I recently came across these great creative writing videos on You Tube.  In them the Scottish writer Keith Gray explains the five main elements of creative writing, namely Ideas and Inspiration,  Characters, Plotting, Setting and Redrafting, and he does a very good job of it, too.

I personally think the first and the last are the best, since they cover the two topics that most writers struggle with namely the getting of creative writing ideas and the struggle of editing and fixing up that first draft, which is just never perfect as is, no matter how much I would like to believe that it is.  Inspiration is another thing that is sometimes hard to force into being, though I must say that getting into the habit of writing daily, whether by doing creative writing exercises or following creative writing prompts or just journal prompts, does help with the inspiration quite a bit.  All in all, I would say that the real inspiration killer is definitely the inner critic, which must always be silenced before any real writing can begin.

Watching these videos and having a writer explain his creative writing process really helped me get some of my own creative writing ideas in order, which is why I decided to make this hub and share them with everyone.  Hopefully you too can benefit with some of the advice and ideas he puts forth.

Here he explains how he gets his creative writing ideas and also how he organizes his day so as to be more productive.  You really just have to force yourself to write, waiting for inspiration to strike can take too long!

Characters are the most important element of fiction, since they propel the story forward and in this video Keith Grey nicely explains how to come up with memorable fictional characters.

Without a good plot all the other elements just sort of hang there, so you must make sure that your story has a believable and consistent plot.

Nothing happens nowhere, as they say, so you must make sure that the setting of your novel or story is described well and believably.  Only then will the reader be transported into the world you created.

This is perhaps the most important element of the creative writing process and it, of course, involves getting that first draft ready for publication.  This is when the inner critic comes in and helps you to shape your stories.