Creative Writing Programs and genre/game writing
D'oh. Yeah, utterly misread your post. Thought you were recommending it to me because some other guy named Tacky had... yeah, okay, it's early, I haven't had my hot chocolate yet. (sigh)
-Tacky
Published Short Story Author
1 publication short of SFWA Membership
Still kinduva doofus
-Tacky
Published Short Story Author
1 publication short of SFWA Membership
Still kinduva doofus
Lazybones
Adventurer
I'd like to wholeheartedly endorse the views of those who said that mastering the "craft" is essential to learning the "art" of writing. Eight years of teaching history and grading papers, plus working as an editor for a historical journal on the side, gave me a hell of a lot of practice in what doesn't work. Even so, I'm always finding errors in my prose.
As for workshops, I don't know if I'd spend $1500 when there are so many free avenues out there for critique and practice. I joined the Del Rey online workshop and got some good feedback (until they started charging
), and joined a writers' group organized by the local Barnes & Noble which lasted about a year or so. If nothing else, start your own writers' club in your community, and advertise at bookstores. It may take a while to find the right folks but they're out there. Plus the peer support is nice when you're submitting and getting tons of rejections.
I love to write, but I've come to accept that I might never get any fiction published (at least I've got some non-fiction credits!). Like Wulf, though, the ENWorld experience has been rewarding (nice to get positive feedback for a change!)
As for workshops, I don't know if I'd spend $1500 when there are so many free avenues out there for critique and practice. I joined the Del Rey online workshop and got some good feedback (until they started charging
), and joined a writers' group organized by the local Barnes & Noble which lasted about a year or so. If nothing else, start your own writers' club in your community, and advertise at bookstores. It may take a while to find the right folks but they're out there. Plus the peer support is nice when you're submitting and getting tons of rejections.I love to write, but I've come to accept that I might never get any fiction published (at least I've got some non-fiction credits!). Like Wulf, though, the ENWorld experience has been rewarding (nice to get positive feedback for a change!)
toberane
First Post
My degree is in creative writing, and I found out quickly what most of the professors involved in Creative Writing programs think of genre material. I tried to write a fantasy short story, and like many modern fantasies, I used a more modern voice for the characters.
The closest that my instructor had apparently come to reading fantasy was perhaps Le Morte D'Arthur or maybe The Hobbit. But he was appalled that I would use modern voiced characters against a medieval fantasy background. Never mind that it is currently a common convention to use modern slang in fantasy and that you rarely read anything anymore that uses that archaic language my professor was expecting. I rewrote it just for him, using archaic language and weakening the story in the attempt to translate it, and he thought the second version was much better.
My point is that, in these writing programs, they set up a certain number of expectations. They look down upon anything that falls outside these expectations, because they are not familiar with it. However, in these programs, I also learned proper grammar, ways of harnessing my creativity, ways to create sentences and paragraphs that have more impact, ways of getting a reader's attention from the start, and so on, and so on. I feel like I was able to apply much of the knowledge and skill that I acquired in the creative writing program to the genre material that I enjoy writing.
If there needs to be proof of this, my final project for the degree program was an 82-page cyberpunk novella. And, regardless of the bias against Sci-Fi and Fantasy in the English Dept., I must have done a pretty good job. I got an "A".
The closest that my instructor had apparently come to reading fantasy was perhaps Le Morte D'Arthur or maybe The Hobbit. But he was appalled that I would use modern voiced characters against a medieval fantasy background. Never mind that it is currently a common convention to use modern slang in fantasy and that you rarely read anything anymore that uses that archaic language my professor was expecting. I rewrote it just for him, using archaic language and weakening the story in the attempt to translate it, and he thought the second version was much better.
My point is that, in these writing programs, they set up a certain number of expectations. They look down upon anything that falls outside these expectations, because they are not familiar with it. However, in these programs, I also learned proper grammar, ways of harnessing my creativity, ways to create sentences and paragraphs that have more impact, ways of getting a reader's attention from the start, and so on, and so on. I feel like I was able to apply much of the knowledge and skill that I acquired in the creative writing program to the genre material that I enjoy writing.
If there needs to be proof of this, my final project for the degree program was an 82-page cyberpunk novella. And, regardless of the bias against Sci-Fi and Fantasy in the English Dept., I must have done a pretty good job. I got an "A".
I joined a writers club and a poetry night.
I never did genre stuff for poetry night, but I was very flattered by the praise I got.
I did okay at the club until they had a funky exercise. They picked nouns out of a had and I got Atlantis and book. So I wrote up a short story that would become my modern science fantasy book I now have on my hard drive. The club never said the story was bad.
