@T.Trian, I'm fine if someone else uses how-to books as long as they question all the advice given. I still, however, see reading as the best way to learn writing. By the way, congrats on making mod! @ChickenFreak, I learned things like unreliable narrator, etc. in my English classes. This stuff can also be learned by critically reading and studying texts. I didn't learn them from how-to books, however. For me, it's more important to know what an unreliable narrator is than how to write one.
But why are English classes good and books (Edited to clarify: books that teach the same things) bad?
Because classes don't teach you how to produce creative fiction. You mainly discuss novels/stories/poetry and don't even focus on the actual writing aspect. English classes are analogous to reading texts on literary theory more than anything.
You mean the seventy-five he was able to write and sell in his lifetime? Wake up, the man wrote commercial fiction. Publishers invested tens of thousands of dollars in his stories, over and over through the years. Do you really think they would have done that were his name on the cover not a guaranteed money-maker? The man wrote and sold seventy-five novels. That is a huge achievement. And that was in addition to his being an honored university professor at one of the most respected schools that teach fiction. You dismiss his views as unneeded while not being able to demonstrate a workable alternative. And demonstrably, the man was able to teach people to successfully write. People do not pay what a four year education costs unless the results justify the cost. There are lots of people who owe their career to what he and Swain, and the other teachers at Oklahoma University were able to give them. It's no longer available on the Internet, but the attendee list for the university's professional fiction writing seminars read like a who's who of American fiction. This is the man and the university you're dismissing as having nothing to teach you. Quite frankly, and without disparaging either your talent or potential as a writer, it seems that were that true—were the techniques taught in the university unneeded, you would already be selling your work using the skills you feel more suitable to a career in writing fiction.
Hmm. Maybe part of this is a different attitude toward how-to books. Even if a book says, "Do X!" I respond as if the message were, "I offer the idea X for your consideration. If you find my arguments sufficiently logical and convincing, you might want to consider adding this idea to your store of knowledge, in case it's relevant someday." So, as far as I'm concerned it's all theory.
Why aren't his novels still being sold? I (and some of the other members here) have mentioned several times that I don't want to write commercial fiction or make money. Some of us prefer to be read decades from now over selling a ton of copies in the present and making money. So Bickham's advice for writing commercial fiction is not for writers like me. By the way, quality always beats quantity. Joyce only wrote 3 novels (1 of which is undecipherable ) and they continue to sell well to this very day. Different opinions I guess. That's fine.
The problem is that you don't understand how the publishing industry works. He wrote before there was an Internet and an Amazon, so his work appeared in the bookstores, where a given title had one or two months on the shelf before being replaced by a new offering. Damn few books, only the ones that were so popular that there were multiple print runs, appeared for longer than that. And we're talking 3% or less. His books are available on Amazon because the publishers put pretty much anything they had up, though they do no advertising or promotion for them. Yet in spite of that, his books do sell there and invariably have good reader reviews. But in the end you're not worried over if he wrote well or sold many copies not, you're seeking to disparage his writing so you can justify not reading a book filled with the kind of information you would get were you to take a course on professional fiction writing. So don't. But also, don't disparage a work that's of great use to people who do. For yourself write as you care to. Read and pay attention to what you care to. That's your right. But if you choose to go that route you can't realistically make suggestions to people who do want to write commercial fiction, on how best to advance their career.
I wouldn't read a how-to book even if it was written by Nabokov. It's nothing personal against Nabokov; it's just not something I'd read.
