A writer is a person who uses
written words in different
writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
s,
short stories,
books,
poetry,
travelogues,
plays,
screenplay
''ScreenPlay'' is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993.
Background
After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, fe ...
s,
teleplays,
songs, and
essays as well as other
reports and
news articles that may be of interest to the
general public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
. Writers' texts are published across a wide range of
media. Skilled writers who are able to use
language to express
ideas well, often contribute significantly to the
cultural content of a society.
The term "writer" is also used elsewhere in the arts and music, such as songwriter or a screenwriter, but also a stand-alone "writer" typically refers to the creation of written language. Some writers work from an
oral tradition.
Writers can produce material across a number of genres,
fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...
al or
non-fictional. Other writers use multiple media such as graphics or illustration to enhance the communication of their ideas. Another recent demand has been created by civil and government readers for the work of non-fictional technical writers, whose skills create understandable, interpretive documents of a practical or scientific kind. Some writers may use
image
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
s (drawing, painting, graphics) or
multimedia to augment their writing. In rare instances, creative writers are able to communicate their ideas via music as well as words.
As well as producing their own written works, writers often write about ''how'' they write (their
writing process
A writing process describes a sequence of physical and mental actions that people take as they produce any kind of text. These actions nearly universally involve tools for physical or digital inscription: e.g., chisels, pencils, brushes, chalk, di ...
);
''why'' they write (that is, their motivation);
[See, for example, ] and also comment on the work of other writers (criticism). Writers work professionally or non-professionally, that is, for payment or without payment and may be paid either in advance, or on acceptance, or only after their work is published. Payment is only one of the motivations of writers and many are not paid for their work.
The term ''writer'' has been used as a synonym of ''author'', although the latter term has a somewhat broader meaning and is used to convey legal responsibility for a piece of writing, even if its
composition is anonymous, unknown or collaborative. Author most often refers to the writer of a book.
Types
![Zacharias Topelius by Edelfelt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Zacharias_Topelius_by_Edelfelt.jpeg)
Writers choose from a range of
literary genres to express their ideas. Most writing can be adapted for use in another medium. For example, a writer's work may be read privately or recited or performed in a play or film. Satire for example, may be written as a poem, an essay, a film, a comic play, or a part of journalism. The writer of a letter may include elements of criticism, biography, or journalism.
Many writers work across genres. The genre sets the parameters but all kinds of creative adaptation have been attempted: novel to film; poem to play; history to musical. Writers may begin their career in one genre and change to another. For example, historian
William Dalrymple William Dalrymple may refer to:
* William Dalrymple (1678–1744), Scottish Member of Parliament
* William Dalrymple (moderator) (1723–1814), Scottish minister and religious writer
* William Dalrymple (British Army officer) (1736–1807), Scott ...
began in the genre of
travel literature and also writes as a journalist. Many writers have produced both fiction and non-fiction works and others write in a genre that crosses the two. For example, writers of
historical romances, such as
Georgette Heyer, create characters and stories set in historical periods. In this genre, the accuracy of the history and the level of factual detail in the work both tend to be debated. Some writers write both creative fiction and serious analysis, sometimes using other names to separate their work.
Dorothy Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
, for example, wrote crime fiction but was also a playwright, essayist, translator, and critic.
Literary and creative
Poet
Poets make maximum use of the language to achieve an emotional and sensory effect as well as a cognitive one. To create these effects, they use
rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
and rhythm and they also apply the properties of words with a range of other techniques such as
alliteration and
assonance. A common topic is love and its vicissitudes.
Shakespeare's best-known love story ''
Romeo and Juliet
''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetim ...
'', for example, written in a variety of poetic forms, has been performed in innumerable theaters and made into at least eight cinematic versions.
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
is another poet renowned for his love poetry.
Novelist
Satirist
A satirist uses wit to ridicule the shortcomings of society or individuals, with the intent of revealing stupidity. Usually, the subject of the satire is a contemporary issue such as ineffective political decisions or politicians, although human vices such as
greed are also a common and prevalent subject. Philosopher
Voltaire wrote a satire about optimism called ''
Candide
( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, The ...
'', which was subsequently turned into an opera, and many well known lyricists wrote for it. There are elements of
Absurdism
Absurdism is the philosophical theory that existence in general is absurd. This implies that the world lacks Meaning of life, meaning or a higher purpose and is not fully intelligible by reason. The term "absurd" also has a more specific sense ...
in ''Candide'', just as there are in the work of contemporary satirist
Barry Humphries, who writes comic satire for his character
Dame Edna Everage to perform on stage.
Satirists use different techniques such as
irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into ...
,
sarcasm, and
hyperbole to make their point and they choose from the full range of genres – the satire may be in the form of prose or poetry or dialogue in a film, for example. One of the most well-known satirists is
Jonathan Swift who wrote the four-volume work ''
Gulliver's Travels
''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...
'' and many other satires, including ''
A Modest Proposal'' and ''
The Battle of the Books''.
Short story writer
A short story writer is a writer of short stories, works of fiction that can be read in a single sitting.
