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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Here's a thread to cite specific fictional works that taught you an important lesson about writing.
For example:
From "The Empire Strikes Back," I learned that you should always give even your least important character something critically important to do. At the climactic action of that film, there are no less than seven protagonists engaged in the action, and without any one of them, the story would have ended in catastrophe. Moreover, there are three major antagonists performing various nefarious tasks to keep our heroes busy. This is not to say that more is better -- just that by having every character contribute, you produce a keener story than if some are mere hangers-on.
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My most useful piece of learning came when I bit on a scam agency in the back of Writers Digest (that they accept them soured me on that magazine). I bit on the “reading fee” scam. But as luck would have it I chose Lee Shore Agency. They would first sell you an expensive editing, then steer you to a vanity press. But because they wanted to sell the full manuscript edit, they gave a pretty good edit of a few pages for $45 (back in about 1995).
At the time I had penned about five novels, and thought I was pretty damn good, but wanted to know why I’d been rejected. So I sent away my check and my submission, and waited. I opened the return envelope expecting lots of grammar fixes, some hints, but over all, a “Yeah, but it’s a really good story, Jay.”
What I got was a first page that looked like it had been dipped in blue ink. There were so many comments that they overflowed the front of page one and filled the back, too. And page two was pretty close to the same thing, with page three a close second to that. It was an “Oh my God,” moment, and probably the single most emotionally devastating moment I had ever had. It took me several days before I could even think of looking at it again.
But that critique taught me an important fact: We no more graduate high school as writers than do our history classes make us historians. Worse yet, what they taught us are techniques useful on the job, and that’s nonfiction writing.
Since then I’ve done a bit of study of writing technique, and in that, hands down, Dwight Swain has had the most profound impact on my view of the act of creating fiction. Recently, I had the chance to listen to a recording of two of his all day workshops, one on structure and the other on characters (boiled down to the important stuff) and can only conclude that the man was a genius. He saw what we all miss: the obvious. And he had the knack of making it so to his students.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Great story, Jay. Not at all what I was expecting, but I certainly can't deny that a scam counts as a "fictional work!"
I haven't heard of Dwight Swain ... I'll definitely look him up.
Any lessons learned from novels and film?
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Take a look at the comments on his book, on Amazon and you'll see why I respect him so highly. The man used to fill lecture halls when eh went on tour.
It's not true, though, that I have a shrine to him in my bedroom.
It's in the basement.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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The "Look Inside" preview speaks well of him too. Looks crisp, concise, and to the point.
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He is that. When I came to chapter two I got exactly two pages in and then went to edit everything I'd ever written, mumbling, "Why in the hell didn't I see that for myself?"
Three days later I went on reading, and two pages later I was back fixing another point for a week. This went on, and about the fourth time it happened I had visions of myself, a year later, ping-ponging between the book and my writing. The thought of going back to reading, knowing what was coming made me think seriously of not going back, because it made me feel so stupid for not seeing such obvious points.
Luckily, good sense prevailed, and also, by then, the major, "Oh my God," issues had been resolved.
The cool thing is that six months after you read the book, when you have a better idea f what he's getting at, you can read it again and pick up almost as much the second time.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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This story reminds me of an assignment I got in 5th grade. It consisted of a list of (I think) 20 numbered tasks, the first of which was, "1. Read all of these instructions completely." The next 18 had you write things, add numbers, draw shapes around them, color in boxes, and basically jump through a bunch of ridiculous hoops. The last instruction said, "20. Ignore instructions 2 through 19, write your name at the top of the paper, and turn it in."
Despite remembering that task from Mrs. Slovacek's 5th grade classroom, I do still find myself halfway through assembling do-it-yourself furniture and realizing that I'm missing the tools for the next step, because I didn't read all the way through before starting.
I guess it's just human nature!
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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Herb, I had that back in 5th grade too. Because of it, I read directions all the way through first.
I learned that to write you need to just keep writing. Writing is all about persistence and hard work. The more you write, the more you improve. I know that "practice makes perfect" seems like common sense for anything, but it's surprising how many people forget about it when it comes to writing. My creative writing professor back in college practically beat that into us. He says that word count is key. The more you write, the more you improve, and the more ideas will come to you. You must use the water in the cup in order to fill it back up. Because of him I have the endurance to just sit down and write.