I think @thirdwind means the seventy-five pieces of dreck Bickham wrote and sold and are out of print and forgotten now. The seventy-five piles of paper nobody cares about. The landfill he produced. Wake up, Jay. Bickham wrote crap. Swain wrote crap. Thousands of other writers have written crap and are also out of print and forgotten. The advice they give is for people who want to write crap. Pulp crap sells; so what? Many of us don't want to sell pulp crap. Honestly, @JayG, if your heroes had written anything I'd heard of, or was still in print, or had won any prizes, I'd give them more credence. But frankly, writing and selling seventy-five novels is not a huge achievement, in the world some of us aspire to. Hemingway published only seven novels in his lifetime and won the Nobel Prize. He's completely in print to this day, more than fifty years after his death. Screw Bickham and his seventy-five; I'm with Hemingway and his seven. Or Boris Pasternak's one (Dr. Zhivago). Or Harper Lee's one (To Kill A Mockingbird). One classic that stays on the bookshelf, handed down to the kids and grandkids, is worth any amount of landfill. And the University of Oklahoma isn't that famous a writing school. I've read tons of books about writing, and I hear about Bread Loaf and SUNY-Binghamton, University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins, and so on. I've never even found a list of top schools Oklahoma appears on. I sometimes think of this in musical terms. Some people love the discipline of classical music - the rightness, the notes on the page, the rules. Others (like me) grew up as improvising musicians, playing rock and jazz as it came to us, whatever works, screw the rules. I was already an adult when my father divorced my mother and married another woman. She's a wonderful classical pianist, very skilled and knowledgeable. I've tried to jam with her on my guitar, and she can't keep up. She says, "What are you playing?" and I say, "I'm just accompanying you." She has no ability to improvise, no comfort with improvisation. I'm the opposite - saddle me with too many rules and I'll start breaking them because the music feels right that way. Jay, you come across to me as someone who's comfortable with rules. You like structure and logic and predictability. You're an engineer who wants the complete plans before you begin to build, and if you don't have them, you don't like it. You don't improvise - you're not comfortable with winging it. Some of us, though, chafe at the rules, and that doesn't mean we're incompetent. It just means we get where we're going without paying attention to rules that much. We wing it, not because we don't know what we're doing, but because we do know what we're doing and we don't have the patience for the rules any more. You say, "Why haven't you sold anything yet? See? You're wrong." And again I say, "Because I haven't submitted anything." I bet you have a bigger pile of rejection slips than I have. I just don't submit, and won't until I'm ready. I'm happy with that. You'll tell me (you've already told me) my advice is worthless unless it has worked for me, meaning that it has resulted in a publisher buying my work. Fair point. But publishers buy lots of crap too, and sell crap to people who want crap. The simple fact that someone has sold something doesn't mean they're good. The simple fact that someone sells doesn't mean their advice is good. McDonald's sells lots of burgers, but I wouldn't trust them to tell me how to prepare a good sea clam linguine.
Minstrel these are all good arguments. But don't you think rules and structure are good at least in the beginning? You might think you're the next Ali, but how do you really know? Why not follow the rules until you know you can break them and still receive (if not receive more) good reception from publishing? Of course it's more ambitious to try and write the next Moby Dick as opposed to another Swain novel, but haven't you ever heard of starting small?
Of course, and you're right. And I don't think I'm the next Ali - I just aspire to be. My objection to @JayG is mostly that he doesn't want me to be the next Ali; he wants me to be the next cheapass local heavyweight who wins his club championship, signs a couple of autographs, and disappears. But there's a couple of points to be made: 1) There is no "publishing." There is no one, monolithic, publishing corporate structure. If there were, JK Rowling wouldn't have had to submit to a dozen publishers before finding an acceptance. The fact that the dozenth bought what the previous eleven didn't tells me they don't all think the same. And that some are losers and some are winners. Just as there are bad writers, there are bad publishers. JayG seems to think all publishers are the same, with the same criteria and the same skill set, and that what one does, all the rest would do, too. 2) Rules and structure are good in the beginning. I think what I'm saying is that we all master the beginning very quickly. Maybe before we're out of grade school, if we read a lot. Teach a five-year-old kid to sing "Kumbaya" and he'll grasp the nature of rhythm, harmony, and melody. It's all there in an incredibly simple song. The rules lock in subconsciously. All a teacher needs to do is help bring them out when it's time for that kid to sing his own song. I think anyone who's read a lot as a kid knows what they need to know, instinctively, about story structure, scenes, characters, etc. They just need their noses rubbed into what they already know. If they can learn to see their work from a reader's perspective, they'll instantly see what doesn't work and what does. Of course, people who don't read - who haven't read since they were kids - are lost. They have no instincts to fall back on. Everything they do has to be by rule and rote. I suspect JayG is one of these.