Performative
Librettist
![Wagner Luzern 1868](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Wagner_Luzern_1868.jpg)
Libretti (the plural of libretto) are the texts for musical works such as operas. The Venetian poet and librettist
Lorenzo Da Ponte, for example, wrote the libretto for some of
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
's greatest operas.
Luigi Illica
Luigi Illica (9 May 1857 – 16 December 1919) was an Italian librettist who wrote for Giacomo Puccini (usually with Giuseppe Giacosa), Pietro Mascagni, Alfredo Catalani, Umberto Giordano, Baron Alberto Franchetti and other important Italian co ...
and
Giuseppe Giacosa were Italian librettists who wrote for
Giacomo Puccini. Most opera composers collaborate with a librettist but unusually,
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
wrote both the music and the libretti for his works himself.
Lyricist
Usually writing in verses and choruses, a lyricist specializes in writing
lyrics, the words that accompany or underscore a song or opera. Lyricists also write the words for songs. In the case of
Tom Lehrer, these were satirical. Lyricist
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
, who wrote musicals and songs such as "
Mad Dogs and Englishmen" and the recited song "
I Went to a Marvellous Party", also wrote plays and films and performed on stage and screen as well. Writers of lyrics, such as these two, adapt other writers' work as well as create entirely original parts.
Playwright
![FF The Tempest title](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/FF_The_Tempest_title.jpg)
A playwright writes plays which may or may not be performed on a stage by actors. A play's narrative is driven by dialogue. Like novelists, playwrights usually explore a theme by showing how people respond to a set of circumstances. As writers, playwrights must make the language and the dialogue succeed in terms of the characters who speak the lines as well as in the play as a whole. Since most plays are performed, rather than read privately, the playwright has to produce a text that works in spoken form and can also hold an audience's attention over the period of the performance. Plays tell "a story the audience should care about", so writers have to cut anything that worked against that.
Plays may be written in prose or verse. Shakespeare wrote plays in
iambic pentameter as does
Mike Bartlett in his play ''King Charles III'' (2014).
Playwrights also adapt or re-write other works, such as plays written earlier or literary works originally in another genre. Famous playwrights such as
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
or
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
have had their works adapted several times. The plays of early Greek playwrights
Sophocles,
Euripides, and
Aeschylus are still performed. Adaptations of a playwright's work may be honest to the original or creatively interpreted. If the writers' purpose in re-writing the play is to make a film, they will have to prepare a screenplay. Shakespeare's plays, for example, while still regularly performed in the original form, are often adapted and abridged, especially for the
cinema. An example of a creative modern adaptation of a play that nonetheless used the original writer's words, is
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony Luhrmann (born 17 September 1962), known professionally as Baz Luhrmann, is an Australian film director, producer, writer and actor. With projects spanning film, television, opera, theatre, music and recording industries, he is re ...
's version of ''
Romeo and Juliet
''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetim ...
''. The amendment of the name to ''
Romeo + Juliet'' indicates to the audience that the version will be different from the original.
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...
's play ''
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'' is a play inspired by Shakespeare's ''
Hamlet'' that takes two of Shakespeare's most minor characters and creates a new play in which they are the protagonists.
Screenwriter
Screenwriters write a screenplay – or script – that provides the words for media productions such as films, television series and video games. Screenwriters may start their careers by writing the screenplay
speculatively; that is, they write a script with no advance payment, solicitation or contract. On the other hand, they may be employed or commissioned to adapt the work of a playwright or novelist or other writer. Self-employed writers who are paid by contract to write are known as
freelancer
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
s and screenwriters often work under this type of arrangement.
Screenwriters, playwrights and other writers are inspired by the classic
themes and often use similar and familiar plot devices to explore them. For example, in Shakespeare's ''
Hamlet'' is a "play within a play", which the hero uses to demonstrate the king's guilt. Hamlet hives the co-operation of the actors to set up the play as a thing "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king".
Teleplay writer
Joe Menosky
Joe Menosky is a television writer known for his work on the various ''Star Trek'' series.
Career
He graduated from Pomona College in 1979, where the number 47 holds special importance (see 47 as an in-joke).
Menosky is the writer credited with ...
deploys the same "play within a play" device in an episode of the science fiction
television series ''
Star Trek: Voyager''. The bronze-age playwright/hero enlists the support of a ''Star Trek'' crew member to create a play that will convince the ruler (or "patron" as he is called), of the futility of war.
Speechwriter
A speechwriter prepares the text for a
speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses Phonetics, phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if ...
to be given before a group or crowd on a specific occasion and for a specific purpose. They are often intended to be persuasive or inspiring, such as the speeches given by skilled orators like
Cicero; charismatic or influential political leaders like
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
; or for use in a court of law or parliament. The writer of the speech may be the person intended to deliver it, or it might be prepared by a person hired for the task on behalf of someone else. Such is the case when speechwriters are employed by many senior-level elected officials and executives in both government and private sectors.
Interpretive and academic
Biographer
Biographers write an account of another person's life.
Richard Ellmann (1918–1987), for example, was an eminent and award-winning biographer whose work focused on the Irish writers
James Joyce,
William Butler Yeats, and
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
. For the Wilde biography, he won the 1989
Pulitzer Prize for Biography
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author o ...
