Most of my professors subscribed to the idea that writing can't be taught. I agree with that. I never would have pursued a degree in Creative Writing if I didn't already have some measure of affinity for the act. I think most people can write, actually, if they can find the right subject and format to use. Writing classes help writers learn about and discuss the various types of writing, grant writers the time to practice and improve, and allow them the chance to receive feedback from peers.
I heard a lot of advice in my creative writing classes. No blog or book could ever cover everything I learned in these classes. This blog entry is for only a few gems from my undergraduate and graduate-level Creative Writing classes.
In no particular order:
1) Grab your favorite book or a book by your favorite author. Open it to a chapter and transcribe it, word for word, onto paper. Pay attention to the words as you transcribe them.
This can be a good way to study the words used to communicate the story you love so much. Does the author use short sentences or long ones? Simple phrases that fade into the background or complicated turns of phrase that draw attention to themselves? Are there noticeable differences between the language used by different characters? What are these differences? Does the author find new ways of describing an action, a reaction, physical details?
2) If one point-of-view or format doesn't work for a particular story, rewrite the story in another perspective or format.
If you find yourself stuck, if the story is not translating to the page as effectively as you'd like, then try something new. Take a short prose story and re-write it as a screenplay. Turn a memoir piece into a work of fiction. Re-write a third person point-of-view as a first person POV. The change just might be what your work needs.
I have tried this myself. I took a third-person POV and re-wrote it in first and presented the two versions for critique in a class. The 3rd person was too disconnected from my main character, but the first person allowed my readers to enter her head and understand her more easily. It was exactly what the story excerpt needed.
I did this again while working on my current novel about mermaids. My main character, a 16-year-old girl, was too vague and not fully realized. I set aside the novel for a couple months and went back further in time. I worked on a novella that takes place when my protag is 3 years old. The narrator of the novella is her mother, actually, and though the novella is more about the mother than the daughter, it has helped me understand both characters far better. I'm still not completely satisfied with my 16-year-old protag, so I'm going to work on the novella some more in the hopes that I'll learn more about her and the world she inhabits.
3) When critiquing another author's work, offer a review that has an equal mix of positive and negative, and only critique, never criticize.
Don't attack the other person's work. They have emotions that can easily be hurt. If you think something in the story needs work, say so, explain why, and offer advice on how to fix it, if you have ideas. Don't insult the author and their work--in other words, don't be a jackass. And even if you're polite and nice, don't just mention what needs improving. Tell the author what you liked about the work and what you think was done well, too.
In some of my workshops, our critiques of the fiction stories, all written by people in the class, were often more negative than positive. Dennis Lehane, one of my professors at Eckerd College, pointed this out and encouraged us to balance our critiques between negative and positive. It helped. Though it still hurt to hear about all the things that didn't work, it was good to hear about the things that did. Other professors have recommended this approach, as well. At Texas State, I had a writing workshop with ZZ Packer. At the start of each in-class critique, she asked each of us to say one thing we liked about a story, then go around the table again and discuss what we thought needed improving and why.
Critiques are emotionally draining. Mixing them with a bit of positive can definitely help uplift the author's spirits. And when it's your turn to receive feedback, a mix of critiques and compliments is always nice to hear and preferable to hearing only critiques.
4) Edit. Edit again. Edit again after that. No piece of writing is perfect the first time or the second, third or fourth times. The longer the work, the easier it is to miss something. But even if the work is short, you could overlook mistakes the first time but catch them again later.
5) Have your work peer-reviewed. Often, if you've read or edited the hell out of your work, you can lose sight between what you want to be on the page and what's actually there. Peers *will* catch mistakes you don't. They can also tell you what works well, so you know what to focus on and what is already working.
6) Write about your current location to hone your description skills. Note where windows are, details about the windows, what furniture is nearby, if the room is crowded or not, what conversations are taking place, the general mood of the people around you, your own mood, details about clothing and chairs and other things. You may find inspiration for a character or a setting based on what you see around you, and you will gain practice communicating your impressions on paper.
7) Don't include specific details unless they are important. Our world is rife with coincidences and things of no consequence. Including all of these little, unimportant details can bog down a story and distract your readers from what is important and essential. If your character has a red backpack, there must be a reason why you mention the backpack is red. If the color is random, don't mention it. Let the reader assign any color they want to the backpack.
In one fantasy story, my characters often said, "Oh, my God." The characters never mention religion at any other point. The phrase is common in our everyday speech, but committing it to paper drew too much attention. My classmates and professor questioned why I bothered using it when some other exclamation of frustration/surprise could have been used, one that would have faded into the background when that phrase did not.
