Creative Writing Final Study Guide

Poetry (Based on Textbook & Poetry Quiz)

Chapter 1

Speaker:

• is the persona or “character” that either speaks or lets the audience into their mind.

• Even if the poet is clearly writing an autobiographical poem, it’s still the speaker who narrates or guides the poem.

• The poet is never the speaker, which should give the poet license to take bold risks

First person:

• “I” could signal narrative or introspection or confession.

Second person:

• When second person “you” is used there is a kind of imperative, implied or stated, and there is also an audience.

• Pause to consider the audience.

Third person:

• When a poem uses third person: “he,” “she,” “it,” “they,” this is third person.

• Using third person allows the poet a number of options to tell someone’s story or shift focus to objects, moods, and things within a poem.

Chapter 2

“Prose tends to convey its ideas in sentences that follow grammatical rules, and the sentences run from margin to margin. Whereas poetry can experiment with rules of grammar, omit grammar altogether, and use line breaks”.

Stanza:

• stanzas in poetry have different purposes: to disclose a speaker’s feelings, a speaker’s change of perspective, to provide imagery, etc. (Think of: Rooms)

• Often, a stanza break in form is mark the end and subsequent beginning of a rhyming pattern.

  • Ex. when no stanza: the fact that it's written in one long stanza with no breaks indicates the pompousness of the speaker as he goes on and on.

Line and Line Break:

“Lines can also be decided with systems of order, such as grammar: phrases, clauses, or sentences. Spatial order is another organizational system, with lines roughly the same length.”

• Formal Verse

  • syllable count (haiku), rhyme (ballads), or meter (Petrarchan sonnet) that determines the line length

• Free Verse

  • what determines the line length is more variable.

• Enjambment

  • when a line of poetry continues beyond the end of the line, without a pause or break, and flows into the next line. It creates a sense of movement and can add suspense, urgency, or a natural speech-like quality to the poem.(.,:;—)

• End-Stopped

  • conclude a thought or phrase at the end of the line with punctuation such as a period, comma, semicolon, or colon. This creates a sense of completion or pause at each line.

Chapter 3

Rhythm:

• an audible pattern created by intervals between stressed syllables

Meter:

• a measurable rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse.

• Look for: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, this is called a metrical foot. Secondly, count how many feet are in a line.

Alliteration:

• the repetition of consonant sounds, usually in the beginning of the word or the accented syllable.

  • ex: The whispering winds wove through the willows.

  • “speckled with barnacles”

  • “the whole bed bends and bounces”

Assonance:

• the repetition of similar vowel sounds in close proximity, and usually these vowel sounds are in the middle of words.

  • ex: The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

  • “tiny white sea-lice”

Chapter 4

“Good art should disrupt us, make us pay attention, make us do a little work.”

Tension:

• all art contains struggle, I’ve heard this described as “tension” or “what’s at stake” in a poem.

• The new treatment on these old subjects comes from tension, experimentation, and innovation of language and image.

Imitation:

• find poets whose work inspires you, and copy their line breaks, syntax, diction, patterns of thought and imagery.

Ekphrastic:

• The word “ekphrastic” is Greek for “description.”

• An ekphrastic poem is a poem that describes another work of art.

Chapter 5

Endings:

• When a poem really lands its ending, you can feel it. You might see the ending coming, but more likely probably not, and the poem takes off in a new direction.

• Endings are there to be fully engaged with.

• The entire poem was a set up for the ending.

Chapter 6

“Figures of speech (figurative language) are expressions that use words to achieve effects beyond the power of ordinary language”

Personification:

• a great device that gives human qualities to something that is not human.

Metaphor:

• a comparison between essentially unlike things, or the application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable.

• An extended metaphor, one that runs throughout the poem, is called a conceit.

Simile:

• a comparison between two essentially unlike things using words “such as,” “like,” and “as.”

Concrete:

• if you can touch it, it’s concrete, if you can’t, it’s not

Abstract:

• Abstraction is expressing a thought without a concrete image

• (When you can express an abstraction or generalization with something concrete, this is when figurative language is at its best.)