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• Writing is all about persistence and hard work. The more you write, the more you improve.
I’m not trying to reactivate an argument, and certainly I’m a monomaniac about the subject. But I have to ask, how? If a given person is turning out unreadable work because they’re missing some basic knowledge, how does becoming more practiced at writing badly help one progress toward publication?
It’s not a matter of simply reading published work and seeing what’s done, because demonstrably, we don’t. We all read, and not one person in ten can tell you what’s different about the first paragraph of every chapter in nearly half the fiction we read. And that’s staring us in the face every time we pick up the book. How much more do we miss because we don’t know to look for it?
I absolutely agree with you that as we write, and edit, and reedit, and read we catch things missed, improve our ability to do it right the first time, and learn to edit on the fly. And I agree that only practice makes perfect. But if writing was enough you’d be able to buy my work in your neighborhood bookstore, rather than from an epub house. And the universities wouldn’t offer four-year majors on professional fiction writing.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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I'm not saying it's the only thing. I'm saying it's the one thing that I've learned that I haven't found in a book or heard from another writer. It's that one piece of advice that most people don't know about that has helped me. I'm not saying that it's publishable prose. It obviously needs work, but just sitting down and writing everyday is an important part of the process. How are you going to learn if you don't sit down and implement the tools that other writers or a book have taught you?
Honestly, I have found that just writing and writing and writing, does help with progress if you do know what you are looking for. I can see a major difference between early chapters and later ones.
And yes, I know about 4 year writing degrees. My alma matter was one of the few that offer a PhD in creative writing.
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Joined: 8/13/2011
Posts: 272
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Hmm, the list of my inspirations. This'll take a while.
Heirs To Empire (David Weber): In my usual fashion, this is the last book in the series and, as such, the first one I read. It's also the first book I'd ever read where I sat back and thought 'that's what I'd like to write'. It was full of the stuff I loved and it had become a novel. Basically, in short, it's the reason I went into writing.
Ice Station (Matthew Reilly): Mr Reilly's writing philosophy is simple: 'Make it unfilmable, because the special effects budget would be too high'. That sort of grasping for utter insanity is something I highly approve of and it informs my ideas, if not what I actually end up writing.
Anything (by Joss Whedon): This actually came from an article on Mr Whedon's story-telling techniques, but it's based on a lot of his stories. Basically, the article was saying that his tendency of bumping off characters wasn't about a cheap attempt to build drama, but rather about driving characters to make choices that they otherwise wouldn't willing make. It's an interesting philosophy to apply to your own ideas.
Finally, Claws That Catch (John Ringo and Travis S Taylor) and The Last Centurion (John Ringo): These two are negative examples that despite having read four years ago, still stick in my head as two of the worst books I've ever read. I won't go into all reasons they annoyed me (as I really don't have the space, but it's enough to say that they showed me exactly what happens when you let small ideas, info-dumping or excessive personal politics dominate your writing.
On that whole discussion of training vs experience, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out how much debate there is about the actual value of MFA programs and the like. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of this is the terrible defence of them I've seen (one article basically said they were the difference between publication and non-publication, but didn't say why) or how much of this is due to the relatively cookie-cutter books that they seem to encourage. To be honest, it seems like the biggest and best writers come out of hard work and dedication, nothing more. I can't help but find that a little inspiring, to be honest
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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Thanks Tim! That was what I was trying to say. You can have all the tools in the world, all the training, but it means squat if you don't exercise it. Writing is an art form like painting, drawing, photography, or even a martial discipline (this includes sports). You need to just keep on writing and writing and writing to work out the kinks.
The problem with MFAs is that it isn't to find your voice (the entire point of my professor's classes). It's to write something that is industry acceptable. A great example is the book Jarhead. It was written in Iowa's Writer's Workshop. You can see other peoples' grubby hands all over the prose. It saddened me. The movie is what the book should have been. Every once in a while you can see Swofford's voice peep through, begging to tell his experience during Desert Storm, but it seemed tainted by other voices. Workshops can ruin good work. They're good for advice and help, but no one else's word should take precedence over creative decisions.
