the expository prose writing creative domain

 is expository prose writing creative?—some common misconceptions

What does The Muse we mean by expository prose?

Expository prose writing is a prose writing style whose sole function is to describe, expose, explain, define, and disseminate objective or subjective information about facts—to bring accurate and correct knowledge to light. It's a mode for writing prose that authors employ when their primary objective is to inform, explain, describe, or define a single subject to a reader.

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Because it's always nonfictional, many people believe that expository writing is ipso facto an uncreative kind of writing. They conclude that it's uncreative because it's mission is to convey facts, and that facts are nonfictional by their very nature.

Is this premise correct? Is all expository prose always uncreative? Or can some expository writing be creative or uncreative depending on how its written or other factors?

In a sense, expository prose writing is nonfictional writing in its utmost form: its sole function is to describe, expose, explain, define, and disseminate objective or subjective factual information—to bring accurate and correct knowledge to light. It's a mode for writing prose that authors employ when their primary objective is to inform, explain, describe, or define a single subject to a reader. It's the utmost nonfictional form because it has no other objective than to convey nonfictional information.

Expository prose writing is one of the most important and prominent prose writing styles in existence. It's a linguistic discipline that plays a key role in social, personal, business, private, and scientific affairs; it pervades virtually all aspects of professional and everyday life. Regardless of nationality or language, almost everyone who has learned how to read or write regularly reads or writes expository prose; it's universal.

Basically, there are two forms of expository prose writing: 1) exclusive expository prose, and 2) the expository essay. Both are nonfictional. An exclusive expository prose work is totally objective; and essay may be totally objective, or it may be subjective as well as objective.

Many observers believe that exclusive expository prose writing is not a form of creative writing because it's nonfictional. Others believe that it's uncreative because it's an intellectual pursuit designed to optimize the communication of facts and other objective information. They further believe that exclusive expository writing is not an aesthetic undertaking because it has nothing to do with a sense of the beautiful, sensations, or emotions, and because expressive language is excluded. If it's not aesthetic, they reason, how can it be creative?

Other observers take the position that expository essays are automatically uncreative as well, and for some of the same reasons. Ironically, they are among the first to label a brilliant essay creative, despite the fact that it contains exclusive expository prose.

These presumptions are incorrect.

If they were valid, on the surface exclusive expository prose would seem to offer writers no chance to be creative in the way that novels or poems are creative. Text that is totally impersonal, objective, and concise leaves little if any room for the exercise of an author's aesthetic or artistic imagination, and no room at all for the interjection of imaginative personal opinions or points of view.

Is expository prose really noncreative? Nothing could be farther from the truth! Yes, some expository prose is noncreative in the sense that it's not an outpouring imaginative literary novelties, but there's far more to tell about the story than simply that.