Communicating creatively with words.

How to get a message across. – tell it like it is or use creative ideas. Creative ideas tend to engage other people and stick in peoples minds for longer – sometimes forever.

Charles Dickens stories, I’m thinking of Scrooge in particular is still putting a message across. If he had said don’t be mean to your workers no one would have heard his message in such a powerful way and the message would have been forgotten. The Help, to bring things more up to date. You can list ‘your favorite’ in comments. Stories that have stood the test of time and are still relevant.

Famous adverts we all remember and are iconic of a period.

Poems, ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith is a good one. There are so many images drawn in words through poetry. It is worth reading regularly. It’s an undervalued pleasure.

Writing a picture in words, with insight thrown in is a powerful tool.

The insight you can write about, you can choose for yourself, whatever it may be. What do you know about? What are your experiences in life?

Hand-me-down stories are the way religions and cultural stories are passed on. Who doesn’t love a good story and embellish it with the retelling?

This is such a brief intro to communicating creatively, but you get the idea.

Communication and media studies are interesting subjects and worth learning in conjunction with writing. It’s at least a two year study programme but a little knowledge goes a long way and you have to start somewhere.

Non-verbal communication is important to note. It varies according to culture, but when you are writing you have only words to convey something non-verbal. A smile, a pause, emotions etc. Put non-verbal communication in your search engine and spend an hour or two exploring. If you get round to it, look up semiotics, there is an introductory blog I posted earlier.

Writing creatively you can express your pain or your happiness and everything in between. There is a misconception that everything you write must be saleable, – of course it doesn’t. You can use it as a way of talking to yourself, sharing with friends, putting your words on the internet,  or writing a blog or article. It’s up to you. Similes and metaphors, saying what something is like or saying it is something else – methods of drawing pictures.

Photos capture memories, try writing your experiences to add to the time and the moment. Write in all the senses, smelling, touching, tasting, hearing, seeing. They aren’t there in a photo apart from seeing. Add feelings.

Description using colours and shades of colours say something about people and places.

A picture is worth a thousand words – is it? Pictures can and do lie, especially now we have photoshop to show us how to make things look what they’re not. Historically, there are photos of fairies at the bottom of the garden. People believed it because the fairies were transposed into a photograph. We need to understand creativity in communication to understand if what we are reading is ‘truth’ or ‘lies’. Lots of discussion here if you belong to a group.

Making words appealing is the art of advertising and communicating. Right words – in the right place – with the right images + the right target audience = success in communication. Expand that idea to poems, short stories, blogs, and any writing.

Communication is where grammar comes in. Get it wrong and the wrong message is conveyed. Put the punctuation in the wrong place and the meaning can be changed. If you read your writing out loud it helps you notice where punctuation is needed, but it doesn’t help with apostrophes, quotation marks and speech. If grammar and punctuation aren’t your strong point start learning step by step. The more you write and correct your work the more you will learn.

Think in new ways, use a unique idea. Creative Writing for communication can be like learning another language, it’s a way of saying things. Don’t be put off by people who know more than you do. I’ve always found writers, friendly people and willing to help. Everyone has to start somewhere.

At the end of all this I hope people feel inspired.

Write a paragraph several times until it sounds better. Read and write poetry. Read great writers and ask yourself what is good about their writing.

Are you good at tweeting? Could you be better? Icould do with improvements on that one, I’m sure.

Remember, we all make mistakes and if you are afraid of making mistakes you won’t get anywhere.

Next week – Writing to make shed loads of money.