It's interesting this MFA debate, because I know UNLV's PhD in creative writing requires the student to study abroad for a year, and to do a translation. To graduate with a Bachelor's in English Literature, you have to have 12 credits of a foreign language. (That always goes back to Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon. Don't really feel like explaining why right now. Even after 4 classes of Spanish, I suck at it. Latin I ain't too bad at.) I've actually seen the abstract for a dissertation that one student was submitting. It was a series of short stories, and he had to explain which literary devices and techniques he used and why to create a certain effect in the story. It blew my mind. It seemed that the PhD was more to teach a writer why they do certain things in their writing. I would do that over an MFA.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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It's an undeniable truth that from a historical perspective, most writers have been self-taught -- learning by reading and writing, both in copious quantities.
And I would say that ultimately, you cannot be a good writer without the ability to self-teach, to self-correct. The inability to learn from what you read, and to apply what you learn to your own work, is an insurmountable barrier to artistic success as a writer.
With that said, there's no reason for a capable self-teacher to reinvent the wheel. Finding and using resources and at least investigating structured instruction can save you a lot of fatally flawed projects, a lot of unproductive drafts, and a lot of simple mistakes that are just enough to keep you from publishable quality.
In the long run, if you have sufficient talent, you can achieve tremendous skill through the simple expedient of writing, writing, writing. But it will be much a longer run than if you make use of the lessons others have already learned.
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• It's an undeniable truth that from a historical perspective, most
writers have been self-taught -- learning by reading and writing, both
in copious quantities.
The facts, if you look into the background of successful writers don't back that up. There are few that haven't had mentoring, or college training in writing, or something other then simply passing through high school.
If simply trying to emulate books we read were enough most new writers would be new high school grads who like reading. And if intent and desire were enough we wouldn't need schools at all.
Knowledge is an amazingly good substitute for genius.
If it was a matter of reading fiction and then writing, we, who all are omnivorous readers would know a hell of a lot more about the basics of writing fiction. And if it was that easy over 90% of what's posted on every writing site would not be written using the narrator at the podium style we all learn in first grade.
One of the reasons I closed my manuscript critiquing service was that I was reading the same manuscript over and over. The plot changed. The characters and situation changed, but the voice was always that of someone standing at the campfire telling the story aloud. It was a transcription of a performance that depended on visual and audible tricks, presented in a medium that supports neither sound nor picture.
A small example: in the work posted here in which we're nominally in the character's POV, and in third person POV, nearly every time the character is reported as doing something, the author uses the character's name. Sam saw this...Sam went here... But that's an external viewpoint. We already know who the protagonist is, or will if the name is used when POV is established for the scene. So given that, unless there's some doubt as to who's speaking the line, or POV changes, "he" or "she" is less author-intrusive. Look a what's posted here and see how many people present the character's name ten times or more a page. Then look at commercial fiction. If we miss something that obvious, how much more that's not as easy to find did we neither notice nor discover?
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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Good writers existed before universities. Before universities taught modern literature. Before MFAs. (Take a look at C.S. Lewis's essays on the development of the modern English department sometime.) How did Homer (whether one man or a series of them) learn to write epic poetry? How did the author of Gilgamesh? What about Sophocles and Euripedes? They didn't go to college. Shakespeare had some education, yes, but not a degree in writing plays. They learned to be storytellers, to write, by experiencing the lure of Story when someone else did it, then doing it themselves, by paying attention to the reaction they got until they'd become who they are in our literary history..
I'm a reasonably successful writer of SF and fantasy: 24 novels in print, more coming, supporting the family by writing. I learned to write fiction by writing fiction, after reading (and continuing to read) a lot of fiction across a range of genres. I heard good oral storytellers as a child, so I got the structure of effective stories embedded early. I had access to magazine fiction (much more available and more varied when I was a child) and frequently read 4-5 stories a week, plus a couple of books. Being able to read fiction written for adults by age 8 helped--along with the horse books and dog books, I was reading my mother's novels.
Started writing stories, as opposed to just telling them, in first grade (they were bad, bad, BAD.) Comparing my work to others, reading and telling my stories to others and paying attention to their reaction--trying to make the stories more interesting so people would want to read them. I had no mentors. I knew no professional writers (and would've been too shy to approach them if they'd lived next door.) I didn't write to writers whose work I admired (too shy--girls weren't supposed to put themselves forward, anyway.) I simply devoured every book that I could get my hands on, good or bad, and wrote a lot, year after year. .
