Tag: creative

Categories
Guest Posts

Using Technology To Boost Creative Ability When Writing

Writers already understand the importance of creativity: after all, writing is an art form, and art forms rely heavily on imagination and the ability to craft something unique.  Technology is sometimes painted as the enemy of creativity, but that is simply not true. From provoking inspiration to facilitating the means of finding it, technology has simply enhanced the ability of writers in their pursuit of creativity, not hindered it. Here is how:

Tuning in to the right distractions

Technology is sometimes cited as the enemy of concentration – mobile phones constantly pinging and entertainment facilities such as TV and video games marking hugely distracting and mind-numbing activities which take away from our more productive activities and thinking time.

However, cannot these advances actually perpetuate imagination and creative thinking? If through video games we are able to enter incredible online worlds, and in movie theatres we are able to step into lives that are far-removed from ours as we could possibly imagine, are we not in fact feeding creative thought? Of course, there is a time and place for such distractions, such as when we have a task at hand that demands our full attention.

Using technology within helpful restrictions

Technology offers unlimited choices. Unfortunately, choices can be counterproductive, as there is also evidence to suggest that the greater number of choices we are faced with, and the greater the number of options we can select from, the more we resort to out tried-and-tested, and thus, less-creative, options. Consider a restaurant where there are 500 choices on the menu. In such a case, are you more likely to choose something new, or become so overwhelmed by the number of possibilities that you order a burger through sheer panic?


Using technology to ask questions

What technology can do, to an incredible extent, is facilitate your ability to ask questions and get answers. “It still amazes me how the internet in particular has facilitated our ability to find about things that we always wanted to know. In fact, some people have almost become dead to the idea of this, but I say use it for absolutely everything it is worth to feed your knowledge and creativity,” says Stanley Strachan, a writing consultant at Australian help and Academized.


Play educational games

Research from Michigan University has pointed to children who play video games actually showing a higher degree of creativity than their peers. Now, this doesn’t mean that writers need to immediately jump into the world of Fortnite, but it can mean that, with the selection of the right sort of game, your creative juices can start pumping. Games which inspire problem-solving capabilities are particularly useful.


Getting creative with help of photographs and videos

Technology has facilitated the ability to record images and videos, and subsequently share them, in a manner that could not possibly have been envisaged a short time ago. Use these images to inspire creative thoughts and to help paint the visuals you need in your mind’s eye to produce the story you want to tell. “As an example, now you can write a novel set in Africa if you have never been there simply because images and videos can facilitate your understanding of that place” says Lucy Hutton, a blogger at State of writing and Big Assignments.


Balance privacy and sharing

One final word of warning here. Creativity can also be greatly bolstered through what is known in the business as ‘incubation’, that is time spent alone with one’s thoughts and ideas in order to foster the greatest possible outcome. This rings as true now as it ever has, so be wary of sharing your ideas to freely before they have solidified in your mind.

I have often been warned against ‘oversharing’, and I think this is pertinent advice. Let the idea come to fruition first, because once you have released it, it is not yours anymore.

Nora Mork is a journalist at UK Writings and Essay Roo. She shares her ideas by speaking at public events, and writing posts for Boom Essays.

Categories
Write Justified

Idioms–Literary Shorthand

 

As if English with its homophones and irregular verbs weren’t confusing enough, how about those idioms? Oh sure, you and I know what’s meant when we explain past loss with “no use crying over spilt milk.” Though to be honest, haven’t there been times when shedding a few tears over a disappointing outcome really did make you feel better?

Idioms, along with similes and metaphors, hyperbole, alliteration, personification and more, are figurative expressions or literary devices that add color and creativity to our writing. English abounds with idioms–expressions in which individual words are not to be taken literally. With their origins in Scripture, folk tales and fables, and famous authors and story tellers, they can enliven your writing. But as with so many things in life, it’s a fine line between cliché and creativity. Idioms, because they are so common, often come across as trite or corny and ought to be used sparingly.

Here are some guidelines for using them well.

  • Create a Character

Since idioms are such a natural part of conversation, use them to create memorable characters in fiction writing. Add a mangled idiom (“it ain’t rocket surgery” or “brain science”) or a regional expression (“She’s so stuck up she’d drown in a rainstorm.”) to make characters colorful and memorable.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird employs a number of southern idioms or colloquialisms:

Uncle Jack Finch who yelled an annual Christmas proposal across the street to Miss Maddie was only trying to get her goat;

Miss Maudie’s acid tongue set her in contrast to Jem and Scout’s do-good neighbor Miss Stephanie Crawford, but endeared her to the children nevertheless.

Scout’s strategy for trapping her assailant Francis was to bide her time and sure as eggs he would be back.

  • Skip the clichés

Some idioms are so overused they no longer have the desired effect. Use them in unexpected ways or turn the phrase in an unexpected way and you may achieve your desired effect. You might even coin a new malapropism.