I agree with point 1, but I'm not sure about point 2. Two things JayG repeats over and over again (and I am simplifying this a lot) is context and conflict. I see a lot of pieces here, including a few very good ones (good means strong use of the English language, strong voice, etc) written by literate people that are missing something, and often it's these two very things. The inclusion of these things might be done more subtly and more masterfully by the greats you aspire to be, but I'm going to go ahead and say a lot of the pieces here just plain full out don't have them . We're stuck wondering whose talking or where we are, or we're stuck wondering "why the hell am I reading this?" The more advanced you get, the more you can make tangents work, or disguise context and conflict as a tangent, or basically do anything. You talk about instincts, but I can think of several other fields where even the naturals need to learn the rules first so that one day they can break them.
I'm kind of swithering about jumping in here, but what the heck. I love reading 'how-to' books, and I've learned a lot from them. Some have been more helpful than others; many of them have an agenda that isn't mine. I have particular favourites. Others haven't had much impact on me—largely because the stories these authors write are not the ones I want to read myself. Why would I write a book I don't want to read? I'm more inclined to read 'how-to' books from authors I admire, than authors I don't really like much. However, I had a great deal of my novel's first draft written when I 'discovered' these books. I've never written to rote. I think once you've actually 'written,' how-to advice is less dictatorial and more inspirational. These authors offer potential solutions to problems you've already experienced, point out mistakes you've probably already made. They make you aware of how you've structured your piece, what you need to do to streamline the story so one element flows into another. They give you hints on how to portray character more effectively and maintain a consistent point of view. You can go through your early drafts and apply these ideas, as you feel necessary. The delight you feel, watching your story improve far beyond your original draft, can't be overestimated. You may need to re-write huge chunks and make other major changes, but at least the raw material is your own. You've told your own story, without feeling the need to 'conform' to anybody else's idea of what a story should be, or how it should progress. I think we have the best of two worlds today, if we're judicious about the process. We can write anything we want, any way we want. But then, if we want to improve what we've written, make OUR story more readable, enjoyable and memorable, we can learn from the wisdom of others. (We don't have to, but we certainly can.) My reservation about how-to books is that they are sometimes seen as a paint-by-numbers blueprint for beginning authors. In other words, new writers may try to 'fit' their story into the mold that a particular 'experienced' author favours. What they end up with may be saleable, readable, and all that - but it won't be very original. If these kinds of books are taken too seriously, they may make people afraid to even start writing, for fear they can't measure up, or can't fit the blueprint. How many people on this forum have spent ages obsessing over their opening sentences, their opening chapter, writing and re-writing without having the courage to move on to Chapter Two, never mind all the way to the end? They've been 'told' by how-to advice, that their opener has to be a corker, with a strong hook, bla de bla. Of course that's true, but this kind of thing can be crafted AFTER the story is complete, and you know for sure where it's going. I think how-to books can sow seeds of insecurity, and that's the danger. I'd say write your story first, as it comes to you, then start learning how to make it work better. Okay, this method takes time, but—as the cliche says—good things do!
Wow, well said. I can only add that if you're interested in writing a novel you should already be writing and reading as much as you can. Someone whose first and only action is to open a how-to book is not sincere. Yes you want instruction, but anyone eager and passionate is going to be starting on their own either before or during.
Thanks! @KaTrian joined the dark side as well (they do have cookies!). I'd have to say that I, too, learned about the unreliable narrator (the bastard) in class, but many of the classes at uni are taught from books that I classify as how-tos. These include courses that focus on grammar from a writer's perspective, creative writing courses, academic writing courses etc. The only difference between attending a class and reading the book the class is based on is that the teacher has already learned the source material and explains some of it to the students to make it easier to digest, but there's a reason why you can often choose whether to attend a course or to go straight to the exam after studying the book on your own. Just to be clear: I'm not saying how-tos are necessary. Just that they can be one useful tool among many and shouldn't be ignored out of the fear that they will magically brainwash you and turn you into a mindless zombie who produces only what the book's author wants.