8) In a short story, character names should be easy to pronounce by your readers. Novel characters can have uncommon names because readers have more time to adjust to a unique pronunciation.
I wrote a novella set in an alternate reality where my characters have odd names. I included a pronunciation key, but some of my readers still had difficulty. I was asking my readers to learn many new names in a short amount of time. I can understand why that was troublesome and frustrating.
This is a bit of advice, like all the other pieces of advice I mention, that you can choose to follow or ignore. Some of my readers had no difficulty learning the new pronunciations and actually enjoyed it, but others did not. If your short story characters and settings have unusual names, your readers will be confused temporarily, maybe even frustrated. This is the last thing I want my readers to experience, but for whatever reason, it may be exactly the kind of reaction you want to instigate.
9) No one agrees on the correct way to insert foreign language segments into pieces of writing. This topic caused much debate in my classes. Every author seems to have a different approach.
For example, in a story written in English, a character may say a line of dialogue in French.
The author may write the line in English and say in exposition that the character is really speaking French:
"Where's George?" I asked in French.
The author may choose to write the dialogue in French:
"Où est George?" I asked.
The dialogue may be in French followed by an English translation within the same dialogue tags:
"Où est George, where is George?" I asked.
The translation may be found in exposition after the closing dialogue tag:
"Où est George?" I asked. Where is George?
"Où est George?" I asked where George was.
"Où est George?" I said, asking where George was.
The translation may appear in footnotes or in end notes.
Or no translation may be given at all. If the reader does not know French, they are expected to consult a French-English dictionary or translation web site, or they are expected to guess the meaning of the foreign dialogue through context. Or the story may be targeted at bilingual readers, and the author assumes his or her readers are fluent in both English and French.
In several writing workshops, we discussed which method was the best one. No one could agree.
I'm not fluent in French, but I have tried to write about characters who spoke occasional lines in French. For one class, I included translations in the end notes for a story. My readers weren't fluent in French, either, but they claimed it was easy to guess what the characters were saying without the key. Later, I revised the story and presented it for critique in another class, but I neglected to include the translation key. My peers in that class said they couldn't understand the French bits and would have liked a translation. Some of them didn't mind looking up the translations online or in dictionaries, while others disliked having to make the effort.
I know very little Spanish. When I come across a bit of Spanish in a story written predominantly in English, I always wish the story included a translation. I know I don't like looking up the translation, especially when I have no time or means to do so (I often read the printed-out story away from my computer or a printed dictionary, and I often have no time to look up the translations before class starts).
Those are all bits of advice from classes that I'm going to mention this time.
I heard a lot of advice in my creative writing classes. No blog or book could ever cover everything I learned in these classes. This blog entry is for only a few gems from my undergraduate and graduate-level Creative Writing classes.
In no particular order:
1) Grab your favorite book or a book by your favorite author. Open it to a chapter and transcribe it, word for word, onto paper. Pay attention to the words as you transcribe them.
This can be a good way to study the words used to communicate the story you love so much. Does the author use short sentences or long ones? Simple phrases that fade into the background or complicated turns of phrase that draw attention to themselves? Are there noticeable differences between the language used by different characters? What are these differences? Does the author find new ways of describing an action, a reaction, physical details?
2) If one point-of-view or format doesn't work for a particular story, rewrite the story in another perspective or format.
If you find yourself stuck, if the story is not translating to the page as effectively as you'd like, then try something new. Take a short prose story and re-write it as a screenplay. Turn a memoir piece into a work of fiction. Re-write a third person point-of-view as a first person POV. The change just might be what your work needs.
I have tried this myself. I took a third-person POV and re-wrote it in first and presented the two versions for critique in a class. The 3rd person was too disconnected from my main character, but the first person allowed my readers to enter her head and understand her more easily. It was exactly what the story excerpt needed.
I did this again while working on my current novel about mermaids. My main character, a 16-year-old girl, was too vague and not fully realized. I set aside the novel for a couple months and went back further in time. I worked on a novella that takes place when my protag is 3 years old. The narrator of the novella is her mother, actually, and though the novella is more about the mother than the daughter, it has helped me understand both characters far better. I'm still not completely satisfied with my 16-year-old protag, so I'm going to work on the novella some more in the hopes that I'll learn more about her and the world she inhabits.
3) When critiquing another author's work, offer a review that has an equal mix of positive and negative, and only critique, never criticize.
Don't attack the other person's work. They have emotions that can easily be hurt. If you think something in the story needs work, say so, explain why, and offer advice on how to fix it, if you have ideas. Don't insult the author and their work--in other words, don't be a jackass. And even if you're polite and nice, don't just mention what needs improving. Tell the author what you liked about the work and what you think was done well, too.