Different people do it differently. There's nothing wrong with taking classes in writing, if your learning style is to wait until someone tells you what to do before doing it. .My learning strategy for "doing things" was the same across all domains: jump in and try it. When I built things, when I sewed, when I cooked, I learned (or didn't learn) by doing, and was hampered (as in sewing) by too much precise instruction and direction. Read all the directions first? No. That was my mother-the-engineer's way, which I evaded when possible. Hated that stupid test (though, knowing that teacher, I knew it was a trick test.)
It's still the same. This year I decided to knit myself socks. I didn't follow a pattern--I took needles, yarn, and my feet and started in. (First socks are about as good as my first stories. Fourth pair's actually pretty good. Fifth pair is teaching me humility. But that's fast, and having YouTube videos helped.) I make things up. Socks, meals, stories.
I wasn't ready to write publishable fiction as a high school graduate, certainly. I had more writing to do, and more living to do (my understanding of human behavior in high school was that of a typical shy nerd: next to nil. One thing books can't give you is the life experience that translates into good characterization expressed in your own voice.) Like everyone else in my high school trying to write poetry or fiction, I was still in "emulator" mode, writing this week like one favorite writer, the next week like another. And I was trying mashups that did not work (a science fiction epic written in metrical forms I made up on the basis of something I'd read about Celtic bards. Yes. That bad.) The ingredients in the mind's kettle hadn't melded yet; the fizzing and bubbling of ideas hadn't begun to settle down.
I made, as with the socks, many mistakes. Boxes full of failed stories. Things that puzzled or alarmed friends. But mistakes are necessary to do anything new, and making your own tools (as my mother the engineer had made tools when in engineering school) is a valuable skill. The nonwriting parts of my life added content to the growing writing skills. I learned how to do solid research. Military service exposed me to very different kinds of people than college had--and forced me to work with them, not retreat into books. A second degree in another subject area (a science, not history, this time) opened other windows and doors for content to flow in. Political engagement, volunteer work, medical experience (volunteer on ambulance, clinic worker) , all these things and others balanced the writing skills...because writing skills without content are just...curlicues and decoration.
Bottom line: I don't have an MFA. I don't have a Ph.D. My education centered far from literature: ancient and medieval and Renaissance history, and biology that included molecular biology and applied ecology in grad school. I'm a published writer, and have been a published fiction writer since 1986. That isn't the only way to get here...but it's one way to get here.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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That's such a nice story, Elizabeth. I'm only 23, and I hear a lot of high schoolers say they want to go to college for creative writing. I tell them, don't. Go for something else you love. You can always learn writing by doing and connecting, You don't need a degree for that. My screenwriting instructor had a degree in Bio-Chemistry. She'd even worked in a lab once. Writing is one of the few things that actually benefits from many different experiences.
I liked the part about the socks. Reminds me of trying to pick up my art again. It's really, really bad.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Elizabeth, thanks for the excellent historical points, and for making them so elegantly. And thanks for then putting everything into such a great personal context. I love your willingness to jump into such disparate endeavors with full knowledge that your initial results will be deeply flawed. That, I think, is one of the key lessons all writers need to learn: the first (several/numerous/many) things you write are not going to be good. The point is to get used to seeing your own mistakes, so that you're in the habit of looking for them constantly.
@LeeAnna: I wouldn't go so far as to tell the high-schoolers, "Don't." But I would tell them to at least find a minor they're passionate about to go along with the creative writing program -- or even to push themselves for a double major.
@Jay: I get it. You're a true evangelist for the benefits of rigorous study based on instruction, mentoring, and how-to books from successful writers. I agree that there is great merit in all of these things. Nonetheless, no writer will ever be good who does not also have the knack of analyzing texts and learning from his or her own mistakes. That's all I'm trying to say, and I would hope you would agree with it.
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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Some kinds of writing are more "content heavy" than others, to be sure. I would say that a lot of commercial fiction--which is what this site is largely about--is more content-heavy than literary fiction. That's why varied life experience is so important for people writing commercial fiction. That can include formal education (quite a few SF and fantasy writers have backgrounds in history and/or anthropology) but definitely includes outside-the-class-and-box experiences.
Writing will use every scrap of experience you can feed it, in all sorts of unexpected ways...and eventually, the writing offers new opportunities to gain such experience.
Also--everybody--if you haven't yet, watch Neil Gaiman's incredible keynote speech: http://vimeo.com/42372767 It completely blew me away. That wasn't the road I took--and I don't regret the interesting byways I wandered on--but a lot of what he said rings absolutely true to me.