.
Critic
Critics consider and assess the extent to which a work succeeds in its purpose. The work under consideration may be literary, theatrical, musical, artistic, or architectural. In assessing the success of a work, the critic takes account of why it was done – for example, why a text was written, for whom, in what style, and under what circumstances. After making such an assessment, critics write and publish their evaluation, adding the value of their scholarship and thinking to substantiate any opinion. The theory of criticism is an area of study in itself: a good critic understands and is able to incorporate the theory behind the work they are evaluating into their assessment.
[For example, see ] Some critics are already writers in another genre. For example, they might be novelists or essayists. Influential and respected writer/critics include the art critic
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
(1821–1867) and the literary critic
James Wood (born 1965), both of whom have books published containing collections of their criticism. Some critics are poor writers and produce only superficial or unsubstantiated work. Hence, while anyone can be an uninformed critic, the notable characteristics of a good critic are understanding, insight, and an ability to write well.
Editor
![Un Cœur simple (manuscrito)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Un_C%C5%93ur_simple_%28manuscrito%29.jpg)
An editor prepares literary material for publication. The material may be the editor's own original work but more commonly, an editor works with the material of one or more other people. There are different types of editor.
Copy editors format text to a particular style and/or correct errors in grammar and spelling without changing the text substantively. On the other hand, an editor may suggest or undertake significant changes to a text to improve its readability, sense or structure. This latter type of editor can go so far as to excise some parts of the text, add new parts, or restructure the whole. The work of editors of ancient texts or
manuscripts or collections of works results in differing editions. For example, there are many editions of
Shakespeare's plays by notable editors who also contribute original introductions to the resulting publication. Editors who work on journals and newspapers have varying levels of responsibility for the text. They may write original material, in particular editorials, select what is to be included from a range of items on offer, format the material, and/or fact check its accuracy.
Encyclopaedist
![Printing3 Walk of Ideas Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Printing3_Walk_of_Ideas_Berlin.JPG)
Encyclopaedists create organised bodies of knowledge.
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) is renowned for his contributions to the ''
Encyclopédie''. The encyclopaedist
Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590) was a
Franciscan whose ''Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España'' is a vast encyclopedia of
Mesoamerican civilization, commonly referred to as the ''
Florentine Codex'', after the Italian manuscript library which holds the best-preserved copy.
Essayist
Essayists write essays, which are original pieces of writing of moderate length in which the author makes a case in support of an opinion. They are usually in
prose, but some writers have used poetry to present their argument.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it.
The purpose of a historian is to employ
historical analysis
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
to create coherent narratives that explain "what happened" and "why or how it happened". Professional historians typically work in colleges and universities, archival centers, government agencies, museums, and as freelance writers and consultants.
Edward Gibbon's six-volume ''
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to th ...
'' influenced the development of
historiography.
Lexicographer
Writers who create dictionaries are called lexicographers. One of the most famous is
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
(1709–1784), whose ''
Dictionary of the English Language'' was regarded not only as a great personal scholarly achievement but was also a dictionary of such pre-eminence, that would have been referred to by such writers as
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
.
Researcher/Scholar
Researchers and scholars who write about their discoveries and ideas sometimes have profound effects on society. Scientists and philosophers are good examples because their new ideas can revolutionise the way people think and how they behave. Three of the best known examples of such a revolutionary effect are
Nicolaus Copernicus, who wrote ''
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (1543);
Charles Darwin, who wrote ''
On the Origin of Species'' (1859); and
Sigmund Freud, who wrote ''
The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1899).
These three highly influential, and initially very controversial, works changed the way people understood their place in the world. Copernicus's
heliocentric
Heliocentrism (also known as the Heliocentric model) is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at ...
view of the cosmos displaced humans from their previously accepted place at the center of the universe; Darwin's evolutionary theory placed humans firmly within, as opposed to above, the order of manner; and Freud's ideas about the power of the
unconscious mind overcame the belief that humans were consciously in control of all their own actions.
Translator
Translators have the task of finding some equivalence in another language to a writer's meaning, intention and style. Translators whose work has had very significant cultural effect include
Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar
(786–833 CE) was a mathematician and translator.
Biography
Almost nothing is known about his life, except that he was active in Baghdad, then the capital of the ʿAbbāsid Empire.
He was the first author who translated Euclid's '' Elements' ...
, who translated ''
Elements
Element or elements may refer to:
Science
* Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom
* Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance
* Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of ...
'' from
Greek into
Arabic and
Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion (), also known as Champollion ''le jeune'' ('the Younger'; 23 December 17904 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in th ...
, who deciphered
Egyptian hieroglyphs with the result that he could publish the first translation of the
Rosetta Stone hieroglyphs in 1822. Difficulties with translation are exacerbated when words or phrases incorporate rhymes, rhythms, or
puns; or when they have connotations in one language that are non-existent in another. For example, the title of ''
Le Grand Meaulnes'' by
Alain-Fournier
Alain-Fournier () was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (3 October 1886 – 22 September 1914[Mémoi ...](_blank)
is supposedly untranslatable because "no English adjective will convey all the shades of meaning that can be read into the simple
renchword 'grand' which takes on overtones as the story progresses."