But they did say I was "wasting" my time on the genre stuff. They even had another exercise where people where to NOT do their usual thing. I wrote a creative piece about a bridesgroom who contenplates his ex g/f on his honeymoon night. They loved it. Funny enough, I didn't any of them write about "those ray guns and wizards." So I guess I am the only one who stuck to the rules. Funny that.
www.hatrack.com has a free writers club set up. It was okay, I had to go through it twice to find enough genre writers to work with. Then they all lost interest after 9/11. Even in a writer's club site offered by a sci fi writer, I still found a lot of people there who the non-genre type and wondered what was up with us SF/F types. Even had a couple of poets too. Very eccletic mix. Another good part was that again, I got some praise for the good parts and some direction for my weaknesses.
Swoopers and Plodders, eh?
The worst is a Swooper who has no regard for his reader. It embarasses me to remember that I was a naive, arrogant, ignorant Swooper who thought the world should recongize my creativity, not my flaws. The really bad part was that I was 23 at the time.
*ouch!!*
I never did genre stuff for poetry night, but I was very flattered by the praise I got.
I did okay at the club until they had a funky exercise. They picked nouns out of a had and I got Atlantis and book. So I wrote up a short story that would become my modern science fantasy book I now have on my hard drive. The club never said the story was bad.
But they did say I was "wasting" my time on the genre stuff. They even had another exercise where people where to NOT do their usual thing. I wrote a creative piece about a bridesgroom who contenplates his ex g/f on his honeymoon night. They loved it. Funny enough, I didn't any of them write about "those ray guns and wizards." So I guess I am the only one who stuck to the rules. Funny that.
www.hatrack.com has a free writers club set up. It was okay, I had to go through it twice to find enough genre writers to work with. Then they all lost interest after 9/11. Even in a writer's club site offered by a sci fi writer, I still found a lot of people there who the non-genre type and wondered what was up with us SF/F types. Even had a couple of poets too. Very eccletic mix. Another good part was that again, I got some praise for the good parts and some direction for my weaknesses.
Swoopers and Plodders, eh?
The worst is a Swooper who has no regard for his reader. It embarasses me to remember that I was a naive, arrogant, ignorant Swooper who thought the world should recongize my creativity, not my flaws. The really bad part was that I was 23 at the time.
*ouch!!*
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babomb
First Post
"Plodder" describes me so well, it's not even funny. My high school had these evil things called timed writings. You sit in the class for 90 minutes and turn in your essay at the end. (I believe the idea was that they knew our parents weren't writing them for us that way.) High school english teachers also, for the most part, do not recognize that essays can be anything other than a five-paragraph essay with a three-part thesis (though they won't be upset if you split the body paragraphs). Furthermore, a paragraph must be at least a certain number of sentences (usually seven or nine). It was a good rule for most people, because they wrote short simple sentences; it was bad for me, because I tended toward long compound-complex sentences (often including appositives, dashed phrases, and if I was particularly enjoying myself, multiple levels of parenthetical phrases [like this]), and was forced to either cut them apart and make it choppy or write a lot more, but I digress.
Once, everyone else in the class (all "swoopers," which is how high school teaches/expects one to write) had finished and I was still working on the introductory paragraph. One of my English teachers actually called my house and told my parents that I was being stubborn because I couldn't think of anything to write. Luckily, my parents thought it was funny, and that she was...a few trees of forest. (which is true, IMO)
Out of necessity, I learned to pace myself a little better and finish writing at the VERY end of class, but before that I would usually sit for about half an hour with nothing written, come up with an introductory sentence, rewrite it, write the second sentence, decide I hated both sentences, rewrite them, add a third sentence, change the first to better accomodate a point in the fourth sentence I was about to write, and so on. Of course, after I got the introduction done, the rest was usually easier for me, except writing a good introduction. If in a hurry (which was most of the time), I'd follow their advice and just repharse the intro, and this worked reasonably well most of the time.
At any rate, quite frankly, the work of the majority of the "swoopers" ranged from bad to mediocre. I was among the best writers in my grade, and the only 2 or 3 who were better than me were also "plodders," just not as extremely. Most of the time that I got points taken off of an essay were for not putting the correct heading or forgetting to write a title. (I had a teacher once who said "Never write a title until you get to the final draft," and that stuck with me, for some reason.)