@jannert nailed it. I also would add that, upon further reflection, the writing accomplishments of the writer of a "how to" is probably only marginally relevant to the usefulness of the advice. Those of us who follow sports know that the best coaches are often people who had undistinguished playing careers. Vince Lombardi was a lineman at Fordham in the 1930s, one of the "seven blocks of granite", never played football professionally, and yet became the most dominant professional coach of his era and one of the most lionized in American football history. It is possible to understand the elements of success in an endeavor without having attained such success oneself. In an earlier thread on this topic that I started (the "Final Showdown" thread - a title chosen in an attempt at humor that, in the end, I regret because it probably added an edge to the discussion that was never intended), I said that whatever means one chose to learn the craft of writing most likely came down to one's personal learning style. But the fact that we keep coming back to this as a point of contention suggests something more - there appears (to me, at least) an emotional underpinning to some of the positions taken that goes beyond a mere stating of opinion. I've been guilty of it, myself. There have been times when this discussion rivaled some of the issues in the Debate Room for intensity. We need, as aspiring writers, to be able to discuss the writing process dispassionately, asking probing questions without risking emotional pushback. And we need to be able to address those questions without feeling that we must at the same time defend how we, ourselves, approach writing. For example, there is something from Bickham that I've seen @JayG quote two or three times regarding description, and the idea that whenever a writer stops to describe something, (s)he is stopping the action of the story (Jay, if I have not paraphrased this correctly, please correct me). I've been unsure how that was intended. One can read it as a blanket admonition to avoid descriptive passages at all costs, or to employ them sparingly, or to be aware of this as a dynamic so that you don't unintentionally bog down your narrative. The first is an absolute, the others are increasingly nuanced, suggesting less judgment by the "teacher" and more by the writer. Let's discuss.
@EdFromNY, I'd just like to add that some virtuosos make absolutely horrible teachers. When I was a kid, nothing was more disappointing than spending my meager allowance to buy the instructional video of my favorite guitarist or drummer and to find out it was little more than someone showing off their dazzling skill. The best instructional videos usually came from guys who are professional musicians, but who aren't really famous and not even all that successful compared to the superstars. I've noticed the same applies in martial arts / combat sports circles, and I'd imagine the world of creative writing is no different, so I wouldn't ignore a person's advice based purely on their commercial success or the amount of critical acclaim they've received etc. I think the key is learning to see for yourself what advice is helpful to you and what's not. That way you can "safely" learn from anyone who has something to offer that suits your style and your writing.
Definitely. BTW, there was some discussion earlier regarding how one might have learned about unreliable narrators. I learned about them from this forum.
That's one of the reasons why I joined this place: to learn as there are plenty of people here who are much better writers and much more knowledgeable about the writing industry than I am. Besides, no matter whether I write fiction, work on a translation, write blog or forum posts, or whatever, it still allows me to write every day which, in turn, helps develop a sense of routine when it comes to things like correct sentence structures, proper punctuation etc. Granted, I don't write my forum posts quite as carefully as I'd write an MS, but I do try to avoid mistakes to the best of my ability as that routine does help make the writing process more efficient (the faster and the better you are as a typist, the more you can just focus on your story, plot, characters etc). I think there was even some discussion about this earlier on in this or a similar thread (typing speed and accuracy, their effect on the writing experience etc).
