A coworker and I talked a bit about this post yesterday, and she brought up the fact that being a technical writer helps in the creative writing realm. This idea is taking a view 180 degrees from the view that that post took, but I have thought about that view a little more and seen that there is more crossover than I had explored. Of course, there are some basic differences, too.

Audience-Conscious Writing

The biggest thing that both types of writing have in common is audience. Pretty basic, yes, because it’s what most writing is all about. But this principle goes beyond the simple fact that you intend someone else to read your writing. In both types of writing, you need to be thinking about the audience (in technical writing, your end users) as you go, or you may end up not having an audience at all.

The decisions that effective writers make are those that will keep people reading. In creative writing, those decisions involve profound descriptions, unique turns of phrase, and, in the case of prose, twists and turns that keep the pages turning almost on their own. Technical writers also must keep the end user’s attention just long enough for the gem of information she’s looking for to surface. The sooner that happens, the better.

Some Structure in Life

Both technical and creative writers are concerned with structure. Free verse poets think about even a little structure in the form of rhythm, and a fiction or nonfiction story needs some overall form to make sense. (There are those writers who go out of their way to break the rules, but that kind of writing still takes deliberate attention to be enjoyable.)

Like a human skeleton, structure gives technical writing its shape. Without it, you get a pile of muscle and organs that then don’t work so well. Documentation has to be predictable and easy to navigate. The emphasis here is heavier than in creative writing, which still has some reliance on it. Mastering the strict structuring laws of technical writing contributes to understanding how to employ the structuring guidelines of creative writing.

Organization and Planning

Having structure lends itself to having a plan. I like to plan out how I’m going to organize my documentation. When I begin a piece of documentation, be it electronic or print, I like to outline it. When I gather information from other members of the team early on, having that plan gives me understanding of where the information belongs and how it relates to other information.

This planning skill in one area reaches over into the other. I have to create an outline for creative writing pieces so that I know where the flow is going. In his book Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life, Terry Brooks admits that some bestselling authors don’t outline their works first, but that doing so takes a knack that many other writers don’t have. He then recommends outlining by arguing that:

  • An outline forces you to think your story through.
  • You have a blueprint to which you can refer later when you forget what you thought about in the beginning. You know where things are going when you start writing, so you can direct things there appropriately.
  • You prevent writer’s block from robbing you of a good finish.

Fundamental Differences

A basic difference between technical writing and the realm dubbed “creative writing” is that a technical writer is focused on practical delivery of information, whereas the author or poet is driven by a desire to express something. I think this is one area where the two don’t really meet. I don’t write online help to express myself. I may find a little self-expression in the visual design of things, but it’s not my principal objective.

Second, while both want to keep the audience’s attention, technical writing aims to give the user the most pertinent information as quickly as possible. The more a user has to click through help topics or flip through manuals and quick-start guides to find one little piece of information, the faster you lose her. You don’t want any mysteries. However, creative writers want to lead their audiences on with questions about what happens next. The idea is to have the reader so deeply involved in your story or language that he’ll let you drive him where you like.

Still, with the relationship between the two, I believe the technical and the creative can coexist in the same writer. They’d better, or I’m in for some serious reevaluation.

A session called “Creative? Me? But I’m a Technical Writer” is scheduled at the STC Technical Communication Summit in June. I’m looking forward to seeing what the presenters have to say about being “whole-brained” writers.

Related entries (auto-generated):

Technical Writer vs. Daydreamer: Not So Distant After All

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The Technical Writer Lens

Some Notes for You USU Tech Writing Students

How a Teacher Reminded Me Why I’m a Writer