(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Glossary of Creative Writing Terms

Am I using a word you don’t know, or—much more likely—using a word in a WAY that you’re pret­ty sure isn’t quite what it means in every­day usage? Fic­tion writ­ers use a lot of terms (like “set­ting as kinet­ic land­scape”) that sort of SOUND like they might be Eng­lish but prob­a­bly need some expla­na­tion. As I start to intro­duce terms, I’ll keep a run­ning list here for ref­er­ence with a quick def­i­n­i­tion and a link back to the post where I orig­i­nal­ly explained the idea.  Or if you just want a cheap laugh or two.

There is con­sid­er­able over­lap between cre­ative writ­ing terms and lit­er­ary terms. The terms I use almost exclu­sive­ly to refer to cre­ative writ­ing con­cepts and that I don’t often hear used as lit­er­ary terms I have under­lined.  Also, though some lit­er­ary terms must be includ­ed in a cre­ative writ­ing glos­sary, this is not a lit­er­ary glos­sary, and it won’t cov­er the more eso­teric lit­er­ary terms.

Cre­ative Writ­ing Terms- A‑E
Cre­ative Writ­ing Terms- F‑J
Cre­ative Writ­ing Terms- K‑O
Cre­ative Writ­ing Terms- P‑S
Cre­ative Writ­ing Terms- T‑Z

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