Reasons to Take a Creative Writing Class

Even if you are not pursuing an English major, a creative writing class can bring you plenty of benefits. Not only your narrative essays and small stories will become better, but also you will practice useful skills that will boost your thinking as a whole. In this post, we will discuss how a creative writing course can expand your horizons.

Creative writing is all about creativity

Yes, this sounds obvious, but creative writing will give you a chance to train your creative muscles. Writing skills are necessary at nine workplaces of ten since they allow you to represent your thoughts clearly and communicate with colleagues more efficiently.

It doesn’t really matter if you are a techie or a humanitarian – writing practice is more than English essays. With advanced writing skills, you will learn how to formulate your ideas engagingly.

You need practice

Formulating your thoughts and choosing the right words is hard work. These abilities don’t come naturally. If you don’t have enough exercise and write one paper per month, then you will find this task even more complicated. However, everything becomes easier with practice.

Of course, you have writing practice at college, but let’s admit that in most cases, it is far from anything that can be called “creative.” Neither your History research papers nor your Biology lab reports develop that magical superpower. Just think about it. Imagine that you have two tasks to complete: an essay about the colonial wars in Portugal or a short story about a young man who starts working in the White House when World War II ends. The choice is obvious.

During a creative writing course, you will discover themes and projects that cannot be found anywhere else. This is your chance to work with something unique and exciting. In most cases, such classes are full freedom and are based on the dialogues between you and your peers/tutors. You can visit a workshop and enjoy an opportunity to stand up and express your thoughts with no limitations. There is so much you can learn from that, right?

How does a typical creative writing class look like?

As a rule, creative writing classes are arranged like conversations. Students are assigned to write different types of texts – poems, novels, scripts, etc. Then they share the results with others. During the next class, students discuss a piece, give comments, and criticize. Sometimes, they take the texts home, read them very carefully, and even leave the comments right on the margins.

Reading and analyzing texts created by others is a great way to improve your own skills. When you see someone’s mistakes, you learn to avoid them yourself. Also, such practice teaches you to notice the problems and think about the improvement options. You learn to provide critical feedback, make edits in your own texts, and summarize the errors and weak spots.

Criticism is a perfect tool for perfection

During the workshops, you can give and receive criticism. Discussions are focused on your work, not your individuality, which makes them constructive. This is a great approach that teaches you and other learners to be professional and objective.

Also, you will learn how to react to critics, criticize someone constructively, and formulate your opinions correctly. In the future, you can apply this constructive criticism to other people and yourself.

Last but not least, creative writing is so much fun! We bet that you will get inspired after spending your time with students who write texts and are ready to communicate. So consider adding this course to your program, and the next semester might be much brighter.