks informally to his friend will switch to a formal register in an official setting; a character who flouts social convention may reject formal register, using informal language when she speaks to people in authority, and this refusal to follow the rules of register can be part of what builds her rebellious character.

But register is just as relevant for our narrators: first person narrators, true characters in their own right, routinely tell their stories through vulgar all the way up to formal registers, and the register used has a powerful impact on how readers perceive that character and connect to the narration. While third person narrators more commonly tend toward formal language, I find the idea of an informal third-person narrator actually a quite appealing experiment.

Another consideration is reading level. Highly formal language also tends to be more challenging for readers to comprehend, and it can make therefore for a slower reading experience. Pacing of a story can actually be heightened by lowering the register.

English is a great mutt, a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic-language words overlaid with Norman French and Latin-derived words, not to mention the host of other loanwords English has accumulated from Wampanoag to Persian.

In modern English, words of Germanic origin lower register, while French or Latin vocabulary raises the register. Latin-derived words are often slightly higher in register than the French. Many English words have Germanic, French, and Latin synonyms that can be interchanged to affect register.

Phrasal verbs (which, in any case, are also Germanic) lower register in English. These are called phrasal verbs because they contain two words (like a phrase), usually a main verb plus a preposition. So bring up is lower-register than mention; put in is lower-register than insert.

Most idiomatic expressions and clichs also lower the register of a text. A house that cost you an arm and a leg is less formal than a house that cost you a lot, even if the expression is less colorful!

The sentence structures we use also significantly impact register. While a general rule applies that simpler, shorter sentences equate with lower register, some specific considerations can help us use our grammar as precisely as possible:

The passive voice makes a sentence more formal in English. This is a tricky one, however, because the passive voice also lowers the energy of a sentence and is therefore often avoided in academic contexts that otherwise require formal register:

The more a sentence employs subordinate or dependent clauses, the more formal it becomes. Subordinate clauses are sections of a sentence that contain a subject and verb but cannot stand on their own. Some subordinate clauses will always appear even in informal writing, but we can choose to layer them up or to highlight them through more prominent placement in order to raise the formality of a passage. Take a look at this example:

English has a surprising number of ways to make questions! Generally, a direct question is considered neutral-to-informal in register. We can raise the register by using an indirect question and lower the register through a question tag:

One wonderful feature of English is its occasional ability to mess with word order for a particularly formal effect. In certain contexts (usually involving a negative adverb at the beginning of a sentence), the subject and verb of the sentence can be switched:

Almost all texts mix formal and informal language features to some degree, and from this comes the continuum of registers in English, from utterly informal texts that have never seen an inverted subject-verb order in their lives to legalese where every contraction would be anathema. The most natural writing will be somewhere in between, combining formal and informal features intentionally to create the effect we desire.

Bad grammar is a distraction. If you can write a riveting story, readers will probably overlook a few grammatical problems. However, each mistake or incorrect construction will momentarily yank readers out of the story. Sure, they can jump back in, but it makes for a negative or unpleasant reading experience.

Good craftsmanship involves more than simply knowing the grammar rules or adhering to a style guide. It includes making smart word choices, constructing sentences that flow smoothly, and writing in a way that is neither awkward nor confusing.

How very true. I go over my manuscripts many times but always find when I sent it to be edited that I have missed several things. I think it pays to have a beta reader go through your work before having it edited and submitting to an agent/publishing company.

Always check your work for how it looks visually as black-on-white-space. Effective writing is often about managing the balance between printed text and white space for dramatic effect. An example would be this sentence-paragraph:

Know your audience. I am a man but I know how to write for women when it is called for. Effective use of these gender cues will endear you to your audience. Example: Sensory cues such as fragrances and color subtleties appeal to most women while most men like action words and urban vernacular like Kapow! and WTF!

I will round out my best writing practices comments with this: NEVER give away your art. Value yourself and your craft and your audience will respond in kind. Walk away from underpaying freelance assignments. Resist the urge to slash your book price to jump-start sales. Why should J.K. Rowling get rich at your expense?

I recommend the Chicago Manual of Style for fiction writers. As for dialogue and thoughts, I personally try to avoid including too many thoughts in narrative. I put dialogue in quotation marks and use italics for thoughts, which differentiates them quite effectively.

In my opinion,writing might be separated to two parts that one of these required really more information and grammar rules others must be just to communicate some people.What is this?So,writing might be art or just we use for communicating.If we understand this difference and we realize why we want to use writing skills,we say that writing is too hard or not.

I was smart enough to learn the most boring and unnecessary lessons at teacher college. In spite of this, I believe I became a decent teacher. Now that I am retired, I am highly motivated to earn a bit of income to be able to pay my bills. Could you please tell me what fundamentals of grammar I must master first.

I join the dozens of people who have already thanked you. I find that these rules are written in an easy to understand form. I may sometimes make some of these mistakes due to carelessness, but I try to always correct what I have written.

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Brett Healey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

My research with year 5 students examined one method of teaching grammar for writing. We can teach students how to imagine the scene they are creating, and then teach them which grammatical features help turn their imagination into text.

Many of the students wanted to create action scenes in their stories, which they did using the previous strategies. However, they lacked the energy felt in an action-packed novel. I showed them a sentence like this one from The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands.

The students could see how energy transfers across the clauses, like dominoes, from noun to noun. In this case, the energy starts with the musket ball, and transfers to hair, window frame and finally the shower of splinters, carried by the action verbs.

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