Translators have also become a part of events where political figures who speak different languages meet to look into the relations between countries or solve political conflicts. It is highly critical for the translator to deliver the right information as a drastic impact could be caused if any error occurred.
Reportage
Blogger
Writers of blogs, which have appeared on the
World Wide Web since the 1990s, need no authorisation to be published. The contents of these short opinion pieces or "posts" form a commentary on issues of specific interest to readers who can use the same technology to interact with the author, with an immediacy hitherto impossible. The ability to link to other sites means that some blog writers – and their writing – may become suddenly and unpredictably popular.
Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani education activist, rose to prominence due to her blog for
BBC.
A blog writer is using the technology to create a message that is in some ways like a newsletter and in other ways, like a personal letter. "The greatest difference between a blog and a photocopied school newsletter, or an annual family letter photocopied and mailed to a hundred friends, is the potential audience and the increased potential for direct communication between audience members".
Thus, as with other forms of letters the writer knows some of the readers, but one of the main differences is that "some of the audience will be random" and "that presumably changes the way we
riterswrite."
It has been argued that blogs owe a debt to Renaissance essayist
Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne ( ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a liter ...
, whose ''Essais'' ("attempts"), were published in 1580, because Montaigne "wrote as if he were chatting to his readers: just two friends, whiling away an afternoon in conversation".
Columnist
Columnists write regular parts for newspapers and other periodicals, usually containing a lively and entertaining expression of opinion. Some columnists have had collections of their best work published as a collection in a book so that readers can re-read what would otherwise be no longer available. Columns are quite short pieces of writing so columnists often write in other genres as well. An example is the female columnist
Elizabeth Farrelly, who besides being a columnist, is also an architecture critic and author of books.
Diarist
![Anne Frank signature](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Anne_Frank_signature.svg)
Writers who record their experiences, thoughts, or emotions in a sequential form over a period of time in a diary are known as diarists. Their writings can provide valuable insights into historical periods, specific events, or individual personalities. Examples include
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
(1633–1703), an English administrator and Member of Parliament, whose detailed private diary provides eyewitness accounts of events during the 17th century, most notably of the
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...
.
Anne Frank (1929–1945) was a 13-year-old Dutch girl whose diary from 1942 to 1944 records both her experiences as a persecuted Jew in World War II and an adolescent dealing with intra-family relationships.
Journalist
Journalists write reports about current events after investigating them and gathering information. Some journalists write reports about predictable or scheduled events such as social or political meetings. Others are
investigative journalists who need to undertake considerable research and analysis in order to write an explanation or account of something complex that was hitherto unknown or not understood. Often investigative journalists are reporting criminal or corrupt activity which puts them at risk personally and means that what it is likely that attempts may be made to attack or suppress what they write. An example is
Bob Woodward, a journalist who investigated and wrote about
criminal activities by the US President.
Memoirist
Writers of memoirs produce accounts from the memories of their own lives, which are considered unusual, important, or scandalous enough to be of interest to general readers. Although meant to be factual, readers are alerted to the likelihood of some inaccuracies or bias towards an idiosyncratic perception by the choice of genre. A memoir, for example, is allowed to have a much more selective set of experiences than an autobiography which is expected to be more complete and make a greater attempt at balance. Well-known memoirists include
Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane
Frances Anne Vane, Viscountess Vane (formerly Hamilton, ''née'' Hawes; c. January 1715 – 31 March 1788), was a British memoirist known for her highly public adulterous relationships.
Early life and first marriage
Frances Anne Hawes was th ...
, and
Giacomo Casanova.
Utilitarian
Ghostwriter
Ghostwriters write for, or in the style of, someone else so the credit goes to the person on whose behalf the writing is done.
Letter writer
![Kusakabe Kimbei - Writing Letter (large)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Kusakabe_Kimbei_-_Writing_Letter_%28large%29.jpg)
Writers of letters use a reliable form of transmission of messages between individuals, and surviving sets of letters provide insight into the motivations, cultural contexts, and events in the lives of their writers.
Peter Abelard
Peter Abelard (; french: link=no, Pierre Abélard; la, Petrus Abaelardus or ''Abailardus''; 21 April 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, leading logician, theologian, poet, composer and musician. This source has a detailed desc ...
(1079–1142), philosopher, logician, and theologian is known not only for the heresy contained in some of his work, and the punishment of having to burn his own book, but also for the letters he wrote to
Héloïse d'Argenteuil .
The letters (or
epistle
An epistle (; el, ἐπιστολή, ''epistolē,'' "letter") is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as par ...
s) of
Paul the Apostle
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
were so influential that over the two thousand years of Christian history, Paul became "second only to Jesus in influence and the amount of discussion and interpretation generated".
Report writer
Report writers are people who gather information, organise and document it so that it can be presented to some person or authority in a position to use it as the basis of a decision. Well-written reports influence policies as well as decisions. For example,
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) wrote reports that were intended to effect administrative reform in matters concerning health in the army. She documented her experience in the
Crimean War and showed her determination to see improvements: "...after six months of incredible industry she had put together and written with her own hand her ''Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army.'' This extraordinary composition, filling more than eight hundred closely printed pages, laying down vast principles of far-reaching reform, discussing the minutest detail of a multitude of controversial subjects, containing an enormous mass of information of the most varied kinds – military, statistical, sanitary, architectural" became for a long time, the "leading authority on the medical administration of armies".
