Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal
professional,
journalistic,
academic, or
technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary
tropes or with various traditions of
poetry and
poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as
feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both
fictional and
non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as
novels,
biographies,
short stories, and
poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and
poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as
crime or
horror. Writing for the screen and stage—
screenwriting and
playwrighting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.