CREATIVE WRITING is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences. (from an adapted version of Steinbeck’s The Pearl) The topic: A Town Analogy or comparison: to an animal Word choice: “has a whole emotion.” Comparisons: “faster than small boys can scramble and dart, faster than women….” We find the first element of imagination operating in the way the writer visualises the town. Then he extends the primary analogy.
The tone he adopts is light humour, a little sarcastic. When we begin to write a story or poem we let our imagination free. We try to say things in a new way. This novelty is what makes our writing pleasurable to the reader.
Sometimes sentence structures are also different from factual writing. Consider the following: They waited in their chairs until the pearls came in, and then they cackled and fought and shouted and threatened until they reached the lowest price the fisherman would stand. (from The Pearl). In a normal construction we will not use so many ‘ands’.
But the action of the story is best reflected through this kind of chaining of actions through ‘ands’. It is appropriate to the movement of the action described. Let us look at another example: She dragged me after her into Miss Rachel’s sitting-room, which opened to her bedroom. At her bedroom door stood Miss Rachel, her face almost white as the white dressing- gown she wore.
The author has used a simile: “white as the white dressing- gown she wore.” In fact, the whiteness of a human face is because of a strong emotion — fear or shock. But here comparing the whiteness to the dressing-gown she wore serves to exaggerate and intensify the emotion. -