Recently, Iowa’s governor commenting about Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse the Republican nominee for president said, “He just shot himself in his cowboy boot.” A deft way of saying he’s sabotaged his own presidential aspirations.

  • Encourage creative thinking

Idioms can be the converse of clichéd writing. They can help the reader think about something in a new, possibly clearer or more compelling way.

Instead of selling like hotcakes, you might try more popular than Pokemon Go.

Or in place of saying someone marches to the beat of a different drummer, you might describe them as a techno idiot in a social media world.

  • Remember your audience

This advice applies universally, but is an especially important reminder if your audience includes non-native English speakers. While every language has its peculiar expressions, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand how phrases such as “barking up the wrong tree,” or  “let the cat out of the bag” could leave English language learners scratching their heads in bewilderment.

 

Save

Categories
Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld

Food for your Storyworld
Even Heroes need to Eat

Regardless how fantastic the setting, the people in your book must treat their environment as commonplace. A character who regularly interacts with something will spend little thought on (and the author should spend little time describing) its method of operation. This is true whether writing about food or magic. But how do you describe the common occurrences of a believable system? It’s best done with sparse descriptions of characters interacting with their world, but to write convincingly, you need to think things through. To get your creative juices flowing, let’s look at the energy that fuels your characters.

No, not their motivations, their breakfast.

Food Production

Unless your world breaks the laws of mass conservation (such as a cleric’s “Create Food” spell or the Enterprise’s replicator), your protagonist’s lunch came from somewhere. If survival isn’t one of your story’s tension hooks, you don’t need to describe the origin of each meal, but in a long enough adventure, your reader may wonder where the lone hero gets his food, and you’ll need to consider it as well.

greenhouse

In our world, all food can be traced back to plants, which require soil, sun, water, and carbon dioxide. This obviously applies to vegetables, fruits, and grains, but grasses inedible to humans are the sustenance of livestock, and from them we get a myriad of consumables. In fact, animal feed can often grow in climates hostile to farming, which is why residents of colder regions historically had more meat in their diets.

Other hostile climates, such as a post-apocalyptic future, may have a similar increase in dietary protein, or they may rely on food production and preservation of ages past (until it runs out!). Alternatively, space stations may house hydroponics facilities, or elven crop growth may depend on the blessings of the local druid. Nevertheless, before food is eaten, it must first be produced.

Food Preservation

spamUnless your protagonists are survivalist hunters or part of the agricultural industry, the food they bring on their adventures must be stored. Portable storage falls into five main categories: canned, frozen, dried, pickled, and salted. Even a high-tech future will have some variation of these methods (e.g. cryo-frozen meats, canned nutrient-paste, etc.).

Preservation only delays the process of rotting as long as possible, but decay is inevitable. You can’t have a character wake from stasis a million years after humanity’s destruction and have her forage for canned food, because by then it will all have spoiled. Exceptions are made for Spam and Christmas fruitcake.

Food Preparation

Anyone who has eaten Cheerios in the car knows not all food needs preparation, but a good meal requires heat. Why? Partly because warm food is pleasant (ever tried cold French fries?), but also because higher temperatures kill harmful bacteria (ranging from 140F for rare beef to 180F for poultry).

microwaveBut no matter how bizarre your world’s heating methods are, your characters won’t think twice about them. Suppose you were an author writing about food two hundred years ago and conceived of a “Microwave Oven.” Should the microwave’s operator need to consider the details of particle physics and wavelengths? Not if you wanted to describe the way we typically use it. Even those who understand microwave technology seldom consider it when they put their leftovers in and walk away. The denizens of your creation should similarly spend little time thinking about something so common, even if it would be unimaginable to those living in a different world or time.

In a fantasy setting, maybe fire sprites heat your villagers’ meals in exchange for precious stones, but don’t revel in the occurrence if it’s commonplace. Or consider a future in which all single-use rations have a self-heating mechanism, making them especially useful on the galactic frontier. At any rate, a method of heating must be considered unless your people eat all their food cold (which limits the kinds of food that can be eaten).

 

Food Disposal

trashcan

Disposal of waste is not of great concern unless your characters inhabit a world of extremely limited resources. Some examples are desert worlds, post-apocalyptic settings, or space stations (Hugh Howey’s Wool Omnibus come to mind). For the most part though, trash isn’t noteworthy. Even a short-range starship will probably jettison its refuse.

 

When writing about food, you don’t need to spell out every detail, but you should ponder how and what your characters are eating. A genuine environment will connect with the reader because it feels like you’ve considered how people survive in it, and food is very much a part of daily survival.

Much of this information comes from my own 2,500 square foot garden and from The Encyclopedia of Country Living, a 900+ page tome by Carla Emery that details everything our agrarian ancestors did.