Creative Writing for Social Research: A Practical Guide

✍ Scribed by Richard Phillips; Helen Kara

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 225
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This groundbreaking book brings creative writing to social research. Its innovative format includes creatively written contributions by researchers from a range of disciplines, modelling the techniques outlined by the authors. The book is user-friendly and shows readers: • how to write creatively as a social researcher; • how creative writing can help researchers to work with participants and generate data; • how researchers can use creative writing to analyse data and communicate findings. Inviting beginners and more experienced researchers to explore new ways of writing, this book introduces readers to creatively written research in a variety of formats including plays and poems, videos and comics. It not only gives social researchers permission to write creatively but also shows them how to do so.

✦ Table of Contents

Front cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Creative writing in practice
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Introduction
Definitions
Social research
Creativity and creative
Writing and creative writing
Synergies between creative writing and social research
What follows
2. Doing creative writing
Introduction
Doing it yourself: getting started
Reading for writing
Small steps and time frames
Warm-up exercises
Putting yourself in the picture
Writing in the first person
Diaries and journals
Observation and description
Autoethnography
Observational writing and the implied observer
Stories and storying
Collecting and transcribing stories
Writing about ideas: essays and lists
Essays
Lists and listing
Doing it yourself: following through
Drafting and editing
Seeking and receiving feedback
Writing together
3. Doing research, generating data, working with participants
Introduction
Rationale
Ethics
Getting started: participatory creative writing for social research
What is a participant?
How to invite or recruit participants
Workshops and groups
How to draw participants together into a cohesive group
Playful workshops
Getting started, warming up
How to write, review and revise together: workshopping
Scope
Working with individuals
Varying roles for participants and facilitators
Data and findings: process and product
Observing and documenting the creative writing process
Product: outputs and impacts
4. Exploring and articulating findings
Introduction
Data analysis
Fiction in data analysis
Poetry in data analysis
Play and screenplay writing in data analysis
Dissemination
Visual methods of writing for dissemination
Performance for dissemination
Comedy in dissemination
Finding and telling stories; storying
5. Searching and queer(ing) writing
Introduction
Searching
Queer(ing) writing
References
Index
Back cover