Chapter 7

Sonnet:

• a fourteen-line poem traditionally written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization.

• No stanza breaks.

Tanka:

• a five-line poem of thirty-one syllables, using the syllable pattern of 5/7/5/7/7 across the lines.

• A “flexible line”, tanka, three lines with a variation of 10/11/10 syllables.

Prose Poem:

• a poem written without line breaks and uses fragmentation, compression, repetition, and internal rhyme, as well as the span of figurative language.

Chapter 8 (and more)

Adjectives:

• modify nouns and explain how

Verbs:

• bring action and experience

Sensory Language:

• draws upon experience gathered from the five senses: touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell

Denotation:

• the dictionary meaning of a word.

Connotation:

• the implied or suggested meaning associated with a word or phrase.

Tenor/Vehicle:

• Tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed in a metaphor. It’s the underlying idea or principal subject being conveyed.

• Vehicle is the image or concept through which the tenor is conveyed. It’s the means or medium through which the metaphor’s attributes are transferred.

  • For example, in the metaphor "time is a thief":

    • Tenor: Time (the subject being described)

    • Vehicle: Thief (the image providing attributes to the tenor)

  • “We sighed like trains”

Ground/Tension:

• Ground refers to the commonalities between the tenor and the vehicle—the aspects they share which make the metaphor meaningful.

• Tension refers to the differences or dissimilarities between the tenor and the vehicle, which create a rich, complex meaning in the metaphor.

  • In the previous example, the ground is the idea that both time and a thief can stealthily take things away, while the tension arises from the fact that time is an abstract concept, and a thief is a concrete entity.

(/) Foward Slash:

• indicator for a line break. ex: Roses are red / Violets are blue

Caesura (Pause/Break):

• a pause for a beat in the rhythm of a verse, often indicated by a line break or by punctuation.

Volta:

• a rhetorical shift that marks the change of a thought or argument in a poem.

Poetry Quiz

• Poets should not rely on cliches

• Beginning poets may be specific, not abstraction

• Poems are not double-spaced (can also only be one line!)

• Contemporary poems do not typically rhyme

• Alliteration, Assonance, Anaphora, Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Figurative Language.

• abba abba cdd cee = rhyme scheme

Creative Non-Fiction (Based on Textbook)

Chapter 1

Genre

• Poetry: Composed with an ear toward linguistic music. Most contemporary poetry would be considered lyrical.

• Prose: Composed with the sentence in mind, with unbroken lines organized into paragraphs. Within prose, we distinguish between Non-fiction and fiction.

What is Creative Non-Fiction (CNF)?

• Creative non-fiction is a genre of writing that combines factual accounts found in nonfiction with literary techniques found in fiction and poetry.

• It is based on the truth but uses figurative language to express it.

• It is not fiction (based on the truth), and it is not poetry (prose), but could be considered a combination of both with non-fiction elements.

  • Ex. Journalism, biographies, memoirs, personal essays

The Paper v. The Essay

• Papers require clarity and value concision, and they usually erase the first-person pronoun “I" in the interest of objectivity. (Knows the answers beforehand).

• Essays allow writers to be messy. Prioritize beauty over virtues, to be (and express) yourself. (seeks the answers out while writing).

  • Aligns with the literal meaning of “essay” (to try, test & experiment)

The Goal

• To make the world strange again—allow readers to see things anew.

• To create art

  • must astonish

  • must create a rift in the ordinary, everyday world

  • allow readers to see into reality itself

Chapter 2

Can you lie?

• No! or at least try not to. CNF is a genre of writing derived from the truth therefore, your readers are expecting the highest level of truth you can provide.

Memory

• Readers expect the truth, but are still aware of memory being faulty.

  • They will give the benefit of the doubt, no one is expecting writers to be tape recorders.

• Don’t be afraid to be daring!

• Memories change/alter themselves as we recall them—this is not a flaw.

  • This allows for more freedom & flexibility to render life as you remember it, knowing it’ll never be 100% factual and verifiable.