Virtually everything that appeared in the bookstores for the past 100 years is out of print. So what? Declaring his writing "dreck" is inaccurate, unjustified, and something that if I did would have you lecturing me on proper forum behavior. Certainly the reviews for his work aren't in agreement with your dismissal. You, my friend, are both abusing your position and demonstrating how little you know about the industry. As to his writing, look at the reviews readers were moved to provide for just one of his stories. Hell, even the one star review was filled with praise. And that's for a book that's been out of the bookstores for more than a decade and has received no promotion. So you're saying that the favorable reviews he got when his books were released are of no consequence, the people who respected him as a writer, misguided, his students, fools because they couldn't see what's perfectly plain to you. I can't agree. You've pretty well forgotten just how many changes you made in your own work, based in the teachings of the two university professors you declare incompetent, after I pointed them out. If their teachings are crap and they don't know how to write, why was Bickham able to create and sell seventy-five novels that were well received and favorably reviewed, while you're not only unable to sell one, you accept advice from Swain and improve your work by using it? You like Hemingway, so let me quote him: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” Hemingway was educated in how to write, and he sat with some of the most accomplished writers of his generation, in Paris.Why did he need a writers education but no one else does? If you like, let's look at what people feel make sense. Lots of people here have viewpoints they believe accurate, and they espouse them here in the forums, where others look at them and decide if they make sense. Unlike many, I don't say, "This is what I do." I don't put forward my own ideas of what it takes to succeed because I've not accomplished enough on my own to do that. I advise people to learn the basics from the pros, as we do in any profession. This is what you're objecting to. The results are interesting. Take a look to the left of the post and you will find a number under everyone's name labeled "likes received." That's the number of people who feel the advice given was good. My current number of likes as against total posts is a little better than 54%. How many others posting on this site enjoy that much agreement? My point? Apparently the views I present make sense to a lot of people. Compare that approval rate with those who so vocally shout that Swain was an idiot. and that teachers provide nothing useful. Were I to make such personal assumptions about you in this forum you would boot me, no questions asked. But who is to there to watch the watcher? This should be a place to discuss writing technique, not attack someone whose ideas you disagree with. Certainly it's not the place to dismiss the idea of education. But in any case you're again dead wrong. I support what works, not a blind set of "do this and then that," rules. I've found that education is a damn good working substitute for genius. And as for rules, on the first page of Swain's book he gives as one of the mistakes new writers make, seeking a set of rules. Bickham, and every other book on writing technique I've seen, and I own many, say exactly the same thing. Every sculptor uses the same tools, subject to their own needs and technique. You're confusing tools and rules. Reasoning that you're not published only because you haven't chosen to submit, as though there's some assurance that when you decide you're ready it will be snapped up, thus qualifying you to pronounce judgment on people who have been snapped up has a technical name: fantasy. Forgetting that 90% of everything is crap, that's nonsense. The people who wrote the stories you're disparaging wrote well enough to convince a publisher to risk company money on editing it, bringing it to market, printing it, and convincing the bookstores to carry it (that is not automatic. Bookstores have to believe a given book will sell or they won't carry it). Close to 50,000 writers succeeded in getting a publisher to say yes to that last year. Yet you dismiss them, as a group, as unworthy, and not nearly the writer you are, but on the basis of what? It means that 50,000 people are better then you and I at hitting the target that you say you're planning to aim at. But at the same time you're dismissing them as, somehow, less worthy than you, as writers. I'll just say I disagree.
You do understand that Amazon isn't actually selling the book because it's long out of print? The only reason Berkley put it up was to get rid of whatever remainders were left in the warehouse, which probably amounted to a few hundred, at best. So of course there aren't a lot of reviews. And the rest of his novels shown there are older and had fewer remainders to sell, and so have fewer reviews. You do understand people don't post reviews for used out of print books? Of course his primary book on writing, Scene and Structure—the book that has value to writers, has fifty-two five star reviews. Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer has has Ninety Five five star reviews. And though the man has been dead for a long time, the book is selling steadily today. And that doesn't count the sales in other countries, or by other vendors. It has been the definitive book on writing technique since 1965. You don't keep selling year after year, in the numbers that has without good reason. Maybe you should read a few of those reviews. Lots of them are by selling authors like Jerry Pournelle, four time NYT best seller. And when you get the pros saying such nice things about a writing teacher you can bet they know what they're talking about.
