which-skills-are-transferable-from-academic-to-creative-writing_-66118 [Documents]

I have a couple of published academic papers in my name and have been writing screenplays for the last couple of years. I'm not amazing at either, but I've at least dipped my feet in both. So here are my thoughts. The very core of academic writing and fiction is the same: Take highly complex ideas, tease out exactly how they relate to each other, and then put them onto paper in a way that will get them into the reader's mind. That's the only thing that's similar, unfortunately; which ideas need to be communicated in fiction and how to do so are very different. But if you can write an academic paper, you more than have the capacity to write fiction. Academic writing and fiction require dramatically different styles of writing. In a journal article, your goal is to communicate ideas with rigor and precision so that other people can use what you discovered to further their own research. It means your writing greatly prioritizes being precise, even pedantic, over being lyrical. Every sentence wears its meaning on its sleeve - you never want your reader to be interpreting the meaning of the words on the page, only the broader ideas you're presenting. Fiction has a wildly different approach to style! You'll often hear the advice "show, don't tell." When you tell a story, readers will emotionally feel the impact of something far more deeply if they piece it together for themselves instead of having it spelled out for them. In academic writing, every sentence should say what it means outright; in fiction, this should almost always be avoided! The most basic actions that characters are taking should be stated outright, but there need to be entire worlds of deeper meaning beneath the surface. And fiction is supposed to be fun, so unlike the tense, precise style used in academic writing, you need to let your language sing. You don't necessarily need a poetic style - I don't like overly flowery language myself. But you can't get away with the dryness of academic writing. You need to have some sense of tone, character, humor (or willful lack thereof) in the musical quality of your writing. This data has been generated by Essay Writers . And academic papers are organized in a certain way. Papers aren't beholden to exactly this structure, but as you are well aware, there's a reason it's so common. The academic world sees itself as above the petty politics and self-centered focus of the business world, and that reputation is deserved. But research is done by people, and that means that it is still political. When someone reads your paper, they're not only reading it to learn what you've discovered. They're also asking themselves, how does this advance (or compete with!) my own research? What did the author get wrong, so I can do a better job or avoid screwing up my own research by relying on parts of the paper that are weak? What does the research mean, what do I think it means, and why did the author want me to think what they're saying it means? This deeply critical approach of reading an academic paper, while antagonistic on the surface, is deeply respectful. It means that you believe the author is secure enough in their findings to hold up to such scrutiny. And so, papers are written to make a critical reading possible: The motivation and prior work make the argument that the research is important. The description of the experiment and the results respectfully lays the author's cards completely on the table, inviting readers to critique the approach used. And the interpretation of the results is the author's chance to present their findings in the best possible light, knowing that readers are smart enough to find the missing pieces. I don't think any of what I said is new to you. I described it all because there are some surprising parallels with fiction writing. Fiction follows a very different common structure than academic writing, but it has a structure nevertheless. And, just like academic writing, that structure exists to best allow critical readers to thoroughly pick apart a piece of fiction. But a conflict prevents them from getting it. Over the course of the plot, the character moves towards overcoming the conflict and getting what they want. The further into the story we get, the more agonizing the conflict becomes. This structure is called rising action. The ways the character has to change to succeed (or not) sheds light on the core moral, lesson, or idea of the story - the theme. Sometimes these elements are called by different names by different writers, but they are virtually always present. They exist because they are the tools fiction writers use to get a reader emotionally invested in a piece and then make statements about their theme without saying it outright. This requires the reader to deeply interpret and critique the piece of fiction at every step. The upshot of all this is, when a reader pieces together the meaning of a story for themselves, they feel the meaning at a deep level. Academic writing asks readers to interpret ideas to understand them deeply; fiction asks readers to interpret ideas until they feel strongly enough to care about the ideas in their bones.