  • We are constantly shaping who we are by shaping who we were.

• What happened doesn’t matter; rather, why it happened and how you render it in language does.

  • To be interesting as a writer means you recognize relationships between things rather than worrying about singular events/experiences

    • ex. relationship between memory and event

“Making” it up

• By speculating what isn’t true, we can arrive at a deeper level

• Take advantage of imagining possibilities when factual details are missing or fuzzy

  • Words: perhaps, maybe, suppose, if, what if, might/could have, possibly, imagine, wonder, perchance.

• By admitting when and how you are imagining and speculating, the readers are more likely to trust you.

• Don’t deny yourself the valuable technique of perhapsing.

Vulnerability

• As a writer, you will need to choose how vulnerable you want to get in your work.

• In everyday life, we may instinctively avoid thinking about painful things to get through the day, but when recalling memories as a writer, you may find yourself confronting difficult things to think about.

• You are never required to share pain but are more than invited to open up if you choose to do so.

• “To see ourselves in others, primarily in terms of shared pain/trauma” (Misery loves company)

Chapter 3

Research in CNF

• Personal questions can still require research to answer

  • What was the name of my summer camp?

  • Who built my house?

  • How long has my favorite restaurant been open?

• The point here is that research is never a singular activity. As a creative writer, you must remain open to the possibilities that arise when investigating one thing or another.

• Integrate the information you have gathered in your research, allowing yourself to pause and reflect on how this research has changed your understanding.

• Finding the inevitable interconnectedness of everything.

Chapter 4

Writing Environments (human)

• Another way to learn more about who we are, however, is to consider where we are.

• we should have direct contact with the world, observing with our senses rather than relying on the interpretation or distillation from others.

• It’s important to write vividly and concretely about what you experience through your senses.

Writing Environments (non-human)

• We center human needs and interests first and foremost, taking into account other perspectives of organisms (or entire ecosystems) secondarily (if at all). When his “mean egotism vanishes,”

• One fruitful way to approach writing about place is to observe the non-human animals residing there.

Chapter 5

The Problem with Grammatical Rules in Creative Writing

• “Active voice” could simplify complexity and erase context created by “Passive voice.”

• Any and every rule, principle, or guideline should be broken when to do otherwise would distort or diminish your writing. The trick is knowing what you’re doing and why.

  • Textbook: “Other grammatical “rules” are not really rules at all. Prepositions are perfectly good words to end sentences with. And you can begin a sentence with a conjunction if you want. I ain’t even gonna mention some of them there other rules.”

• We’re less interested in prescriptive grammatical rules than the descriptive rules we can observe by analyzing actual sentences from essays.

Syntax

• Hypotactic style is characterized by subordination, in which some clauses are dependent on others to form a complete sentence. Hypotactic sentences include subordinating conjunctions (e.g., although, because, while, and so on).

• Paratactic style, on the other hand, is characterized by coordination, in which clauses are parallel and equivalent to one another. Paratactic sentences include coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, or, but, and so on).

The Goal

• There is no end to the number of different ways you might write a sentence. The goal of this section, therefore, is not to be exhaustive but to point out what I think are some helpful elements of English style and syntax.

• The goal is for you to become more informed and confident about the choices you make.

• Art is a subjective endeavor. As such, there can be no absolute right or wrong, as a prescriptive grammarian might have it, but you can still analyze aspects of language in order to understand it more deeply.

• It’s okay to begin writing, allowing yourself to go with what feels right, leaving deliberation for later.

Chapter 6

Metaphors & Similes!

• Metaphor: show us a connection or likeness between two things that no one has ever noticed before, possibly revealing some truth about reality itself—or at least our perception of it. (asserting)

• Simile: a matter of placing two things that share a characteristic next to one another and tucking the word like or as into the phrase. (suggesting)

• A metaphor integrates the reality of the comparison into the language itself, whereas a simile remains indirect, relying on language to hold the comparison at arm’s length

• Sometimes, a quick simile is enough to give your reader a sense of what you want to communicate

Symbolism

• A symbol is a concrete image that stands in for a larger idea.