The logs and reports of
Master mariner William Bligh contributed to his being honourably acquitted at the
court-martial
A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...
inquiring into the loss of .
Scribe
![The Letter Writer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/The_Letter_Writer.jpg)
A scribe writes ideas and information on behalf of another, sometimes copying from another document, sometimes from oral instruction on behalf of an illiterate person, sometimes transcribing from another medium such as a
tape recording,
shorthand, or personal notes.
Being able to write was a rare achievement for over 500 years in Western Europe so monks who copied texts were scribes responsible for saving many texts from first times. The monasteries, where monks who knew how to read and write lived, provided an environment stable enough for writing. Irish monks, for example, came to Europe in about 600 and "found manuscripts in places like
Tours and
Toulouse" which they copied.
The monastic writers also illustrated their books with highly skilled art work using gold and rare colors.
Technical writer
A technical writer prepares instructions or manuals, such as
user guides or
owner's manuals for users of equipment to follow. Technical writers also write different procedures for business, professional or domestic use. Since the purpose of technical writing is practical rather than creative, its most important quality is clarity. The technical writer, unlike the creative writer, is required to adhere to the relevant
style guide
A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
.
Process and methods
Writing process
There is a range of approaches that writers take to the task of writing. Each writer needs to find their own process and most describe it as more or less a struggle.
Sometimes writers have had the bad fortune to lose their work and have had to start again. Before the invention of
photocopiers and electronic text storage, a writer's work had to be stored on paper, which meant it was very susceptible to fire in particular. (In very earlier times, writers used
vellum and clay which were more robust materials.) Writers whose work was destroyed before completion include
L. L. Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language.
Zamenhof first dev ...
, the inventor of
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
, whose years of work were thrown into the fire by his father because he was afraid that "his son would be thought a spy working code".
Essayist and historian
Thomas Carlyle, lost the only copy of a manuscript for ''
The French Revolution: A History'' when it was mistakenly thrown into the fire by a maid. He wrote it again from the beginning. Writers usually develop a personal schedule.
Angus Wilson
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, CBE (11 August 191331 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for ''The Middle Age of ...
, for example, wrote for a number of hours every morning.
Writer's block is a relatively common experience among writers, especially professional writers, when for a period of time the writer feels unable to write for reasons other than lack of skill or commitment.
Sole
Most writers write alone – typically they are engaged in a solitary activity that requires them to struggle with both the concepts they are trying to express and the best way to express it. This may mean choosing the best genre or genres as well as choosing the best words. Writers often develop idiosyncratic solutions to the problem of finding the right words to put on a blank page or screen. "Didn't
Somerset Maugham also write facing a blank wall? ...
Goethe couldn't write a line if there was another person anywhere in the same house, or so he said at some point."
Collaborative
Collaborative writing means that other authors write and contribute to a part of writing. In this approach, it is highly likely the writers will collaborate on editing the part too. The more usual process is that the editing is done by an independent editor after the writer submits a draft version.
In some cases, such as that between a librettist and composer, a writer will collaborate with another artist on a creative work. One of the best known of these types of collaborations is that between
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
. Librettist
W. S. Gilbert wrote the words for the
comic operas created by the partnership.
Committee
Occasionally, a writing task is given to a committee of writers. The most best-known example is the task of translating the Bible into English, sponsored by King
James VI of England in 1604 and accomplished by six committees, some in
Cambridge and some in
Oxford, who were allocated different sections of the text. The resulting
Authorized King James Version
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
, published in 1611, has been described as an "everlasting miracle" because its writers (that is, its Translators) sought to "hold themselves consciously poised between the claims of accessibility and beauty, plainness and richness, simplicity and majesty, the people and the king", with the result that the language communicates itself "in a way which is quite unaffected, neither literary nor academic, not historical, nor reconstructionist, but transmitting a nearly incredible immediacy from one end of human civilisation to another."
[(p.240, 243)]
Multimedia
![William Blake Nurses Song Copy Z 1826](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/William_Blake_Nurses_Song_Copy_Z_1826.jpg)
Some writers support the verbal part of their work with images or graphics that are an integral part of the way their ideas are communicated.
William Blake is one of rare poets who created his own paintings and drawings as integral parts of works such as his ''
Songs of Innocence and of Experience''.
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...
s are writers whose work depends heavily on hand drawn imagery. Other writers, especially writers for children, incorporate painting or drawing in more or less sophisticated ways.
Shaun Tan, for example, is a writer who uses imagery extensively, sometimes combining fact, fiction and illustration, sometimes for a didactic purpose, sometimes on commission.
Children's writers
Beatrix Potter,
May Gibbs, and
Theodor Seuss Geisel are as well known for their illustrations as for their texts.