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• How did Homer (whether one man or a series of them) learn to write epic poetry?
He associated with others who did, and improved on what they had to give him. And what we read today has been heavily edited. He did not, single handedly invent the form. Besides, Homer didn’t write the work attributed to him. They were written by another man of the same name.
• Shakespeare had some education, yes, but not a degree in writing plays.
Shakespeare had a difficult and demanding apprenticeship. He was an actor and worked in the theater long before he had his work produced. He knew, first hand, what audiences responded to. Knowledge may be acquired in many ways.
No one has said that one can only learn by attending the university. But if it was as easy as sitting down and doing it, universities would not offer four year majors in professional fiction writing, and Dwight Swain would not have filled lecture halls when he went on tour.
The writing filling this and the other writing sites would not so often read like a high school writing assignment, author-centric and fact-based, if one could simply say, “Hell, I can do that,” and need no more information.
• I knew no professional writers (and would've been too shy to approach them if they'd lived next door.)
Yet, had you access to such writers to ask, people who would have given you advice of the caliber of what you’ve so generously given here, how many wasted hours would you have avoided? How much wasted time have you saved members here, who otherwise would have pressed forward with something that’s virtually a guaranteed rejection.
Stephen Sondheim is brilliant. No one will dispute that. But had he not been treated almost like a son by Oscar Hammerstein would he have accomplished as much? Would Hemingway have created such tightly disciplined prose had he not served an apprenticeship in journalism and then hung out with some of the most brilliant writers of his time?
You began writing when you were a kid, but weren’t published till your thirties. But suppose you’d lived next door to someone like Anne McCaffery or Andre Norton, who could have helped you avoid all the new writer traps?
My point is that you did it, and did it damn well. But perhaps a read of Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer (well, had they been already written), or Jack Bickham’s books, you might have kicked started you and gotten you to your goal when John was still at the helm of Analog
Demonstrably, fumbling toward the goal and learning by reading fiction isn’t working for the vast majority of hopeful writers.
The thing that bothers me is that in our primary schooling they never even tell us that another approach to writing exists, or why verbal storytelling technique can’t directly translate to the page. In fact, my sister, who was a fantastic teacher, had not a clue that any approach other then the fact-based and author-centric approach to writing existed, even though she was reading and enjoying fiction.
A result is that the vast majority of new writers believe writing is writing and that if they simply list the plot elements one at a time that’s all they need.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Wow, Jay. So far you've come onto my topic, completely hijacked the thread from its stated original purpose, accused me of getting my facts wrong, refused to acknowledge it when I graciously conceded the merit of your ideas, ignored a comment that I addressed directly to you, and basically told a vastly more successful author that you know better than she does.
Now, I don't think you're a bad guy. But the only alternative explanation I can come up with for your conduct here is that you simply don't understand how your writing on this thread is coming across.
I suspect you'll take that as an attack, but it's not meant to be. I really just want you to consider the possibility that self-perception and self-correction are more important to the mastery of writing than you're admitting.
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• Wow, Jay. So far you've come onto my topic, completely hijacked the thread from its stated original purpose.
You posted a full week ago. Any answers you were going to get have been gotten. A discussion of writing is always good, even a heated discussion. How much have you learned from people who agree with you?
• accused me of getting my facts wrong,
Demonstrably, you have. Do nothing but look at the present. Wannabe writers are here, or on the other sites, discussing, exchanging ideas, and working toward perfection. You, and others gotten advice from Ms. Moon, for example. Does none of that count? Would you prefer she not advise so everyone can “do it themself?”
I’ve often seen that claim, that all you need do is read fiction and you’ll figure it out. A 99.9% rejection rate says that’s not true. Any method that boasts a one in a thousand success rate has little to recommend it.
• I addressed directly to you, and basically told a vastly more successful author that you know better than she does.
The lady is a very talented writer. That was obvious when I read her first story in Analog. But she is not God any more than I am. And my point is a valid one. Had she access to her peers—those who have her level of talent—and acquired a mentor when she was in her twenties, would she have achieved publication sooner? If the answer is yes, how many of lesser but still adequate talent, who might have had a career in writing never do make it, because they get stuck on a point that a mentor or a book on technique could have cleared up in seconds, to get them going in the right direction?
