What good practices can we identify for creative writing posts?

Question

One of our biggest challenges is figuring out how to match the strict SE Q&A format to the subjective, creative, and rather abstract field of creative writing.

We've seen a lot of great questions and a lot of great answers - what helpful elements or practices can we learn from them, that we might be able to apply to future posts as well? Can you look at a particular "really good" question/answer, and identify why it was so good?

Any observations and suggestions are welcome - both broad and narrow.

Answer 1

What I find tremendously useful in answers is examples from popular culture. Examples add so much substance to an answer - they turn it from general, abstract advice, into a useful reference I can study, understand, and reuse.

In this sense, I feel like such examples fulfill the "Back it up!" idea discussed in Good Subjective, Bad Subjective. It does exactly what that article discusses - it turns an opinion into an experience that can be shared; it backs up opinion with references.

My personals standbys for this include books, comics, and movies, including Ender's Game, Game of Thrones, The Matrix, Harry Potter, Dragonlance... some others, no doubt, and no less geeky than these :P

Unfortunately, attempts to use lesser-known works don't work nearly as well even if they serve as a good demonstration of your point.