By Ciana Bowers

As creative writers we tend to write fictional stories about our lives or completely made up characters, but what about real world stories? I’m not talking about creative nonfiction, but stories about things happening around your campus or in the world as it affects us.

Recently Blue and Gold Widener’s news website came out with a new website and stories about its campus and real-world events. The creative writer in me wants to write stories about these events, but I was nervous to write articles instead of the usual short story or flash nonfiction that I write. However, as I got more comfortable with the process, I realized that there is no difference to writing articles versus writing short stories. Even though short stories are more entertaining to write, the process is still the same. You have to catch the readers’ attention for the story, find the story arc that will entertain the readers, and plan out your story. By plan I don’t mean write out the character description and world building, but research, ask questions, and find your ‘character’ who happens to be the person you’re interviewing or whoever is involved. Having an eye for telling fictional stories is no different than telling news stories. The story is there and reporting it in a newspaper with facts and details isn’t very different from writing a story with details about characters and important plot points

I find it benefiting to write stories in more than one way whether it be a feature, editorial, or news. Learning more about what’s happening in the world and on my campus only benefits me as a creative writer. I feel like it fuels my creativity and my imagination that I can take these events and turn them into a creative story because creative stories are everywhere.