Creative Writing - Experience Plus Research Equals Credible Writing

Sound research is the foundation for solid, credible article writing. You can draw upon your own experiences and combine it with your research to develop your material. This will allow you to write authentically and with authority. These steps will help you organize your research and writing to create outstanding content.

1. Define Your Reasons for Writing

Before you begin writing, you need to establish some parameters. Identify your target audience and establish the problems that he or she will face. Determine the information that he or she already has and the information he or she will require. Try to answer any other questions that may be relevant to meeting your readers' needs. You will not be able to help your readers if you do not gain their respect and show them that you are a credible authority on the subject.

2. Plan Your Methods of Research

Review your favorite textbooks and manuals so that you can brush up on the basics of your topic. Browse some articles on the subject that have been published recently. You want to combine the solid knowledge of your textbooks and the up to date information from the articles to create current content.

You can also conduct a web search for material. It may help if your insert the word "problems" into the search query along with the search term for your topic. The addition of this word will direct you to forums that are sponsored by companies and will allow you to connect with people who have issues and experience with your topic.

As you conduct your thorough research, though, be prepared to wade through conflicting information and even some fallacious information. This is where your experience in the subject will come into play. Do not attempt to wing it, know what you are talking about, and use your knowledge to discern the false information from the accurate information. It is important that you know your product, service, or topic because you will be bombarded with subtleties, obscurities and conflicts that will confuse you and frustrate you if you do not know what you are doing.

3. Write from Personal Experience

As you write, include problems that you have faced and solutions that you have found. This will establish your credibility even if you do not write in the first person. When you present knowledge that was obviously gained through experience, it lends a great deal of authority to the piece.

If your work is written strictly from tidbits of information acquired here and there with no real experience behind it, your article will lack the credibility and substance that is the mark of truly great writing. It is vital that you know your subject if you are going to write in depth about it.

4. Work Experience as Valid Research

The old advice to "write what you know" still rings true today. It does not matter the genre or topic, if you are writing about something you know your article will tend to be stronger. When you back it with recent research, it is even better.

Drawing from work experience can be a great research method. The writer is ever observant, drawing from personal experience and backing it with solid research. Pay attention to what you do at work, how your co-workers act and watch your customers. What do your customers want? What are some common complaints? What problems do you face on the job the most often? When you begin assessing these issues, you can offer real life, practical answers to questions you know for a fact people are asking and problems that you know people are facing. You just made yourself in demand.

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Experience Plus Research Equals Credible Writing

Creative Writing Prompts and Tips

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside of journalistic, academic, technical, and professional writing. Short stories, novels, and poetry fall into this category. Creative prompts are a great way of getting your creative juices flowing. A creative prompt is a seed of an idea, which gets you writing. Maybe you can write two hundred words about why a dog makes a great pet or a poem using the words doubt, table, wrist, chocolate and helicopter. When using a creative writing prompt, it is best to just write whatever comes into your mind. Do not worry about planning or a first draft.

There are many creative writing ideas, creative writing tips, and creative writing exercises to help budding writers. There are also creative writing unit plans, which are a set of writing objectives to help the writer develop their writing skills.

When it comes to creative writing, every writer is different. The great thing about creative writing is that there are no strict guidelines, despite people telling you that you must do this or you should never do that when writing. E E Cummings wrote poetry without capitalization or periods, for example. The advice "write what you know" is often given to new writers but this is not obligatory. What about sagas set in outer space or epics set in the fourteenth century? We have not been there but research and imagination are all the great writer needs to produce believable creative writing.

If you are not sure which genre, you want to write about, try a few. Maybe you will find that you love writing murder mysteries, gothic horror, or even fantasy epics. Some writers excel in a variety of genres and others prefer to stick to one. Every writer is different and the best advice for a writer is to write lots. Even making yourself write five hundred words, a day about whatever comes into your head is good writing practice!