ABSTRACT
The term ‘creative writing’, which is used in English courses ranging from school to university, usually refers to writing which takes the form of stories, poems and plays. The word ‘creative’ is attached to such writing because it is seen as doing something new, either new in its ideas and what it is saying, or new in its techniques of writing, or both. There are, of course, degrees to this. Some writers blaze across the sky, dazzling with their novelty; others are less obviously ‘different’ from what has gone before. But, whether it be through the invention of a completely new form of story-telling, or the subtle use of metaphors, it is expected that good writers will surprise their readers by doing things with language that have not been encountered before.
