Have you considered creating a writer’s credo? Whether or not you have, be warned – doing so may not be as easy as it sounds.

I started drafting one, but it will take time to get my thoughts down and organize them to my satisfaction. Like most people, I don’t go around with a list of commandments in my back pocket. If you ask me what I believe about a specific concept, I’m happy to discuss, but I’m not able to rattle off a campaign speech without notice.

So, writing a credo can take time. Because a credo is a personal statement, there’s no checklist that lets you know when you’ve finished. There are no guideposts to creating your guideposts. You’re mostly on your own.

However, in two recent posts on Writer Unboxed, literary agent Donald Maass addressed the writer’s credo in an indirect way. Maass doesn’t use the word “credo” but he does suggest that writers should clarify their view of the human experience and what they wish to accomplish with their work.

In his first article, Maass urges writers to take a “moral inventory” and suggests a series of questions to get you started. For the purpose of this inventory, the questions are either/or. You can choose only one answer, and cannot answer “both”, even if that is sometimes accurate. Here are six of the twelve questions:

• What factor most produces success, security, and happiness: Randomness and luck, or effort and reward?
• Which better describes you: warrior or survivor?
• What is the better goal: to do justice or to practice forgiveness?
• What is better to have: individual freedom or group cooperation?
• Which is better to have: faith or reason?
• Works of fiction should primarily show us: how we are or what we should do?

When you’re done, you should have a list of words or terms that reveal how you see yourself and the human condition. Maass says the final question is especially important to your writing, as it reveals your unconscious intention: Do you create mirrors or arrows? Do you want to show your readers the way people are or the way we should or could be?

Maass dives into the differences between mirrors and arrows – which he calls Stories of Fate and Stories of Destiny. He categorizes the answers to his twelve questions as either mirrors or arrows, and suggests that, from a craft perspective, it’s important to pick what kind of story you’re telling and which answers best fit that story. A strategy of picking some from Column A and some from Column B will likely result in a tale with a muddy message. Maass also offers some advice for putting this into practice, but for the purpose of a credo, the questions are the point. You can find the rest here, and may be inspired to add some of your own.

In a follow-up article, Maass continues discussing how to put these dichotomies into practice in your writing, particularly when deciding your story’s purpose and its intended effect. Generally, Maass argues that when your purpose is unclear, the effect on the reader is weak. You may write a story about the nature of evil or justice or equality, but if your reader does not understand your definitions of those concepts, your story may fall flat. The reader might not grasp your point or even believe that you were arguing for its opposite.

You should never assume that the reader will intuit your purpose. If you want your reader to know what is good or bad, what should be feared, or what should be hoped for, you need to feel that strongly in yourself and express it clearly on the page.

“What produces a strong effect for readers is not your story’s plot circumstances. It’s you. Your outrage, inspirations, problems and comforts. Your heartbreaks, hopes, humiliations and laughter. Your insights, lessons, and self-knowledge.” – Donald Maass

A credo can help you define your values in strong terms that carry through to the page. Maass offers suggestions – including more questions – to help you dig deep into your psyche to identify what angers or scares you or inspires defiance or hope. What makes you furious? When have you felt helpless? When have you felt terror? Those kinds of questions can point you toward specific values and the reasons those emotions were triggered. Again, Maass approaches the topic from a craft standpoint, but the exercises can help you create your writer’s credo.

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