Using Lists In Creative Writing

Our lives center around lists: reading lists, shopping lists, to-do lists, wish lists, David Letterman’s top ten lists etc. Right brain marketing uses lists extensively in creating commercials. Poets have long used lists, because lists lead to powerful poetry through their succinctness.
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” is nothing but a list. When Elizabeth Barrett Browning started with How do I love thee, let me count the ways, she was setting her readers up for a list. Emily Dickinson was making a list about what the heart asks in “The Heart Asks Pleasure First.”
Be it poetry, fiction, or non-fiction, lists have a major place in creative writing. In Amulya Malladi’s 236 page novel, Serving Crazy with Curry, on the second page, the protagonist Devi has made a list of pro’s and con’s for doing away with herself. In that list, Devi has introduced most of her backstory without going into boring detail, and from that point on, the novel starts taking shape.
Creating a list is a clever idea to give information to the reader in a nutshell. Among the assets of lists are persuasiveness, neatness, conciseness, and being scannable, easily comprehendible and quotable. Lists let a writer present the big picture first, so he can deal with the details later, if needed.
For prewriting, many ideas can be used in a list and can be added to it, as they pop up to the writer’s mind. In this sense, list building is research. Most writers make lists of their characters’ traits, the sequences of the action and the scenes, and what they will include in the setting. These lists help them organize their thoughts and make the actual writing finish in less time. Care should be taken with making too-long lists, because they can become unmanageable.
Before writing any scene, a list for writing the scene may come in handy even if the list has three items and is inside the writer’s head instead of on paper or the computer screen. Making another list for the points of development in the story will facilitate the writing process and will circumvent the blank stare at the paper or the screen, also.
Lists are significant in introducing the content. In a creative writing item, surely, content is king, but a list can pave the way.
For the lists to be successful in dramatic writing, it is necessary to keep them short. Three to seven items should be the norm to not bore the reader. For example, if in a story a housewife’s catch-all drawer is mentioned, a writer might say: She gazed inside the drawer at the wedding ring she had slipped off her finger after the divorce, the cork from the champagne bottle of New Year’s Eve from two years ago, a memo pad with the hastily noted menu on top, and the single mitten her five-year-old had tossed away.
Irrelevant items in a list do not belong inside a serious text. In the above example, if the writer were to name every item inside the drawer, as if making an inventory, the reader would be bored since those extra items would be unnecessary for the story. In addition, lists need to be arranged in a logical order, from the most important item to the least important or vice versa, in a way it fits the writer’s goal of presentation.
Functional lists are vital tools, and if used properly, they can enhance the success of any text or task. No matter where the writer keeps his lists, on a piece of paper, in a computer file, or in a notebook, a list is an efficient way for saving time and giving information.