“A writer’s goal is to draw attention and transport the audience to the world in which they have created”, said my film lecturer once I was ready to enter the world of creative writing. This world he talked about is purely non-existent, and features stories of fiction and truth. I fell in love with this idea of telling ‘good, believable lies’ in works of fiction and the truth twisted to suit drama, tension and suspense. Because nothing keeps the attention of an audience than those three.
Even as I wrote, I came to find that creative writing is not only about the words you write, but the stories you tell. A good storyteller will give his or her audience stories to tell back to their families, but a good writer will know how to arrange the story to appeal to the audience. For this reason, filmmakers know how to not mix up the two, and that’s why when you watch a movie, they will credit the storyteller with, “Story By” and the writer with, “Written By” making sure to separate the two even though it may be the same individual person that did both. Rappers and poets too, play with this idea of the story versus the writing.
Then there is the important part of communication. As a writer you have the simple but exhausting task of accommodating hundreds of words into sheets of paper for the sake of communication. Especially when writing academically for school, this principle of communication comes into play because you have to defend the words you write as you write them. The teacher, though obviously much more aware of the topic you write about more than you, he or she would want you to communicate your arguments and defend them with other people’s writings while answering the day’s question.
Subsequently, writing can also be a report. This works perfectly for news writers, who in a way are telling a story that actually happened. Then these words you are reading right now are collectively called an article. This will appear on blogs, websites and magazines in its own column, capturing the opinions of the writer on a particular subject like the very thing I am doing right now. I would then professionally be referred to as a columnist, which to me sounds like an internship title of the guy who everyone sends around in the office.