The fun part was when we got to essays that we did at home. (I did this sometimes in timed essays too, but not as often or as well.) I liked to amuse myself by thinking of the most bizzare analogy or allusion I could, and working it into the paper in a logical manner. So, for instance, when asked to compare two books, I likened them to two different types of pastries. When writing about Gothic tales, I mentioned Scooby Doo. When asked to define a hero, I spent a full paragraph on hero sandwiches (and the teacher loved it). I've even used Dungeons and Dragons on multiple occasions. (I have a funny story about using Dungeons and Dragons to get out of English assignements, but that, as they say, is another post; I also have one involving Julius Caesar and a graphic hack of Pac-man.) Sometimes I would find a random word in the dictionary that I didn't know and try to work it into the paper. This sort of thing actually helped me to write faster, because although I wasted half an hour thinking about how I could write about Scooby Doo, it got me thinking creatively.
Once, everyone else in the class (all "swoopers," which is how high school teaches/expects one to write) had finished and I was still working on the introductory paragraph. One of my English teachers actually called my house and told my parents that I was being stubborn because I couldn't think of anything to write. Luckily, my parents thought it was funny, and that she was...a few trees of forest. (which is true, IMO)
Out of necessity, I learned to pace myself a little better and finish writing at the VERY end of class, but before that I would usually sit for about half an hour with nothing written, come up with an introductory sentence, rewrite it, write the second sentence, decide I hated both sentences, rewrite them, add a third sentence, change the first to better accomodate a point in the fourth sentence I was about to write, and so on. Of course, after I got the introduction done, the rest was usually easier for me, except writing a good introduction. If in a hurry (which was most of the time), I'd follow their advice and just repharse the intro, and this worked reasonably well most of the time.
At any rate, quite frankly, the work of the majority of the "swoopers" ranged from bad to mediocre. I was among the best writers in my grade, and the only 2 or 3 who were better than me were also "plodders," just not as extremely. Most of the time that I got points taken off of an essay were for not putting the correct heading or forgetting to write a title. (I had a teacher once who said "Never write a title until you get to the final draft," and that stuck with me, for some reason.)
The fun part was when we got to essays that we did at home. (I did this sometimes in timed essays too, but not as often or as well.) I liked to amuse myself by thinking of the most bizzare analogy or allusion I could, and working it into the paper in a logical manner. So, for instance, when asked to compare two books, I likened them to two different types of pastries. When writing about Gothic tales, I mentioned Scooby Doo. When asked to define a hero, I spent a full paragraph on hero sandwiches (and the teacher loved it). I've even used Dungeons and Dragons on multiple occasions. (I have a funny story about using Dungeons and Dragons to get out of English assignements, but that, as they say, is another post; I also have one involving Julius Caesar and a graphic hack of Pac-man.) Sometimes I would find a random word in the dictionary that I didn't know and try to work it into the paper. This sort of thing actually helped me to write faster, because although I wasted half an hour thinking about how I could write about Scooby Doo, it got me thinking creatively.
Ooh, if you find yourself in a writer's group that tells you, based on the genre you like to write in (regardless of which one) that you are wasting you're time, then that's just not the place for you.
It's one of the reasons I left the Writing Group I was in (that an absolute burn out after three years of writing/publishing the group newsletter) - they were all mainstream writers, with the occasional dabbling into romance. I'm not going to turn them lose on my fantasy novel. While there would be things to learn from them, I think the genre barrier would have been too much for them to overcome. If you can't find a real life group that matches your writing interests, there are many great options online to workshop your WIP.
(And I won't even get into the guy who joined the club the last year I was there. He didn't even know how to put words into paragraphs - he had an 'editor' for that! ??? *bangs head on table*)
It's one of the reasons I left the Writing Group I was in (that an absolute burn out after three years of writing/publishing the group newsletter) - they were all mainstream writers, with the occasional dabbling into romance. I'm not going to turn them lose on my fantasy novel. While there would be things to learn from them, I think the genre barrier would have been too much for them to overcome. If you can't find a real life group that matches your writing interests, there are many great options online to workshop your WIP.
(And I won't even get into the guy who joined the club the last year I was there. He didn't even know how to put words into paragraphs - he had an 'editor' for that! ??? *bangs head on table*)
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Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
So like, there are a bunch of us here . . .
Let me get this straight.
There are a handful of us here who are writers of some stripe, and who are interested in Genre stuff. Who see the challenges and rewards of writing in a genre when most of the rest of the writing group world does not.
So . . . should we be looking in to starting something ourselves?
Is that crazy?
How many people might be interested?
-rg
Let me get this straight.
There are a handful of us here who are writers of some stripe, and who are interested in Genre stuff. Who see the challenges and rewards of writing in a genre when most of the rest of the writing group world does not.
So . . . should we be looking in to starting something ourselves?
Is that crazy?
How many people might be interested?
-rg
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