{"id":14518,"date":"2022-06-28T08:25:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=14518"},"modified":"2022-05-28T09:44:03","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T23:44:03","slug":"modern-creative-writing-resist-or-evolve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/modern-creative-writing-resist-or-evolve\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Creative Writing \u2013 Resist or Evolve?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Did you know that in the 18<sup>th<\/sup> century, stories could only be printed and published in England if they were true? Powerful religious influences at the time otherwise deemed stories as \u2018lies\u2019 and thus \u2018evil\u2019. You can see the effect of this in the book titles published at the time, and how they suggest the story belongs to a real person, whose experiences actually happened, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>\u2018Robinson Crusoe\u2019 by Daniel Defoe (1719)<\/li><li>\u2018Gulliver&#8217;s Travels\u2019 by Jonathan Swift (1726)<\/li><li>\u2018Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded\u2019 by Samuel Richardson (1740)<\/li><li>\u2018Joseph Andrews\/Shamela\u2019 by Henry Fielding (1742)<\/li><li>\u2018The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling\u2019 by Henry Fielding (1749)<\/li><li>\u2018Cecilia\u2019 by Fanny Burney (1782)<\/li><li>\u2018Camilla\u2019 by Fanny Burney (1796)<\/li><li>\u2018The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman\u2019 by Laurence Sterne (1759)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The value of fictional stories told as \u2018novels\u2019 was in flux, and wouldn\u2019t be defined until the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century. Thus the irony was that writers had to claim their story was true in order to avoid being called a liar!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve come a long way since then. We\u2019ve experienced developmental eras such as Romanticism and Modernism, we\u2019ve experimented with style such as Stream of Consciousness and Gothic, we\u2019ve even created new genre such as Young Adult and Climate Fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since the rise of television and movies, and now social media, we\u2019ve also become a very visual culture. We want to be shown, not told about characters, so we can imagine and deduce our own conclusions about them. Gone are long passages at the start of stories, telling of a particular character or place. We want to infer a character through their actions and decide for ourselves whether what they are doing is interesting enough to read on.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-medium\"><a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12855\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/zena-shapter-over-blight.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are many techniques writers can use to make their creative writing \u2018modern\u2019 in this way, such as focusing more on action, dialogue, and internal thought to tell a story, rather than detailed descriptions and summarising. There&#8217;s some free advice for writers on my Writing Rockface post \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/writing-rockface-the-over-blight\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"12847\">The Over Blight<\/a>\u2019, such as how to identify when certain writing devices don&#8217;t belong in a narrative at a given point, which can risk over-telling, over-showing, over-writing, over-explaining or over-poeticising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, all evolution commonly encounters resistance because it\u2019s natural to value the status quo, and I often see this when <a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/mentorship\/\">mentoring<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/editing-services\/\">editing<\/a> clients who reference \u2018the classics\u2019 in order to justify their creative writing decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-medium\"><a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10946\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Classics are classics for their resonance of ideas and themes, for their cultural importance or groundbreaking contributions, for the way they offer deep explorations into what it means to be human. At the same time, since storytelling tastes constantly change as our lives also change, creative writing decisions must also change. Thus many older classics can be both highly valued <em>and<\/em> written with too much detail and wordiness by today\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I love how language evolves over time (see my posts &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/i-fear-me-the-worm-how-the-meanings-of-words-change-semantics\/\">I Fear Me The Worm, How The Meanings Of Words Change<\/a>&#8216;, &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/words-reveal-who-we-really-are-semantics\/\">Words Reveal Who We Really Are<\/a>&#8216; and &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/the-throw-away-culture-of-forbidden-words-semantics\/\">The Throwaway Culture of Forbidden Words<\/a>&#8216;). Much to my teenagers&#8217; distress, my favourite trendy words right now are &#8216;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=mid\" target=\"_blank\">mid<\/a>&#8216; and &#8216;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=OG\" target=\"_blank\">OG<\/a>&#8216;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/layout-designs\/\">Laying out a book<\/a> in InDesign recently for a publisher, I had to create multiple template boxes to resemble text messages \u2013\u00a0they are such an important element of modern life, the book layout demanded a replication of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full\"><a href=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Zena-Shapter-Text-Message-Box-Evolve.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"325\" height=\"103\" src=\"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Zena-Shapter-Text-Message-Box-Evolve.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14529\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Zena-Shapter-Text-Message-Box-Evolve.png 325w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Zena-Shapter-Text-Message-Box-Evolve-300x95.png 300w, https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Zena-Shapter-Text-Message-Box-Evolve-150x48.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 325px) 100vw, 325px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But who knows if any trend will stay or go, and who knows how creative writing will continue to evolve. All we can be certain of is that it will, and writers can either resist that or evolve with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know that in the 18th century, stories could only be printed and published in England if they were true? Powerful religious influences at the time otherwise deemed stories as \u2018lies\u2019 and thus \u2018evil\u2019. You can see the effect of this in the book titles published at the time,\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"continue-reading-button\"> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/modern-creative-writing-resist-or-evolve\/\">Continue reading<i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"As modern creative writing evolves \u2013 will writers resist or evolve?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[2428,2429,2031,2431,2427,782,2430,2432,2028],"class_list":["post-14518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookish-inspection","tag-18th-century","tag-19th-century","tag-classics","tag-evolve","tag-modern-creative-writing","tag-novels","tag-resist","tag-techniques","tag-writing-rockface"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Old_book_bindings.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14518"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14541,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14518\/revisions\/14541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}