Crowd sourced
Some writers contribute very small sections to a part of writing that cumulates as a result. This method is particularly suited to very large works, such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The best known example of the former is the ''
Oxford English Dictionary'', under the editorship of lexicographer
James Murray, who was provided with the prolific and helpful contributions of
W.C. Minor, at the time an inmate of a hospital for the criminally insane.
The best known example of the latter – an encyclopaedia that is crowdsourced – is Wikipedia, which relies on millions of writers and editors such as
Simon Pulsifer worldwide.
Motivations
Writers have many different reasons for writing, among which is usually some combination of self-expression
and recording facts, history or research results. The many
physician writers, for example, have combined their observation and knowledge of the
human condition with their desire to write and contributed many poems, plays, translations, essays and other texts. Some writers write extensively on their motivation and on the likely motivations of other writers. For example,
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
's essay "
Why I Write" (1946) takes this as its subject. As to "what constitutes success or failure to a writer", it has been described as "a complicated business, where the material rubs up against the spiritual, and psychology plays a big part".
Command
Some writers are the authors of specific military orders whose clarity will determine the outcome of a battle. Among the most controversial and unsuccessful was
Lord Raglan's order at the
Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to se ...
, which being vague and misinterpreted, led to defeat with many casualties.
Develop skill/explore ideas
Some writers use the writing task to develop their own skill (in writing itself or in another area of knowledge) or explore an idea while they are producing a piece of writing.
Philologist J. R. R. Tolkien, for example, created a new language for his fantasy books.
Entertain
Some genres are a particularly appropriate choice for writers whose chief purpose is to entertain. Among them are
limericks, many comics and
thrillers. Writers of children's literature seek to entertain children but are also usually mindful of the educative function of their work as well.
Influence
![Ninety-Five Theses, Wittenberg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Ninety-Five_Theses%2C_Wittenberg.JPG)
Anger has motivated many writers, including
Martin Luther, angry at religious corruption, who wrote the ''
Ninety-five Theses
The ''Ninety-five Theses'' or ''Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences''-The title comes from the 1517 Basel pamphlet printing. The first printings of the ''Theses'' use an incipit rather than a title which summarizes the content ...
'' in 1517, to reform the church, and
Émile Zola (1840–1902) who wrote the public letter, ''
J'Accuse'' in 1898 to bring public attention to government injustice, as a consequence of which he had to flee to England from his native France. Such writers have affected ideas, opinion or policy significantly.
Payment
Writers may write a particular piece for payment (even if at other times, they write for another reason), such as when they are commissioned to create a new work, transcribe an original one, translate another writer's work, or write for someone who is illiterate or inarticulate. In some cases, writing has been the only way an individual could earn an income.
Frances Trollope is an example of women who wrote to save herself and her family from penury, at a time when there were very few socially acceptable employment opportunities for them. Her book about her experiences in the United States, called ''
Domestic Manners of the Americans'' became a great success, "even though she was over fifty and had never written before in her life" after which "she continued to write hard, carrying this on almost entirely before breakfast".
According to her writer son
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope (; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the '' Chronicles of Barsetshire'', which revolves ar ...
"her books saved the family from ruin".
Teach
Aristotle, who was tutor to
Alexander the Great, wrote to support his
teaching. He wrote two
treatises for the young prince: "On Monarchy", and "On Colonies"
and his
dialogue
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is c ...
s also appear to have been written either "as lecture notes or discussion papers for use in his philosophy school at the Athens
Lyceum between 334 and 323 BC."
They encompass both his 'scientific' writings (
metaphysics,
physics,
biology,
meteorology, and
astronomy, as well as
logic and
argument
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
) the 'non-scientific' works (poetry,
oratory, ethics, and politics), and "major elements in traditional
Greek and
Roman education".
Writers of
textbooks also use writing to teach and there are numerous instructional guides to writing itself. For example, many people will find it necessary to make a speech "in the service of your company, church, civic club, political party, or other organization" and so, instructional writers have produced texts and guides for speechmaking.
Tell a story
Many writers use their skill to tell the story of their people, community or cultural tradition, especially one with a personal significance. Examples include
Shmuel Yosef Agnon;
Miguel Ángel Asturias;
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...
;
Toni Morrison;
Isaac Bashevis Singer; and
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987.
White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, ...
.
Writers such as
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...
,
Herta Müller, and
Erich Maria Remarque write about the effect of conflict, dispossession and war.
Seek a lover
Writers use prose, poetry, and letters as part of courtship rituals.
Edmond Rostand
Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (, , ; 1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his 1897 play ''Cyrano de Bergerac''. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted with t ...
's play ''
Cyrano de Bergerac'', written in verse, is about both the power of love and the power of the self-doubting writer/hero's writing talent.
Authorship
Pen names
Writers sometimes use a pseudonym, otherwise known as a pen name or "nom de plume". The reasons they do this include to separate their writing from other work (or other types of writing) for which they are known; to enhance the possibility of publication by reducing prejudice (such as against women writers or writers of a particular race); to reduce personal risk (such as political risks from individuals, groups or states that disagree with them); or to make their name better suit another language.
Examples of well-known writers who used a pen name include:
George Eliot (1819–1880), whose real name was Mary Anne (or Marian) Evans;
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...