• Symbols are also culture-bound.

• The symbols you may want to develop will need to diverge from these familiar cultural images, but they will be specific to the context you create in your writing.

• The best literary symbolism is discovered rather than imposed.

• The Key

  • Be alert to the objects, the things, the stuff you observe in your writing, asking yourself if and how they carry deeper meanings.

  • Notice how personification relies on verbs to carry most of the comparison: steal up, speak, whisper, wear. We might assume that figurative language is all about the nouns, like the breeze or a river, because those are the things we are comparing. Instead, some of the richest personifications (and metaphors in general) are a function of elegantly chosen verbs. Verbs naturally carry meanings from certain domains whose metaphorical resonance you can take advantage of.

• When metaphors, similes, or symbols appear in your writing, they should derive from some truth about how you perceive the world around you. Like all good art, figurative language itself can reveal something we hadn’t realized or understood before.

Chapter 7

Show, Don’t Tell

• Showing and Tellings are each techniques that you can choose to employ or not.

• They represent neither good nor bad writing. Rather, the context of your particular piece of writing will determine if, when, and how you might call upon them.

• Showing is another way to talk about the inclusion of images in your writing.

  • This technique engages the reader's senses, allowing them to visualize scenes and feel emotions more profoundly. By using descriptive language and vivid imagery, you can create a more immersive experience that draws readers into the narrative.

  • Images are not only visual. They include all five senses. The reason sensory images work so well in creative writing is that we experience the world through our bodies

• We don’t think our emotions, we feel them.

The Benefits of Imagery/Senses

• Images can offer an accurate representation of the world you want to evoke.

• Images can reveal something of the consciousness or personality of the observer.

• Images can establish a tone in your writing, putting your reader in a specific mood.

• Images can advance the plot or complicate the narrative in your writing.

• Images can serve as symbols that suggest larger thematic significance.

Synaesthesia

• “Synaesthesia occurs when you craft a specific sensory image by using the language associated with a different sense, as when you render a visual image in auditory terms, or render an image of taste by choosing tactile words. For example, “Her whisper glimmered softly in his ear.” A whisper is something we hear but in this sentence it glimmers, which is a visual verb.”

The Goal

• “The goal of creative writing is to offer your reader an experience, some of which may indeed include ideas and arguments but will always attempt to animate them through experience. The job of the writer of creative nonfiction, then, is to learn to translate an experience of the world into the language of the senses.”

Chapter 8

The Body Essay

“Whether you like it or not, as a human, you are an inescapably embodied creature. By attending to the body and learning what lessons it might have to teach us, we can arrive at an even deeper understanding of our interior lives, the world of ideas, emotion, and psychology.”

• The illness memoir

  • Being sick/ill

  • Vulnerable, bold, and open.

• Body Image

  • Describing not only physical traits but also perceptions of body image.

• Braided Bodies

  • In order to understand our internal selves more deeply, we should not ignore our external lives as experienced through our bodies.

  • External assumptions about body (how did they make you feel then? now?)

• Other Bodies

  • Trying to reconnect/remember.

  • Memories live in bodies.

Chapter 9

Genres within Genre

• Among the creative non-fiction genre, there are more ways to write than just the essay format we’ve been looking at thus far.

  • You might also need to discover the final form of your work while writing. There is no set path to arrive at art.

• Flash non-fiction

  • Flash nonfiction is usually defined as an essay of no more than a thousand words that offers a brief “flash” of illumination on a single topic, experience, or phenomenon.

• The braided essay

  • The braided essay develops two or more different ideas or narratives that alternate and move forward together until the end.

• The lyric essay

  • The lyric essay has one obvious defining characteristic: it’s written primarily in the lyrical mode. The lyrical mode is writing that pays close attention to the sound of language.

• The hermit crab essay

  • Their names are derived from seeming like a hermit hiding in their shells like a cave. Like the crab itself, the hermit crab essay goes out in search of another “shell” in which to live, borrowing a form from another kind of text as a new container.

