How is Academic Writing Different from Creative Writing?

How is Academic Writing Different from Creative Writing?

Written by Alison Lurie, In Education, Published On
September 18, 2021
, 579 Views

In order to understand the difference between academic writing and creative writing, you will first have to understand both writing styles.

How is Academic Writing Different from Creative Writing?

What is Academic Writing?

what is academic writing

Academic writing is the form of writing which is focused, clear, concise, having a proper structure, and is supported by facts and figures. Its main purpose is to make the readers understand the writing effectively.

Academic writing has a specific formal tone and style. However, it does not involve using complicated vocabulary and long sentences. It is a concrete and structured form of writing.

Top academic essay writers use a thorough research approach as their writing help tool. The purpose of comprehensive research is to make their writing effective. It helps them find all the resources to support their arguments.

What is Creative Writing?

creative-writing

Creative writing is the art of portraying your thoughts in a constructive way. Any writing that goes beyond the boundaries of academic, normal professional, technical or journalistic forms of writing can be classified as creative writing.

Creative writing helps you to step into your own imaginary world in order to make things up. Creative writing, instead of cold, help you express feelings and emotions. It does involve complicated vocabulary to demonstrate a few exaggerated thoughts.

Best creative writers make their observations strong enough to persuasively express their feelings and emotions.

Academic Writing Vs. Creative Writing

Academic writing and creative writing are two different writing styles with the major difference in style.

  • Academic writing is a writing style that has a formal tone and formal style. Creative writing does not follow this principle of formal style and tone. Creative is a freestyle.
  • Academic writing is an organized and structured form of writing. In contrast, creative writing is based on storytelling regardless of structure and organization.
  • Academic writing involves the usage of facts and evidence to support the main theme. On the other hand, creative writing does not need evidence to support the idea as it is based on imagination.
  • In academic writing, you should answer every question. However, it is not necessary to answer every question in creative writing.
  • The pressure factor is another element that differentiates academic writing from creative writing. Time constraints, in timed academic writing, can drastically change anyone’s writing. The writer would not be able to brainstorm properly. However, there is no time limit involved in creative writing. As it is based on imagination so one can think of the ideas at any time. He can speedily put them in writing at some other time.
  • Academic writing uses references for the information used in writing to support the arguments. On the contrary, creative writing does not need any references to support the arguments. It only requires strong logic to portray your thoughts.

Which Writing Style is the Best?

Well, this is something that purely depends on the purpose of writing. Sometimes, you just need to educate your readers about the topic on which you are writing. In that case, academic writing will serve the purpose as you’ll be needing evidence to support your arguments along with structured information to effectively educate about the topic.

However, there are times when you want to influence your readers based on your own experiences and logical reasoning. Creative writing will make you achieve your purpose in such cases. You will be open to express your thoughts regardless of the fact of supporting your arguments to convince your readers.

Both writing styles have their own benefits and can be used according to writing objectives and personal needs.

Recommendations

As both writing styles have different purposes so you can never say that one writing style is better than the other. Both writing styles have their own needs and impact. However, you should always align your academic writing assignments in a way that your writing piece can make an impressive impact.

Always align your whole paper in a manner that it can cover almost all the aspects of your subject matter. Following is the most recommended way of organizing your paper:

Introduction: Always have an introductory section; this introductory section will be purely different in both writing styles. For academic writing, you will have to have a proper formal tone and a formal introduction. But for creative writing, you can draft the introduction in a creative manner without compromising the writing style.

Main body: In this section, you will have to list down all the necessary points; this can include various arguments with evidence. In order to match the needs of the writing style, you will have to elaborate you’re your arguments along with evidence in a manner that matches the requirements of your writing assignment.

Conclusion:

Lastly, no paper or no publication, or no assignment can leave a lasting impact on your reader if it is not concluded well. Either it is your academic writing assignment or any creative writing task, a conclusion is a must. So, always add a conclusion in the manner that best matches the needs of your writing piece.

“Academic writing is the style that helps you get good grades, but Creative writing can get you published.”

You should always try to make a solid impact in both writing styles.

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