As I’ve been looking through information on teaching creative writing (philosophies, techniques, etc.), I’m finding that the range of approaches is just about as wide as the range of literature that exists in the world. So I’ve decided to focus just on those approaches that I feel can be learned from Shakespeare.
Since Shakespeare really said so little, it is difficult to pinpoint what his exact creative writing methods and philosophies were. With that being the case, however, it seems to me that the best way to learn creative writing from him is through imitation.
The first step of this is to identify which of Shakespeare’s attributes as a writer are worth emulating. Once I can identify the areas of strength, then I can build a more focused method of emulating those attributes.
I found an article online which, although it was pretty informal, I felt did a good job of this. The areas of Shakespeare’s expertise that this article points out are,
1) A large vocabulary
2) Playing with words, and inventing new words and phrases
3) The “common touch”
4) Knowledge of great literature, orators, actors and “the popular”
5) Living with passion
6) Writing!
I really liked this outline of basic strengths to emulate. The article goes on to outline ideas for cultivating these strengths, but I think I’d like to take each one and study it just a little more in depth, and come up with the ways I think would work best based on my research.
If anyone has a brilliant idea of any additional areas of strength that really should be added to this list, please let me know!!
*Just as a side note, I’d like to apologize for my delay in posting about my research. I once again find myself really struggling to find resources on the topic that interests me. (Thanks to those who have given me suggestions, by the way, I really appreciate the help!)