(1903–1950), whose real name was Eric Blair;
George Sand (1804–1876), whose real name was Lucile Aurore Dupin;
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991), whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel; Stendhal (1783–1842), whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle; and
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
(1835–1910), whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Apart from the large numbers of works attributable only to "Anonymous", there are a large number of writers who were once known and are now unknown. Efforts are made to find and re-publish these writers' works. One example is the publication of books like ''Japan As Seen and Described by Famous Writers'' (a 2010 reproduction of a pre-1923 publication) by "Anonymous". Another example is the founding of a Library and Study Centre for the Study of Early English Women's Writing in Chawton, England.
Fictional writers
Some fictional writers are very well known because of the strength of their characterization by the real writer or the significance of their role as writer in the plot of a work. Examples of this type of fictional writer include Edward Casaubon, a fictional scholar in George Eliot's ''
Middlemarch'', and Edwin Reardon, a fictional writer in
George Gissing's ''
New Grub Street
''New Grub Street'' is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London. Gissing revised and shortened the novel for a French edition of 1901.
Plot
The story deals with the lite ...
''. Casaubon's efforts to complete an authoritative study affect the decisions taken by the protagonists in Eliot's novel and inspire significant parts of the plot. In Gissing's work, Reardon's efforts to produce high quality writing put him in conflict with another character, who takes a more commercial approach.
Robinson Crusoe is a fictional writer who was originally credited by the real writer (
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
) as being the author of the confessional letters in the work of the same name.
Bridget Jones is a comparable fictional diarist created by writer
Helen Fielding. Both works became well-known and popular; their protagonists and story were developed further through many adaptations, including film versions.
Cyrano de Bergerac was a real writer who created a fictional character with his own name. The ''
Sibylline Books
The ''Sibylline Books'' ( la, Libri Sibyllini) were a collection of oracular utterances, set out in Greek hexameters, that, according to tradition, were purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and were consulted at mo ...
'', a collection of prophecies were supposed to have been purchased from the
Cumaean Sibyl
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The word ''sibyl'' comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word ''sibylla'', meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls ...
by the last king of Rome. Since they were consulted during periods of crisis, it could be said that they are a case of real works created by a fictional writer.
Writers of sacred texts
Religious texts or scriptures are the texts which different religious traditions consider to be
sacred, or of central importance to their religious tradition. Some religions and
spiritual movements believe that their sacred texts are
divinely or
supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
ly
revealed or inspired, while others have individual authors.
Controversial writing
![Old Man with Water Studies](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Old_Man_with_Water_Studies.jpg)
Skilled writers influence ideas and society, so there are many instances where a writer's work or opinion has been unwelcome and controversial. In some cases, they have been persecuted or punished. Aware that their writing will cause controversy or put themselves and others into danger, some writers self-censor; or withhold their work from publication; or hide their manuscripts; or use some other technique to preserve and protect their work. Two of the most famous examples are
Leonardo da Vinci and
Charles Darwin. Leonardo "had the habit of conversing with himself in his writings and of putting his thoughts into the clearest and most simple form". He used "left-handed or mirror writing" (a technique described as "so characteristic of him") to protect his scientific research from other readers.
The fear of persecution, social disgrace, and being proved incorrect are regarded as contributing factors to Darwin's delaying the publication of his radical and influential work ''
On the Origin of Species''.
One of the results of controversies caused by a writer's work is scandal, which is a negative public reaction that causes damage to reputation and depends on public outrage. It has been said that it is possible to scandalise the public because the public "wants to be shocked in order to confirm its own sense of virtue".
The scandal may be caused by what the writer wrote or by the style in which it was written. In either case, the content or the style is likely to have broken with tradition or expectation. Making such a departure may in fact, be part of the writer's intention or at least, part of the result of introducing innovations into the genre in which they are working. For example, novelist
D H Lawrence challenged ideas of what was acceptable as well as what was expected in form. These may be regarded as literary scandals, just as, in a different way, are the scandals involving writers who mislead the public about their identity, such as
Norma Khouri Norma Khouri is the pen name of author Norma Bagain Toliopoulos (born Norma Bagain in Jordan in 1970). She is the author of the book titled '' Forbidden Love'' (known under its original title in Australia, Britain, and Commonwealth nations and as '' ...
or
Helen Darville who, in deceiving the public, are considered to have committed fraud.
Writers may also cause the more usual type of scandal – whereby the public is outraged by the opinions, behaviour or life of the individual (an experience not limited to writers). Poet
Paul Verlaine outraged society with his behaviour and treatment of his wife and child as well as his lover. Among the many writers whose writing or life was affected by scandals are
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
,
Lord Byron,
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Albert Camus, and
H. G. Wells. One of the most famously scandalous writers was the
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine sexuality as well as numerous accusat ...
who offended the public both by his writings ''and'' by his behaviour.
Punishment
![Tyndale-martyrdom](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Tyndale-martyrdom.png)
The consequence of scandal for a writer may be censorship or discrediting of the work, or social ostracism of its creator. In some instances, punishment, persecution, or prison follow. The
list of journalists killed in Europe,
list of journalists killed in the United States
Numerous journalists have been murdered or killed in the United States while reporting, covering a military conflict, or because of their status as a journalist. At least 39 of these have been directly targeted as a result of their journalistic i ...
and the
list of journalists killed in Russia are examples. Others include:
* The
Balibo Five, a group of Australian television journalists who were killed while attempting to report on Indonesian incursions into
Portuguese Timor in 1975.