I used harsh language, @JayG, because I was hoping to get your attention. I don't think it worked very well. Sorry for the language - I know I used words like "dreck" and "crap" when I really meant "run-of-the-mill ordinary fiction," but it's sometimes hard to get you to respond to my points, or other people's points, without you repeating yourself. Yes. 99.99% of it is. Forgive me, but I'm aiming to be among the 0.01%. Sure, I'll very likely never make it, but it's why I'm writing. I see no point in aiming for run-of-the-mill. As you keep pointing out, there are many thousands of writers filling that market. There are enough of them. I'm aiming as high as I can, and I'm happy to go down fighting to get there. You sound like you're taking my side of the argument. Let me take yours: Wake up! He's out of print! Publishers have given up on him because his books no longer sell. For me, success is when your books keep selling. Not just now, but to future generations. When your books have permanent value. You've mentioned this before, and I still don't know what you're talking about. You must have me confused with someone else. I've only ever uploaded the beginning of one story on this forum, and I never posted a revision. I thanked everyone for their comments, including you, but I never revised the story. I still haven't revised it. Their teachings are not necessarily crap, but they do not necessarily apply to everyone, either. This is my central point with you. You seem to think all writers are trying to achieve the same thing. You seem to think all readers want the same thing. You seem to think all publishers are looking for the same thing. You seem to think all critics will receive everything the same way. You think the same standard applies to all writing, no matter who it's by or who it's for. It's as if you're trying to teach us all to make Big Macs because Big Macs sell, when some of us want to make eggs Benedict and some of us want to make sushi and others here want to make turducken. I know you mean well, but it seems to me like nothing you've posted in this forum is intended to help the members reach their goals; it's intended to help them reach your goals. This isn't true. As I've said before, I've taken writing courses online - I wouldn't have done that if I thought I already knew it all. I recognize that people need to learn craft before they can succeed. Where you and I differ, I think, is that when you think of "the pros" in your sentence above, you mean Swain and Bickham and Sol Stein. My point is, they aren't the only pros. Other pros differ. Other pros think other aspects of fiction writing are more important than things like motivation/response units and ending scenes with disaster. As I've said before, I've read hundreds of interviews with celebrated, prize-winning writers (from Norman Mailer to Truman Capote to Alice Munro to Chinua Achebe to John Banville to Isak Dinesen and a great many others), and I don't think any of them have so much as mentioned motivation/response units. They deal in other things. My favorite writing book is The Art of Fiction, by John Gardner. I like it not because it's about the nuts and bolts, but because it's inspiring. It's got enough hardware to be helpful, and it's got a ton of whatever it takes to make me want to climb Everest. I've tried reading Swain and he makes me want to throw down my pen and jump off a cliff. Sorry, but that's the way it is for me. Swain has some good things to say about hardware, but he's not inspiring. Once again, I emphasize that I have never dismissed the idea of education. I took courses, as I've said time and again, because I recognize that it's necessary. And once again, you seem to think the only source of education is Bickham, Swain, & Co. This is not so. I have no illusions about being snapped up. I expect I'll have trouble getting published, just as so many have before me. Maybe it'll never happen. That's fine; I'm not special. And I do not pronounce judgment on people who have been snapped up (at least not seriously). The only people I pronounce judgment on seriously are those who tell me I have to lower my sights in order to succeed. That's a non-starter. If I believed that, I'd quit writing. And I'm very serious about writing. This is a good talk. I like discussing values. I like finally getting down to what's serious.
No one gave up on him. He's dead. Publishers promote only new books. If that wasn't true the bookstores would be filled with reprints and no one would sell a book to a publisher, ever. Other than a tiny fraction of writers all books quietly vanish, as does the writer when they stop writing. And we should be damn thankful they do. Well then, have you read the reviews for Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer? It's over fifty years old and the author is dead, yet it's still selling. You have a past president of the science fiction writers, Jerry Pournelle, a man who was on the NYT best seller list four times, saying: I have little use for books on how to write, but Dwight Swaine's Techniques is an exception. I don't know anyone in my racket who can't benefit from at least one of the chapters in this work. It has been around a long time because it talks about permanent factors. I unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make a living at writing. There are twelve pages of reviews—people shouting their praise for that book, and more than a few giving it the credit for their having been published. Hell, my own love letter to the man is buried in that pile. It's not just a book that people are saying was helpful, the reviews carry titles like like: "This book got me published — Skip the MFA classes and read this book, then write! — The best book on writing around. — Wow!!!! Absolutely Mind Blowing!!!! — The Best on Writing Dramatic Fiction." And those are just the first-five-reviews. That continues for twelve pages. Swain is dead and still successful, so he fits your criteria for someone pretty damn special as a writer. Not bad for a man who wrote dreck. But that aside, most of the people who appear on the best seller lists make lots of money but their writing doesn't outlive them. So you've dismissed all but a statistically vanishing portion of the writing community. And you're not taking into account the people who, because