Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Secret To Transforming Your Creative Writing

Writing prompts don’t tell you how to write, which words you should use, how long your sentences should be and so on. That’s all up to your own creative expression. The prompt just provides an entry point to unlocking your imagination, and this can be invaluable, especially during times when you’re feeling particularly blocked or short of inspiration.

Another benefit of using writing prompts is that they gradually make themselves redundant.

The more you use writing prompts, the more easily you’ll be able to come up with the starting point yourself.

This works because your creativity is something that can be trained and developed. When you use prompts often, your creative mind learns to pre-empt what the writing prompt might have been, and it loves to fill in the gaps.

So instead of thinking “I’m really stuck, I think I’ll use a writing prompt to get my creative juices flowing”, you start to think: “I’m really stuck. What kind of writing prompt would work to get my creative juices flowing?”. And then you come up with it!

This sounds too simple and obvious to work, but it does. In effect your saying “I don’t think I know the answer to this question. But if I DID know the answer, here’s what I think it would be…”

Because you’re putting faith in your creativity to come up with something, it will, it loves the challenge. You’ve just got to present it with the challenge in the right way.

And this is how creative writing prompts can help, by training your creativity to come up with new ideas, new perspectives and different outlooks in the way you write.

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