In some of my workshops, our critiques of the fiction stories, all written by people in the class, were often more negative than positive. Dennis Lehane, one of my professors at Eckerd College, pointed this out and encouraged us to balance our critiques between negative and positive. It helped. Though it still hurt to hear about all the things that didn't work, it was good to hear about the things that did. Other professors have recommended this approach, as well. At Texas State, I had a writing workshop with ZZ Packer. At the start of each in-class critique, she asked each of us to say one thing we liked about a story, then go around the table again and discuss what we thought needed improving and why.
Critiques are emotionally draining. Mixing them with a bit of positive can definitely help uplift the author's spirits. And when it's your turn to receive feedback, a mix of critiques and compliments is always nice to hear and preferable to hearing only critiques.
4) Edit. Edit again. Edit again after that. No piece of writing is perfect the first time or the second, third or fourth times. The longer the work, the easier it is to miss something. But even if the work is short, you could overlook mistakes the first time but catch them again later.
5) Have your work peer-reviewed. Often, if you've read or edited the hell out of your work, you can lose sight between what you want to be on the page and what's actually there. Peers *will* catch mistakes you don't. They can also tell you what works well, so you know what to focus on and what is already working.
6) Write about your current location to hone your description skills. Note where windows are, details about the windows, what furniture is nearby, if the room is crowded or not, what conversations are taking place, the general mood of the people around you, your own mood, details about clothing and chairs and other things. You may find inspiration for a character or a setting based on what you see around you, and you will gain practice communicating your impressions on paper.
7) Don't include specific details unless they are important. Our world is rife with coincidences and things of no consequence. Including all of these little, unimportant details can bog down a story and distract your readers from what is important and essential. If your character has a red backpack, there must be a reason why you mention the backpack is red. If the color is random, don't mention it. Let the reader assign any color they want to the backpack.
In one fantasy story, my characters often said, "Oh, my God." The characters never mention religion at any other point. The phrase is common in our everyday speech, but committing it to paper drew too much attention. My classmates and professor questioned why I bothered using it when some other exclamation of frustration/surprise could have been used, one that would have faded into the background when that phrase did not.
8) In a short story, character names should be easy to pronounce by your readers. Novel characters can have uncommon names because readers have more time to adjust to a unique pronunciation.
I wrote a novella set in an alternate reality where my characters have odd names. I included a pronunciation key, but some of my readers still had difficulty. I was asking my readers to learn many new names in a short amount of time. I can understand why that was troublesome and frustrating.
This is a bit of advice, like all the other pieces of advice I mention, that you can choose to follow or ignore. Some of my readers had no difficulty learning the new pronunciations and actually enjoyed it, but others did not. If your short story characters and settings have unusual names, your readers will be confused temporarily, maybe even frustrated. This is the last thing I want my readers to experience, but for whatever reason, it may be exactly the kind of reaction you want to instigate.
9) No one agrees on the correct way to insert foreign language segments into pieces of writing. This topic caused much debate in my classes. Every author seems to have a different approach.
For example, in a story written in English, a character may say a line of dialogue in French.
The author may write the line in English and say in exposition that the character is really speaking French:
"Where's George?" I asked in French.
The author may choose to write the dialogue in French:
"Où est George?" I asked.
The dialogue may be in French followed by an English translation within the same dialogue tags:
"Où est George, where is George?" I asked.
The translation may be found in exposition after the closing dialogue tag:
"Où est George?" I asked. Where is George?
"Où est George?" I asked where George was.
"Où est George?" I said, asking where George was.
The translation may appear in footnotes or in end notes.
Or no translation may be given at all. If the reader does not know French, they are expected to consult a French-English dictionary or translation web site, or they are expected to guess the meaning of the foreign dialogue through context. Or the story may be targeted at bilingual readers, and the author assumes his or her readers are fluent in both English and French.
In several writing workshops, we discussed which method was the best one. No one could agree.
I'm not fluent in French, but I have tried to write about characters who spoke occasional lines in French. For one class, I included translations in the end notes for a story. My readers weren't fluent in French, either, but they claimed it was easy to guess what the characters were saying without the key. Later, I revised the story and presented it for critique in another class, but I neglected to include the translation key. My peers in that class said they couldn't understand the French bits and would have liked a translation. Some of them didn't mind looking up the translations online or in dictionaries, while others disliked having to make the effort.
I know very little Spanish. When I come across a bit of Spanish in a story written predominantly in English, I always wish the story included a translation. I know I don't like looking up the translation, especially when I have no time or means to do so (I often read the printed-out story away from my computer or a printed dictionary, and I often have no time to look up the translations before class starts).
Those are all bits of advice from classes that I'm going to mention this time.
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