You can’t have it both ways. If the help she’s been giving here is of value, and is guiding hopeful writers into a better understanding of the techniques of the working fiction writer (and I certainly believe it is, and bless her for giving the time) then the nuts and bolts of approach and technique can be taught. And if it can be, what glory is there in saying, “I did it all myself in only ten times what it would have taken with help.”?
And no, I don't think you were attacking me, any more than I was attacking you.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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*Demonstrably, you have. Do nothing but look at the present.
Jay, the claim that I made, which you're saying was factually incorrect, prominently included the phrase, "from a historical perspective." If I'm talking about a historical perspective, you can't prove me wrong by telling me to ignore history.
*I’ve often seen that claim, that all you need do is read fiction and you’ll figure it out.
You haven't seen that claim from me, ever. Nor have you seen it from Elizabeth, nor from LeeAnna. So stop arguing against that claim. If you want to have a conversation with us, pay attention to what we're saying, not to other people whose previous lines of argument you want to argue against.
*And my point is a valid one.
If your point is that studying all available information on your craft is useful and can lead a potentially publishable writer to success faster than exclusively reading and writing fiction, then yes, your point is a valid one. And that's something I've now repeatedly acknowledged.
On the other hand, when a writer relates her life story to you and emphasizes the importance of self-teaching to her success, for you to turn around and say, essentially, "But look how your life could have been so much easier and better," is just plain rude. And considering her degree of success relative to yours, it's arrogant as well. I'm not saying you were being deliberately rude or arrogant, but it's really quite astonishing to me that you can't see the potential for offense in the way you responded to her.
*How much have you learned from people who agree with you?
A lot. For example, my college fiction writing professor agrees with me about tons of stuff, including the importance of prolific practice and reading. He also agrees with me on quite a few political issues, and when I read the links he shares on Facebook, I regularly learn things I didn't know. Most of the people who write the articles at those links agree with me as well.
And now I will repeat myself one last time, just to make my position clear:
Studying, mentoring, workshopping, and all those other methods of learning from others are vastly beneficial to a developing writer and can remain beneficial even to a successful writer.
But a writer who is unable to learn from reading, and from examining her or his own work for its flaws, will never be a success, no matter how many workshops are attended. Reading and writing and reading and writing and reading and writing are not enough. But they are an imperative part of progress as a writer.
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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Jay is correct in that we, as writers, need to study technique. Some things are more effective than others. That is true. But a writer does need to exercise those techniques like any other art form, as I said before. The general public believes that writers must be "inspired." It's sad, but true. Go and talk to them about what you do when you write. If you just say that you sit down to crank out words and get it down, most people will stare at you like you're speaking Klingon.
I took writing courses from Dr. John Irsfeld. Once he went to a conference with other writing instructors to present a paper he had written on his style of writing class, which involves writing 25,000 words in a semester to pass. It's that simple. (And I can tell you, when you aren't used to cranking out the word count, it's hard. Really hard.) After he presented the paper, the other writing professors, who used the workshop style, looked at him and asked if it worked. He said, "Yes. I don't care if you don't believe me, but it really does work." The entire point was that you could know all the technique in the world, but if you don't have the discipline or confidence to sit down and pound out the words, then you won't get used to writing. It turns writing into a habit (and weeds out the truly passionate from the weekend scribblers). Most of the students who took his class were English or Journalism students anyway, so we were already inundated with theory, technique, and loads of reading. It might not have been the right kind, but it helped keep things simple. Just learning to sit down and write helped me so much. I could learn all the techniques in the world, and it wouldn't mean as much to me as learning writing discipline has.
He's also the one who told me about Book Country. So I owe it to him.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Great story, LeeAnna. Was that really all there was to the class, just 25,000 words, no lectures or peer critiques? If so, it sure sounds like easy money for the professor!
The beginning Fiction Writing class I had in college was a workshop-style class, but came with a 200-page minimum output. That was to get a C. Now, the page-count included revisions and an autobiography that the instructors promised not to read, but it was still a massive amount of writing.
The advanced classes after that had no minimum at all -- they were quality over quantity, and used the workshop format. I clearly remember one semester when a fellow student harped on me all semester long about my disinterest in dressing up my prose. He was obsessed with wordsmithing and brought up the same points over and over again about my lack of figurative writing and my relatively pedestrian use of structure. For a variety of reasons (including my own immaturity and the fact that his stories didn't impress me much), I ignored him almost entirely.