the professors of literature have declared them noteworthy, are read primarily as an assignment. Everyone knows Shakespeare was a genius. But the number who read him by choice is small. They did a study a few years ago and stopped people at random. Most, if they knew his plays at all, referred to the Simpson's Hamlet episode or Shakespeare in love, etc. Everyone read him in high school. At the moment, the creator of Pibgorn, Booke McEldowney Is doing a brilliant graphic novel version of Romeo and Juliet. (interspersed with his political observations, I'm afraid) I suspect that more people will read that this year than will read the original (if we subtract those who have it as a homework assignment). Personally, I'd prefer to have people read and enjoy my work now, when I know about it. I don't give a damn what someone reads when I'm dead. And you're not taking into account that many books lose their attraction because changes in the culture render them less meaningful. I remember reading an older story in which a woman has an affair, but the man dies before they're married, so she goes into a nunnery, because she "knows" that no man will ever want a "fallen woman." When published that was a poignant and dramatic moment. Fifty years later I thought she was an idiot and wondered what the fuss was about. Is the man's writing lousy because people in today's society don't get the point? When people go to a Gilbert and Sullivan play they miss a huge amount of the topical humor because it's no longer topical. Everyone laughed when the Major General sang "and tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform," because they all knew Caractacus was a Pict, and went into battle nude and painted blue. Does that diminish the abilities of Gilbert, who write those lyrics? Read my critique of the chapter, then look at the changes you made. Most of them were connected with POV. Choose some stories at random from the workshop. Fully half are transcriptions of the author speaking the story aloud because the only storytelling skills the author knows are the verbal tricks we use every day. Damn near all of the rest read as if they're a highly detailed history of fictional characters, and are focused on dispassionately chronicling events because that's how we're taught to write. Practicing either won't make them a better writer. They'll just become more practiced at writing lousy. Before we could write a book report in school we had to be taught the structure of a report. The same applied to an essay. But in our schooling no one told us the structure of fiction other than in generic terms. Unfortunately, the ones grading our fiction are the publishers. And they're hard graders. No grading curve (though take-overs are allowed). Seems to me that before we try writing something we hope will get a passing grade we should find out what the one grading the paper expects to see. They do: professional writing. But only 3% of submissions are thought to be professionally written. That's 3%, and it's according to the publishers. How is it possible that only three in a hundred are writing on a pro level? We're not talking about the story, we're talking about the approach to writing. I could see publishers saying they only choose the best of the best, but they're saying that ninety-seven out of one hundred are not worth looking at because the author doesn't know how to write, by-their-standards. Obviously, whatever their missing those ninety-seven people aren't getting it from online forums or through reading fiction. You've dismissed most writing as not "successful." Your right to do that, of course. But The New York Times ,and millions of readers might disagree. No one will remember 50 Shades fifty years from now, and by your criteria it's not successful. But more people have bought and read that book than many people you declare a success. And we're talking about selling 100 million copies. If Erika made only a dollar a copy I'd call that a success, because she sold more books in a few years than most of the people you call successful, combined. And before you say she needed/took no training, her background as a TV executive exposed her to the business end of how to please the customer in the entertainment field, which fiction is part of. It does, and the publishers wrote and enforce that standard. And, the universities, in collusion, teach what those expectations are, and how to make them work for you. Other than their income from writing, that's how Jack Bickham, and Dwight Swain made their living—and did very well at it. Either could have liffed well on only their writing. Seems to me that while there might be things that a given writer might choose not to use, not taking advantage of their expertise and analysis to avoid the "I didn't know that," pitfalls make sense. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” How much of what we believe about how to write when we first sit down to record a story is part of, "just ain't so?" Two ways to find out. Submit the work (which doesn't tell us what ain't so) or see what the pros have to say. Asking others who are in the same situation will get answers, but given the rejection rate it's probably not a reliable method. Wait...you took an on line writing course and you're disparaging the accuracy and utlity of men who taught professional fiction writing at an accredited university?
A lot of authors are dead, yet their books continue to sell. He dismissed them because he doesn't think they're great writers. That's his opinion and a perfectly valid one. Though your comment about culture changing is a good point, the decline in popularity of all books can't be attributed to that; some books are quickly forgotten because they aren't memorable or worth reading twice. What do you mean by professional writing? Do you only become a pro once your manuscript is accepted? Most readers are just looking for a quick fix, so they naturally tend to gravitate to Dan Brown and Grisham over some of the harder (and more rewarding IMO) writers out there. Justin Bieber has sold millions of copies of his songs. I wouldn't call him a successful artist, however. The so-called pros rejected writers like Faulkner and Joyce. So getting rejected is not a sign that your writer is bad. There are other factors, like marketability, to consider.
