`"Call me Ishmael": Encouraging creativity and flair in the standard social science student essay

In her landmark chapter ‘Writing: a method of inquiry’, Richardson (1994) unclothed the emperor by declaring that she found much of qualitative writing to be boring. Having identified the problem of the homogenized voice of “science”, and its dominance within the qualitative milieu, she highlighted the utility of creative writing techniques for producing engaging qualitative research outputs. In numerous subsequent articles, Richardson showcased, through demonstrable examples, the power of this innovative approach for communicating scholarly messages to a wide range of audiences. The impact of Richardson’s body of work has been immense, inspiring an international community of qualitative researchers to push the envelope and experiment with their writing. For me, encountering Richardson’s alternative paradigm was like rediscovering the sociology I had fallen in love with as an A-level student. I felt empowered once more to pursue topics of autobiographical interest and to find my own, authentic, scholarly voice. As a lecturer, I have sought to inspire the same spirit of experimentation, reflexivity and creativity in my students, sharing with them the plethora of tools at their disposal. Whilst it may seem slightly paradoxical to say that I have created templates and guidelines to facilitate this everyday creativity, the philosophies and logic which underpin these literary devices may not be immediately apparent and thus must be explained and taught to a certain extent. In this paper, I shall discuss my pedagogic approaches and materials, as well as my various degrees of success in eliciting truly interesting and highly readable student essays.