But later, well after I'd graduated, I went through a period of reading some really masterful prose stylists, and I finally recognized the way that inventive prose can contribute to a story -- not just because it makes the writing more artistic, but because it engages the reader differently and often allows you to communicate the same information more vividly and concisely than detailed literal descriptions.
Did the Johnny-one-note prose enthusiast help sow the seeds for my eventual conversion to the importance of style? Or does he show that sometimes you just have to be ready to absorb a lesson in your own way?
Or both?
My instructors, by the way, were Eugene McKinney and Robert Flynn -- terrific mentors both and masterful facilitators of student discussions.
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• Jay, the claim that I made, which you're saying was factually incorrect, prominently included the phrase, "from a historical perspective.
Surely you don't believe that in the past would be writers labored in silence in their garret, never talking to others and seeking advice from people who might mentor them? I’ve had this discussion many times over the years. Usually, the one making the claim lists several examples, but when you check, most of the people on their list studied writing, or were mentored.
I looked at the Amazon editor’s choice list. I started at the top and took the first five for which there was a Wikipedia bio entry. I didn’t load the dice or cherry pick. I took the first five who had educational background available
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• Ben Macintyre – Double Cross - He has a background in Journalism
• Katherine Boo – Behind the Beautiful Forevers – A journalist and editor.
• Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl – Worked for Entertainment Weekly. The daughter of a Film Professor and a reading teacher.
John Green – The Fault in Our Stars - Lived for several years in Chicago, where he worked for the book review journal Booklist as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska, his first success.
• Andy Borowitz – An Unexpected Twist - Graduated from Harvard. Studied with playwright William Alfred and wrote his undergraduate thesis on Restoration comedy. Wrote for TV sitcom.
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If your thesis is correct the majority of them should have had no training for the writing arts. In fact every one of them did.
Writing is a profession. And like any profession has specialized knowledge and trick of the trade. Look at the advice Ms. Moon has given. Nearly every time sheposts, someone who garnered useful information from her words thanks her. She knows! Yet were she to sit down and write out what she thought mattered, and collect it into a book that a hopeful writer might use to shorten the learning curve to more manageable proportions, your contention seems to be that it’s not necessary really necessary because most writers make it without needing anything but good intentions and a keen eye.
Yes, she says she did it without reading any books on technique, and I certainly won’t dispute that point. But can you do it? Can the vast majority of people posting their work here do it without help? I don’t think so. And the data seems to agree.
You cannot have it both ways. And demonstrably, based only on the success rate of the people posting on this site , the “I can figure it out myself, and achieve publication, by just reading fiction,” does not work.
• You haven't seen that claim from me, ever. Nor have you seen it from Elizabeth, nor from LeeAnna.
You just said that most writer make it without having to study. That clearly says you apply it to “most writers” here. And if “most writers” don’t have any need of education, who does, only fools like me?
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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*You just said that most writer make it without having to study.
Please post the quote in which I said that. It's not there. You just won't find it. If you think you're finding it in something I've said, it's because you're misreading what I've written.
*That clearly says you apply it to “most writers” here.
What??? Even if I said that most writers from a historical perspective make it "without having to study," how in the world would that mean I apply it to most writers here?
There's a huge difference between saying, "Most people in Group A have Characteristic X," and saying, "Most people who want to be in Group A have Characteristic X."
Do you understand how frustrating it is to try to converse with someone who keeps putting words in your mouth? At this point, it seems like you're only interested in picking out quotes you think you can dispute, recasting them into straw men, and thereby attempting to "win" the argument we're having. But we're really not even having an argument, because I keep agreeing with the usefulness of the methods you're touting.
I'm now going to copy my ending paragraphs from a few posts back. I want you to respond to them. If you're not willing to respond directly to these two paragraphs, especially the final one, then we're done here.
Studying, mentoring, workshopping, and all those other methods of learning from others are vastly beneficial to a developing writer and can remain beneficial even to a successful writer.
But a writer who is unable to learn from reading, and from examining her or his own work for its flaws, will never be a success, no matter how many workshops are attended. Reading and writing and reading and writing and reading and writing are not enough. But they are an imperative part of progress as a writer.
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Joined: 3/12/2011
Posts: 376
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Ahem.
