Is writing an art form?
While I could easily research about a million “experts” on the topic of whether or not writing can or should be considered art, I’ve decided for today to just inject my own opinion on this hotly debated topic.
In my opinion, writing should be considered an art form. Visual art like paintings, movies, and TV shows are used to tell us a story while providing the visuals directly, letting us infer most of the inner dialogue and struggles of the characters without directly telling us. Writing is, in essence, the exact opposite. The inner dialogue and struggles are stated almost directly to the audience, and it’s up to them to visualize this world.
Writers are forced in a way to create whole new worlds with which their characters can occupy. And they usually are constrained to do this only through writing, allowing themselves no visualizations except what they picture in their head. They have to convey this entire new world and all of its inhabitants to the reader, try to get them to have the same or a similar mental picture of this setting when they view the work. This skill is the same employed by artists, the only difference being that one is text based while the other is paint/pencil/marker/etc.
The skills used for effective writing are, much in the same way as visual art, honed through years of practice, patience, and pure drive in the field of their work. Fine crafts of work are produced by both, comparing the Mona Lisa to The Lord of the Rings, or The Scream to the Ernest Hemingway six-word novel, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” They all have their deep impacts on society, it’s just a matter of seeing them as equals in the field of art.
This shows that writers, in their own ways, are just as creative as the artist that present their works at galleries. The medium may be different, but it is all art, all creative works set before the world to behold.