• The list

  • The list essay defines itself: an essay that is a list. You might consider the list essay a subset of the hermit crab essay. The difference is that lists are much more general than the hermit crab forms tend to be. You can list anything: fugitives, groceries, Communists, children who are naughty or nice. Lists might be tightly focused on a specific topic, or they might be broadly thematic. They might be chronological or ahistorical. You have a lot of freedom when writing a list essay.

• Experiments on the page

  • If you think of the page as a canvas on which you are painting your words, you might discover great creative freedom that will lead you to places you hadn’t anticipated.

Fiction (Based on Textbook & Notes)

Chapter 1

• Nyberg Model

  • This is the expository phase of a short story (the first act) where something creates a destabilizing condition, a shift from the every day that throws the lead character into chaos. A person you haven't seen in years arrives at your doorstep. Your boss tells you to close the door, we need to talk. Your doctor says we need to do further tests. Rational order and calm break down. The narrative escalates, and some empathy is created for our lead character who is in some way beset upon.

  • During the crisis phase (act two) the protagonist is in conflict with another person who wants something different from the protagonist and this push/pull creates not only tension but moments of genuine connect and disconnect between them. At some point, during this emotional struggle, a deflection happens. A character makes a choice, acts on it, and the scene spins in a new direction. This deflection can include saying something that has never been said before; seeing something in the other person that the protagonist has never noticed before; taking an action that is new and pushes the lead character out of her comfort zone; etc. The possibilities are endless. The spin should direct the protagonist toward a resolution.

  • For Nyberg, that resolution (act three) often leads to an epiphany (the lead character coming to some sort of insight about herself or the situation or the other person or the human condition), but an epiphanic ending isn’t necessary. The protagonist can realize something has shifted between her and the other person (notice I didn’t say antagonist: not all stories are a fight between good and evil) without fully realizing what that shift is. Or the protagonist is taking baby steps at the end. The story can even end at a precipice where the protagonist has undergone change but still faces further changes to come. For example, two people sit in a car while the motor’s running, and the man realizes something about the woman he had never realized before (he has an epiphany). He wants to build on this moment, to apologize for his boorish behavior and some inappropriate comment he made about her at a party earlier that evening. He struggles to find the words, where to begin, and the story ends as she waits, the motor choogling, and the light in the parking lot intermittently flickering.

Chapter 2

• The quest: goal-oriented

• The epiphany: character-driven stories, firmly rooted in quotidian naturalism, that end with the protagonist suddenly realizing something.

• The peripheral narrator: tells the story of a much more flashy character. It’s as if the flashy “specimen” character is being observed under a microscope. The peripheral narrator watches, empathizes, and comments on the actions of the “main” character.

• Collage: In this plot line, from the collision of short photographic scenes emerges a narrative thread. Scenes should be evocative, attention-grabbing, a series of haunting tableaux.

• Slice of life: really lean into the fictional world’s dirty realism setting (daily life)

• The Visit and A Gathering of Strangers: The Visit often involves some sense of returning as a protagonist is confronted with the past or seeks to escape into an irretrievable past. In A Gathering of Strangers, a group of disparate people are forced together through abject circumstances: a bus breaks down in a snowstorm.

Chapter 3

• Ending

  • Speaking of endings, whether it be a battleground story or one driven by counterpointed characterization, they should grow organically out of the journeys our central characters take. Moreover, they should illustrate subtle change, change that’s believable within the range of possibilities for the protagonist in the given circumstances of the story.

Chapter 4

• Showing

  • Setting: a sense of place can provide mood and atmosphere, giving a story nuance and the necessary building blocks for world building.

  • Props, costumes and staging: Using small actions/objects to add subtext/clues on characters’ intentions, secrets, etc…

  • Dialogue and the Art of Subtext: How a character speaks and what they speak about defines them in your narrative arc. What do they want? How do they go after it? What are their objectives in the scene? What adjustments to these objectives do they make as the scene unfolds?

