Creative Writing SA1

Sensory Details

  • Make a story come alive for the reader

  • Add depth to the narrative

    • Helping the readers feel as if they're experiencing the world of the story firsthand

  • Are powerful and memorable because they allow the reader to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel your words

  • Writers can create vivid, immersive scenes that evoke emotions, set the mood, and bring characters and settings to life

 

Types of Sensory Images

  • Sight

    • Visual details

      • Including colors, shapes, sizes, patterns, light, and darkness

    • What we can see

      • Including visual descriptions

    • Writers use sight to create atmosphere, establish, mood, and highlight important aspects of the scene

  • Sound

    • Auditory details

    • Engages the reader's sense of hearing

      • Allows them to experience what the characters hear

    • Helps create a mood

    • Can heighten tension of evoke a sense of calm,

    • Uses onomatopoeia and alliteration

  • Smell

    • Olfactory details

    • Descriptions about fragrance

    • Most evocative sense and can trigger strong emotions in readers

  • Taste

    • Gustatory details

    • Can add a unique layer to the story

    • Can enhance scenes that involve blood, food, and drink

    • Helps ground the reader in the physical sensations of the character

  • Touch

    • Tactile details

    • Refers to physical sensations character feel through their skin

    • Makes readers more connected to the characters

    • Helps readers understand the physical world of the story

 

What to Avoid?

  • Too many adjectives

    • Retain only the most powerful words in your writing

    • Delete any unnecessary words

  • Too many adverbs

  • Cliched figures of speech

    • Overused language signals a lack of imagination

Character

  • Refers to a textual representation of a being that gives like to a story

  • Refers to real or imaginary individuals who take part in the action of the story

  • Their intentions drive the plot and create suspense

 

How Are Characters Known?

  • Characterization

    • The way character are introduced and developed in the text through:

      • Direct and indirect revelations

      • Representations of characters' thoughts

      • In the case of first-person- narrations, the stream of consciousness style

        • A technique that immerses readers in a character's inner world, through, and sensory perceptions as they flow without filter

 

Methods of Characterization

  • Physical description of the characters

  • Description by another character

  • The character's speech

  • Explanation of the character's thoughts and actions

  • The character's responses and reactions to the other characters or situations

 

Types of Characters

  • Protagonist

    • Known as the hero or heroine

    • Character who dominates the story

    • Most fully developed

    • They are traditionally or conventionally an outstanding character with meaningful character traits

  • Antagonist

    • Character who opposes the efforts of the protagonist

    • May or may bot be equal in force to the protagonist

    • May be a major character or a minor one

    • Doesn't have to be a person

      • Can be things like death, the devil, or illnesses

      • Basically any challenge prevents the character from living a happily ever after

  • Anti Hero

    • A protagonist who has the opposite or most of the traditional attributes of a hero

    • They may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely pathetic

  • Tragic Hero

    • Protagonist who comes to a bad end as a result of their own behavior

      • Usually caused by a specific personality disorder or character flaw

    • Qualities

      • Of high noble stature

      • Has a tragic flaw

        • Excessive pride called "hubris"

      • Hero's tragic flaw causes him to experience a "reversal of fortune"

      • Audience experiences "catharsis"

      • Ending: a tragic hero experiences self-awareness, isolation and a feeling of defeat

  • Flat Characters

    • Have one or two personality traits and are often recognizable as stereotypes

    • Is the same sort of person from the beginning until the end

  • Round Characters

    • Have multiple personality traits

    • More like real people

    • Is complex, multi-dimensional, and convincing perhaps even contradictory

  • Static Characters

    • Character who remain the same throughout a work

  • Dynamic Characters

    • They grow in understanding

    • Climax of this growth is sometimes an epiphany

  • Stock Characters

    • Stereotypical character

    • Known by having one personality trait

  • Sacrificial Characters

    • Their sole dramatic purpose is to die

  • Foil Character

    • They serve as a contrast to the protagonist or any other character to highlight the character's qualities

  • Bit Players

    • Has a very small role in the story

  • Psycho

    • Has mental issues stemming from a trauma or unfortunate experience

  • Phobic

    • Refers to an individual who tends to deal with anxiety by extreme or fearful avoidance

  • The Confidant

    • The protagonist confides or relies on them for support

  • Unseen/Absent Character

    • They are mentioned in the story but doesn't have any involvement in the series of actions or in the dialogue

Point of View

  • Is a metaphor that indicated the location from which the narrator sees everything in the narrative

  • Can be called perspective

  • Vantage point from which an author presents a story

 

Types of Point of Views

  • First Person

    • One of the character tells the story and uses the first person pronoun "I"

    • Narration is restricted to what one character says he or she observes

    • Narrator may be a major character located at the center of events or a minor character who observes the action from the side lines

    • There can be a possible distortion of the truth since there is a tendency to be subjective in telling their story

    • They could be self-deceived, untruthful, gullible, mentally troubled, or limited in understanding, or self-serving

  • Second Person

    • A rarely-used technique of narrative in which the action is driven by a character ascribed to the reader

    • Reader is immersed in the narrative as a character involved in the story

    • Narrator describes that "you" do and lets you into your own thoughts and background

  • Third Person

    • Narrator exists outside of the events of the story and related the action of the characters by referring to their names

    • One problem with this is the writer cannot describe himself physically unless he describes him image in a mirror

    • Types of Third Person

      • Omniscient

        • Narrator is "outside" the story

        • Narrator refers to all the characters in the third person

        • Narrator assumes near complete knowledge of the character's actions, thoughts, and locations

      • Limited

        • Narrator refers to the characters in the third person and have more knowledge of the fictional world that we do

        • They limit their perspective to the mind of one reader

          • Character may be a main or peripheral character

      • Objective

        • Narrator refers to the characters in the third person

        • Display omniscient knowledge of places, times, and events

        • They don't enter the minds of any characters

        • Narrator reports the event that take place without knowing the motivation of thought of any of the characters

        • Little is known about what drives the characters until we hear them speak or observe their actions

  • Multiple Points of View

    • Authors sometimes include several point of view in the same work

    • Point of view here becomes a means of developing characters and making point about the limits of human perception