Creative Writing

Most people would rather talk than write. Pressed for creative writing, they draw a blank, or feel either that they have nothing new to say or that whatever they have to say could be said better by someone else. Yet when you talk to hesitant writers about assignments at work or school, you find they have too much to say: they are swamped by their research, and feel helpless in trying to sort out their own arguments in a clear and forceful way.

Most professional writers agree that the surest way to become a better writer is to read, think, and write a great deal. This site offers an intensive program in creative writing. Many of the exercises present you with a set of jumbled sentences which are like pieces of a puzzle that can be arranged into a complete picture. You will read the sentences and analyze the ideas to see how each piece fits together with the other pieces to form a coherent description or argument. Then you will write the sentences (from memory as much as possible) in the best logical order to form a convincing, informative paper. In some sections you will be asked to organize and write sentences for several such papers before beginning your own, original papers.

Do not think this is a waste of time. The creative writing exercises give you firsthand experience with a variety of ideas as well as sentence and argument patterns that you can employ in your own writing. Of course you also will be asked to write original and creative papers. You will be given guidance in going through the steps used by successful writers. In fact, some sections are totally devoted to helping you write your own generalization-specifics papers - the type required on many writing exams. But the sentence arranging exercises will provide a foundation of experience with language and idea patterns that you can draw upon for these original papers.