*
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), an influential theologian who wrote ''
The Cost of Discipleship'' and was hanged for his resistance to
Nazism.
*
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who was sentenced to imprisonment for
heresy as a consequence of writing in support of the then controversial theory of
heliocentrism
Heliocentrism (also known as the Heliocentric model) is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the universe. Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at ...
, although the sentence was almost immediately commuted to
house arrest
In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if all ...
.
*
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a ...
(1891–1937), who wrote political theory and criticism and was imprisoned for this by the Italian Fascist regime.
*
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Da ...
(1927–2015), whose poem "
What Must Be Said" led to his being declared ''
persona non grata
In diplomacy, a ' (Latin: "person not welcome", plural: ') is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and other types of prosecution.
Diplomacy
Under Article 9 of the ...
'' in
Israel.
*
Peter Greste (born 1965), a journalist who was imprisoned in Egypt for news reporting which was "damaging to national security."
*
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
(1919–1987) who, among many Jews imprisoned during World War II, wrote an account of his incarceration called ''
If This Is a Man
''If This Is a Man'' ( it, Se questo è un uomo ; United States title: ''Survival in Auschwitz'') is a memoir by Italians, Italian History of the Jews in Italy, Jewish writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a memb ...
''.
*
Sima Qian
Sima Qian (; ; ) was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206AD220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his ''Records of the Grand Historian'', a general history of China covering more than two thousand years b ...
(145 or 135 BC – 86 BC) who "successfully defended a vilified master from defamatory charges" and was given "the choice between
castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharmaceut ...
or execution." He "became a eunuch and had to bury his own book ... in order to protect it from the authorities."
[p40]
*
Salman Rushdie (born 1947), whose novel ''
The Satanic Verses'' was banned and burned internationally after causing
such a worldwide storm that a
fatwā was issued against him. Though Rushdie survived, numerous others were killed in incidents connected to the novel.
*
Roberto Saviano (born 1979), whose best-selling book ''
Gomorrah'' provoked the Neapolitan
, annoyed
Silvio Berlusconi and led to him receiving permanent police protection.
*
Simon Sheppard (born 1957) who was imprisoned in the UK for
inciting racial hatred
Incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a crime under the laws of several countries.
Australia
In Australia, the Racial Hatred Act 1995 amends the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, inserting Part IIA – Offensive Behaviour Because of Race, Colour ...
.
*
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who used his experience of imprisonment as the subject of his writing in ''
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' and ''
Cancer Ward
''Cancer Ward'' (russian: links=no, italics=yes, Раковый корпус, Rakovy korpus) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Completed in 1966, the novel was distributed in Russia t ...
''—the latter, while legally published in the Soviet Union, had to gain the approval of the
USSR Union of Writers.
*
William Tyndale ( – 1536), who was executed because he translated the Bible into English.
Protection and representation
The organisation
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
(also known by its French name: Reporters Sans Frontières) was set up to help protect writers and advocate on their behalf.
The professional and industrial interests of writers are represented by various national or regional guilds or unions. Examples include writers guilds in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
and
Great Britain and unions in
Arabia,
Armenia,
Azerbaijan,
Canada,
Estonia,
Hungary,
Ireland,
Moldova,
Philippines,
Poland,
Québéc,
Romania,
Russia,
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
, and
Ukraine. In the United States, there is both a
writers guild and a
National Writers Union
National Writers Union (NWU), founded on 19 November 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers and poets. ...
.
Awards
![Tomas Transtromer and Modhir Ahmed](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Tomas_Transtromer_and_Modhir_Ahmed.jpg)
There are many awards for writers whose writing has been adjudged excellent. Among them are the many
literary award
A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author.
Organizations
Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony. Ma ...
s given by individual countries, such as the
Prix Goncourt and the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
, as well as international awards such as the
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
. Russian writer
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...
(1890–1960), under pressure from his government, reluctantly declined the Nobel Prize that he won in 1958.
See also
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Academic publishing
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Hack writer
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Lists of writers
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List of women writers
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List of non-binary writers
This is a list of notable non-binary writers, or writers who are genderqueer, agender, bigender, genderfluid, non-binary gender or third gender.
A
* Travis Alabanza, an English performance artist, poet, writer, and LGBTQ rights activist
* K Ale ...
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List of writers' conferences
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Genre fiction
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Professional writing
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Website content writer
A Website content writer or web content writer is a person who specializes in providing relevant content (media), content for websites. Every website has a specific target audience and requires the most relevant content to attract business. Content ...
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Writer's voice
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, t ...
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Betty Abah
Betty Abah (born March 6, 1974) is a Nigerian journalist, author and a women and children's rights activist. She is the founder and Executive director of CEE HOPE, a girl-child rights and development non-profit organization based in Lagos State ...
References
External links
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{{Authority control
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Communication design
Articles containing video clips
Writing