Creative Writing
Imagination in writing
Use comparison, imagery and sentence structure imaginatively.
The same word calls up different pictures in different minds. Asked what the word 'seam' means, one student thought first of a cricket ball, with its stitched seam; another might think of a dress.
Factual writing, such as a report or a recipe, sounds much the same whoever writes it. Creative writing is different: it changes with each writer's imagination.
Imagination shows in the comparisons a writer makes. John Steinbeck compares a town to an animal, with nerves, a head and feet. He extends the comparison: news travels through the town faster than small boys can run.
It shows in the shape of sentences too. A long sentence joined by 'and … and … and' can mirror a rush of action, such as eager bargaining, piling one detail on another.
And it shows in similes and exaggeration. A simile like 'white as the white dressing-gown she wore' intensifies a feeling. Exaggeration of this kind is one way in which fiction differs from fact.
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