  • Characters: What is their relationship (lovers; father/son; mother/daughter; sisters; teacher/student)? How would you describe the dynamics of power between them (equals; abusive; patronizing; controlling)? Within the given circumstances of your story what do these characters want? Are they “I” characters or “me” characters? Do they act on the world or are they acted upon? Do they have agency or are they victims?

  • Time and Light: Because showing stories rely so much on immediacy and are grounded in what a character is experiencing they usually take place over a very short period: twenty minutes to an hour. And because this kind of fictional world is highly visible it relies on the spaces between light and dark.

• Telling

  • The inner journey is one of reflection/introspection/backstory and the outer often involves a more present timeline.

Chapter 5

• What do I want? and how am I going to get it?

• Writing the Backstory

  • Purpose: What does your character want? To find love? To be accepted?

  • What are your character’s hopes, dreams, and fears?

  • Stat sheet: age, sex, race, height, weight. Shoe size? What physical attribute in himself is your character most proud of? What physical attribute in himself is your character least proud of?

• The Three S’s

  • Staging: putting characters in specific strategic positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed

  • Stakes: Characters want things: respect, love, to be understood, happiness. Literary stories are often about desire. the space they inhabit is fraught with “life and death stakes,” either real or figuratively.

  • Sounds: non-listening, selective listening, and parallel monologues

Chapter 6

• Dialogue

  • Dialogue can make a story pop, bringing characters fully to life. Direct dialogue grants them their own spaces to speak from, giving us writers all kinds of narrative threads and impulses to follow. But we have to be listening.

• The Five Modes of Fiction

  • Dialogue: Conversations should involve conflict or something at stake, possibly a reveal. Most moments of dialogue involve some kind of subtext (the unsaid) and waver between moments of connect and disconnect.

  • State of Mind: This is where, depending on the point of view, we enter into a character’s consciousness and get some of their direct interiors.

  • Action: Physical movement of some sort: fleeing from an adversary; a fight on a front lawn; looking through backyards for a stolen bicycle.

  • Description: A kind of pause in the narrative where we get a description of a structure, a place, a character. These descriptions are often linked to character psychology and the setting’s mood. Moreover, short descriptions in a scene often function as beats, pauses, while a character figures out how to change tactics, how to get what he wants.

  • Exposition: establish a quick backstory or compress time so that we can leap forward or back in a narrative.

• Three Models of Dialogue

  • Dialogue Summary: In the opening moments of dialogue it might be effective to simply tell. An entire fictional hour of conversation can be compressed into a line or two.

  • Indirect Dialogue: It imitates speech using narrative voice—not the actual voice of the characters. It compresses conversations while giving the illusion of characters speaking. The characters don’t have complete autonomy and aren’t coming fully from who they are but some kind of blend of their perspectives and the narrator’s voice.

    • “They’re spoken from Ted’s perspective, but they aren’t precisely what he said.”

  • Direct Dialogue: Characters come from where they are. They are totally autonomous and free. This is a powerful device that allows writers to listen to what’s being said and let each character follow his/her impulse.

Chapter 8

• Point of View (POV)

  • Point-of-view is the most important decision you’ll make in writing a story. It guides everything: perspective, voice, vision. In terms of perspective, your choice in point of view will shape how much knowledge the narrator will share or repress with an audience.

• First-Person

  • “I” speakers let you into their limited range of understanding of the world

  • Restricts us only to what the character knows, thinks, and form of talking. (Grammatical-verbal errors are accepted in this perspective if that is how the character speaks)

    • Character determines language

  • Subjective, we can question the narrator

  • Protagonist tells the story

• Second-Person

  • “you”

• Third-Person

  • Omnipotent narrator

  • Knows everything

  • We don’t question 3rd person

    • Objective

  • Language remains, generally, grammatically correct

• Third-Person Limited

  • in limited third person you can play with the distance of your backstories, telling us what a character understands of the past or telling us more than your lead character understands. The possibilities for differing ranges of knowledge are greater in limited third.

  • Omnipotent of only the protagonist

  • language between character and narrator may begin to bleed into eachother