One of my players is a cleric of shelyn, and they wanted to have the art form they are dedicated to be writing; jotting down short stories, aesops and amusing anecdotes with fun spins as inspiration hits him, I'm just not sure what skill would best represent this.
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I think it's probably a specific Lore to be a good creative writer, much as it is to be a good farmer or lawyer. None of Performance, Society, and Crafting quite fit and those are definitely the three closest Skills.
If you want it to be a non-Lore Skill, I'd say probably Performance so you can make a living at it without that being weird by the rules, but I think it's just a Lore.
I've had a few that are writers and essentially I stick it under either Profession, Craft, or Performance depending on the sort of creative writing I see them doing (in terms of the attribute it requires). The philosophical writer I put under Profession because his sort of writing philosophy was definitely a wisdom driven notion. Another character wrote adventure novels, and I envisioned that as intelligence driven, so I made it Craft.
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PF2 forums, profession doesn't exist in this game. Craft is one skill, and it's about making physical things. Craft would be what you'd use to make the paper and bind it into a book (specialty crafting lists bookmaking as one of the choices).
It'd be art lore to come up with interesting things to write in that book. I'd recommend pointing them to take the "artist" background.
Maybe something like "Story-Crafting Lore."
To me, it fits under Performance.
Oratory if you're telling the story to a live audience. Script-writing if you're writing out parts for a group to perform the story later, restricted by what props and actors can actually do. Creative Writing if you are writing it for your audience to read later, without the restrictions of the stage.
In all cases, you're thinking both about the story you want to tell, and the emotional reaction you want to elicit from your audience.
As a self-published author: It depends on the type of writer you are. Some people are full seat of the pants creatives that plan nothing in advance, which I would put as Performance. Other writers use formulas, heavy outlines, and lots of planning, which I'd put as crafting. Still others are the types who watch others and write down their thoughts on society, which I would consider Society (shocking, right?).
A specific Lore would also be a good choice, but I think that each skill has good arguments for it. It's just a matter of which you think works best, and that your GM will accept.
*drops two cents in the bucket*
I'd say Crafting. You're creating something, which is what Crafting is used for.
It's not a perfect fit, sure, but that's what happens with rules abstractions. It's no more odd than someone being able to weave a basket and build a ship or castle with equal proficiency.
I'd definitely use Lore but you can make a case for performance. I'm not inclined to use Crafting because I view it as a function of mechanical intelligence, not creative intelligence. Being good at fixing one thing and therefore good at fixing another is certainly a thing you see in real life. And you at least see people who can build different kinds of things in fiction pretty often. You don't tend to see those same skills being used towards writing the great American novel though.
Then again, if you needed to make a sculpture you'd probably use crafting, and creativity would be as much a part there as a book. But it still feels different to me. You could make a good case for Society, actually, which is what you'd probably roll to review or edit a book. Yeah, I think I dig society here.
I would say performance. with a bonus for either high intelligence or wisdom depending on what the person is trying to write and style they want to do it in.
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I am fairly certain that creative writing requires at least 1 occultism check. If not a full on ritual.
A different take: It depends on what form of creative writing your character intends to do. If they want to write stories that are tailored to a specific people/region, then Society could very well fit the bill. Fit the check to the topic of the story.
Also, I know that Unicore was joking about making it a ritual, but really, you could adapt the casting of a ritual into a sort of "story writing" event. The additional participants would be your proof readers and editor. Then you could use a series of different checks based on different parts of the story. Society for bits that take place in civilization, nature or survival for those in the wilderness and arcana/occult/religion/nature when and if the characters in the story experience or deal with magic. If the character has specific lore, you can even add those in, like Lore: Warfare for a wartime drama or what have you.
This would be entirely homebrew obviously, but it could lead to some interesting narrative. For instance, say you had a writer make a society, survival and occult check from the examples above, and they aced the society and occult checks, but flubbed the nature.
You could have a reviewer comment on the story using that as their metric.
"The story really hits it's stride when the protagonist arrives in the city of blah. And once they discover the hidden ruins of blah blah blah, I was on the edge of my chair! But unfortunately it loses it's way in the blah blah blah woods, and for that I give this novel a 3/5."
Who was joking?
Creative writing is definitely a down time activity and could easily be made into a victory points challenge that requires multiple skills to be successful. It is also an activity that is probably watched over by Great Old Ones and critical failure can invite all sorts of demons and worse monstrosities onto Golarion.
Creative writing comes in many flavors:
-Writing a stage play? Perhaps Perform using Int. Or regular Perform using Cha if one acts it out or improvs it until one's muse inspires.
-The same could work for stories meant to be told rather than read.
-Writing a grand play w/ lots of set pieces (Broadway)? Then we see why it's "Playwright" (builder) rather than "Playwrite" (writer/not a word). That could fall into Craft, though also likely there'd be collaborators using Perform or Lore: Writing.
-Writing books of stories? Lore. It's an occupation. There's a body of knowledge around it. It's not kinesthetic enough to fall under Craft nor engaging directly with an audience like Perform.
-And then satire might fall under Society, if one's targeting societal norms as is its norm.
Stretched far enough, one could tap into other skills too, yet since Lore could cover all variants, I'd go with that. Lore: Story Writing, Lore: Novels, etc. depending how focused they wish to be.
That also avoids the weird situation where the player doesn't their author's dancing ability or home handiness to improve as they learn how to write better.