*dehijack*
From Girl Genius and, to a degree, the Wheel of Time series I learned the importance of detail. Not just having them there, but having more than are required. When I pick up a book where every single detail expressed on the page is required, I can generally put it down by around 1/4 of the way through, because I know not only what is going to happen, but how it's going to happen. Reading at that point is an exercise in endurance, not entertaining at all.
From The Lord of the Rings I learned the importance of creating an entire world, not just the corner you're playing in. The second time I read it, I learned not to put it on the page unless it's critical or entertaining.
From The Legacy of the Aldenata I learned that an 'action packed' book can have a lot of non-action and still seem like it's cover to cover action, as long as you have dramatic tension, with the possibility of action hovering in the background at any moment. I also learned that if you've little else but action and tension, rereads are like rewatching The Phantom Menace - "Pod Race, fast forward, Lightsaber Duel, done."
From Small Gods I realized that heros, even action heros, need not be Men of Action. I also learned that it is neither prose nor character nor plot nor setting that draw a reader back again and again, it is the combination of all of those to create emotion.
From countless unnamed romances, I learned that it's easier to talk about generating emotion than actually do it.
There are others, many many others, but those are the ones that stick out.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Thanks, Robert!
I had an experience with Jack McDevitt's Seeker that showed me a similar lesson in detail. The characters are flying along in their starship at some point, and a micrometeorite comes streaking in on a collision course, setting off the ship's automatic countermeasures, which vaporize the rock. It struck me as an odd and pointless diversion from the plot, and sure enough, later on in the story the fact that the ship has these countermeasured is used to get the characters out of a plot-related peril. If the book had contained a few additional diversions that detailed some of the ship's other capabilities, it would have been much harder to spot that plot point coming.
I didn't learn much from LOTR the first time (I was 12), and I learned only a little more the second time, like the use of a return home to heighten the understanding of how much a character has grown in the course of a story, and the fact that small villainies and large ones are not so different as we sometimes assume.
The Phantom Menace certainly has its share of negative lessons! I'd say the biggest one is that if your surface-level story is haphazard and immature, no amount of subtext will get your theme across. The prequel movies in general are bursting with powerful subtext, and almost no one notices it because the storytelling comes across as so superficial and self-indulgent.
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• Please post the quote in which I said that. It's not there. You just won't find it. If you think you're finding it in something I've said, it's because you're misreading what I've written.
Okay, page 2, second post.
“It's an undeniable truth that from a historical perspective, most writers have been self-taught -- learning by reading and writing, both in copious quantities.”
Definition of self-taught:
having knowledge or skills acquired by one's own efforts without formal instruction <a self–taught musician>
learned by oneself <self–taught knowledge>
• What??? Even if I said that most writers from a historical perspective make it "without having to study," how in the world would that mean I apply it to most writers here?
Simple logic. If most published writers pick it up by themselves, the “prepublished” writers here, and everywhere must fit that criteria as well, or they can’t be included in te class “most writers.”
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It wasn’t my intention to start an argument, or to upset anyone. But when someone tells new writers that most successful writers make it to publication without need of professional knowledge—something demonstrably not supportable—I feel it’s a disservice to those writers and must respond.
The last thing I want to do is create an environment of hostility on this site because it’s one of the few on the Internet where the subject is writing, without the name calling that such arguments almost invariably turn into.
For that reason I’ll not post in this thread again.
And to the others, who might have been upset: Sorry.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Thanks for the true-to-form last word, Jay. You're nothing if not consistent!
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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Back on topic, I learned from Robert E. Howard's Conan books that the perceptions of supporting characters can often inform the reader about a protagonist more effectively than direct narration can. Whenever Conan runs into ordinary people, even ordinary soldiers in the city guard, they're impressed or intimidated or downright frightened by him, and their visceral responses make us feel his imposing stature far more than any exposition about his size or apparent ferocity.
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Joined: 7/25/2012
Posts: 25
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Recent scientific studies have shown we are hard-wired to respond to gossip. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossip
So all the more reason for indirect characterization.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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I heard that the author of that study was cheating on his wife with her best friend, Susie, and then the wife started drinking and blew all their money at online poker.
(Actually, the article looks really interesting. Thanks for the link!)
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Joined: 7/25/2012
Posts: 25
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It's all part of a conspiracy.
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