For Virginia Tech students the time to pick classes for the upcoming semester is here. If you are looking for an extra elective course I recommend taking Introduction to Creative Writing. I’m minoring in creative writing so this class was mandatory for me, however, this class was inspiring and beneficial for more than just my minor.
During this course I have seen the differences in the stories being told. Stories come in the form of movies, books, and poems. Right now we are living in a world surrounded by stories. Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time. Historians believe people started to tell stories to comfort themselves and explain things that they couldn’t. Then, they were used to teach lessons in the form of fables and children’s stories, and now they are evolving into a powerful tool that can change the world. Storytelling has transformed from humanity trying to understand unexplainable natural forces into humanity trying to explain the forces that are the human emotion. We’re hearing more stories being told by those who haven’t had a chance to share theirs.
Stories gain popularity and influence the public based on the credibility of those sharing these stories. For a long time no one wanted to hear stories like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn specifically because it involved an African American character. But during our life time we are changing that narrative, one of the New York Times Best Sellers was a story of a homosexual African male titled, All Boys Aren’t Blue. The stories we give value to and want to hear are changing. Those who have been silenced are being given the chance to share the stories in their head, whether it be in a poem, fiction, or a true story.
The course is split up into poetry and creative nonfiction. The first half of the semester is focused on learning how to define poetry and find your voice about topics that spark strong emotion. Poetry is subjective and there are very few limitations to what you can write about. My teacher, Elisabeth Bloomer, has taught me so much about different writing styles but the most important thing she has taught me is that every writer has twisted their own story into a fictitious one.
The choice to start the class focused on poetry is beneficial beyond just writing. Poetry is a very expressive type of writing. I think this is a really important first step in finding your voice. This class transformed the way I view poetry. It boils down to a short insight into human emotion and teaching students how to write this also helps them learn to process these emotions as well. Specifically, I noticed while peer critiquing, those who weren’t writing majors and didn’t spend a lot outside of class writing had the most powerful poems. We learned how to take a singular emotion and describe it in a way that is never explicitly said, but it is felt by the reader.
Then we moved into creative nonfiction as well as fiction. We would write stories based on painting and one day we even drew random cards that gave us the story we were supposed to write. The thing I have learned most from this section of the class is creating a plot. Most plots and storylines are a more elaborate or fictional versions of something the writer has been through. The writer must be able to understand what it is like to feel what the main character feels in order to get that across to the reader.
Another benefit of this class was being surrounded by so many creative people. Some days it went beyond writing, some students were really talented artistically and paired the visuals with their stories and it was super cool to see what some students created. Bloomer once said during class, “It isn’t about whether you agree or disagree, it matters that you understand.” This class has made me want to open my mind to all sorts of different perspectives and read how others feel and react to situations that happen all around us.
Creative writing is a great class to exercise the creative muscle in our brain. If you have time in your schedule I recommend fully immersing yourself into what it takes to write creatively. I found it helpful not only in furthering my writing skills, but also growing emotionally. Subconsciously through my stories and poems I have worked through and come to terms with a lot of emotions I had no idea were there. According to Bloomer, “If you have an easy thought, you aren’t thinking hard enough.”