A survey in the U.K. revealed that more people want to be a writer there than any other job. To which Guardian writer John Crace says “Don’t give up the day job.”
Further in, he comments on the growing number of creative writing classes that people are taking as they pursue their dreams of being the next J.K. Rowling
“While a creative writing course might teach you a little about structure, characterisation and dialogue, it won’t teach you a thing about creativity. As a reader, I reckon I can almost always tell which writers have come through a creative writing course. Because they are the ones whose work is dry, lifeless and formulaic.”
He’s not saying anything that hasn’t already been said re: the teaching of writing. Still, it did make me think, “What am Idoing to make sure my writing is wet, lively, and random?”
If you’re teaching, what are you doing to help your students defy the formula?
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Comments 10
strangely, the description of bad writing is very near a description of bad sexual intercourse (dry, lifeless, formulaic)
I am currently teaching creative writing at the Boston Center for Adult Ed (bcae.org), and I have to say that in my experience, nobody expects to be taught creativity.
However, I will say that being in a workshop atmosphere often fosters creative energy. The most popular reason that my students (who are mostly professional adults- doctors, technical writers, school teachers- exploring creative writing) give for attending my workshops is that it spurs them on to actually go home and write.
If I could be so brash as to say the creativity of writing comes from the tension that we experience when we pit our own agenda (personal concerns, naked emotions, narrative voice) against those very rules the workshop offers. That tension sharpens the blade.
Can you become a brilliant writer without taking a creative writing course? Sure. Can you take a dozen creative writing courses and be a boring writer? Sure. But going to a writing workshop does not automatically negate someone’s ability to be creative.
Here is my opinion on what makes good writing. Here are the big elements of writing:
voice (of the narrator)
plot (stakes/conflict)
novelty (avoiding cliche)
your character’s inner lives
control of language and expression (similar to voice)
dumb luck
The more you have of one or a few, the less you need of another. Some (like plot or novelty) can be taught. Others (narrative voice) seems to come from inside but can be honed by writing and reading a lot.
Anyway, I often advise my students to find and stick to their narrative voice.Other things, like plot, can be built around the voice. It’s like jazz. Everyone plays the same song but we appreciate more it when someone plays from the heart with an authentic voice.
ok- I’m rambling now-
cheers-
Armand
Posted 24 Aug 2007 at 5:24 pm ¶Dear Armand,
I just can’t think of one instance when dumb luck has played a role in my writing.
Lizzy
Posted 24 Aug 2007 at 10:28 pm ¶Hi lizzy !
I see where you are coming from. Every once in a while though I sort of accidentally stumble onto a way of phrasing something that’s just beautiful. I guess it could be a subconscious thing and not dumb luck. Hard for me to say.
Maybe I should rephrase to say that dumb luck plays a role in getting good writing published.
Thanks-
Armand
Posted 25 Aug 2007 at 11:19 am ¶oh! and I consider myself lucky when I think of a good story title. I have such a hard time with titles.
Posted 25 Aug 2007 at 11:23 am ¶Luck, to me, means being in the right place at the right time. If you sit down and write every day, you increase your chances of getting lucky… or something like that.
Posted 25 Aug 2007 at 12:46 pm ¶I have a difficult time with titles, too. I have about three or four Untitleds going now.
I’d say that there is such a thing as getting lucky in publishing, though not in writing.
Gordon, do you mean that if I write every day I will have better chances of winning at slots? Or?
Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 2:20 am ¶What formula? : )
Posted 03 Sep 2007 at 12:55 pm ¶Re: Armand
Everyone’s workshop is different, so I could be wrong, but it’s my experience that voice is concentrated on too much while plot and novelty are rarely instructed or discussed.
I think this might be because, largely, the writers whose works we consistely look at have almost no reliance on plot. Maybe a bit of novely, but mostly their stories are driven by character and tone.
Like I said, this could just be my experience. Still, I’ve got to agree with Crace on this one.
Posted 03 Sep 2007 at 9:44 pm ¶Oh for God’s sake. Why is it that people think that good writers are only good if they’re self-taught? We don’t feel that way about other professionals — one’s doctor, for instance — or even about other creative artists. We never say, “Well, what a pity that violinist had a teacher.”
Sure, writing programs turn out mediocre writers, but that’s nothing new. mrbenning is correct to say that writing programs don’t generally teach plot, and should – but that’s craft (which is also critical), not creativity.
The challenge, though is how to teach creativity. It’s a lot easier to teach the elements of craft than to help a student figure out how to become more creative. I’m convinced that the best teachers (and I’m not one of them) would do some of both.
Armand, your point that voice can drive the development of a work of fiction is a good one, but I would argue that most students wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it. We as teachers labor under the “curse of knowledge:” we’ve done it, we can do it again, and we’ve lost the ability to see how difficult it was to understand the trick of writing when we first began.
Most of my students and most of the writers I see in the slush pile everyday have much more basic hurdles they’ll have to clear before they can confidently create a voice, much less use it to riff on, in the way you suggest.
Gordon: defying the formula’s a great thing, but I can tell you from experience it’s much harder to actually write to formula than people tend to believe, and mastery of it as part of one’s education as a writer (even if one wants to transcend it) should, I think, be part of writers’ boot camp.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 5:43 pm ¶It’s not a very thoughtful article. Assuming everything he says is true, then half the population of the UK wants to have a more artistic, creative lifestyle, and they have no idea how to go about doing it. And, even if some of them did make the huge step of quitting their jobs, reading the canon of Western literature and sitting alone at a desk everyday, our society would have no place for them. It doesn’t have a place for all the current artists either, let alone the thousands of people who would like to join them.
Also, from the writer’s professional cynicism, it sounds that he himself has little idea how to live an artistic life, yet he is being paid to advise the rest of us on that very topic…
Sad, really.
Daniel
Posted 02 Oct 2007 at 5:17 pm ¶Speak Your Mind