Isn't your claim of the reliability of people like Bickham and Swain that they have decades of experience in teaching such courses? And, beyond that, does that mean that you advocate only reliance on their books (or others like them) and not university creative writing courses? I've been checking out some of my favorite writers, those who I think influenced me a lot, on Wikipedia. It's a fascinating exercise. Ernest Hemingway first became interested in writing when he took a high school elective in journalism taught by Fannie Biggs, who ran her classroom like a newspaper office (I would have dearly loved to see that). His early career in journalism is well documented. I find it interesting that you have highlighted both Hemingway's and Vonnegut's journalism activities, since journalism is the essence of the very kind of expositive writing that is taught in school and is anathema to creative writing and that you yourself have advised members of this forum to avoid. Moreover, neither Hemingway's nor Vonnegut's prose bear any resemblance to news reportage. It may be that their careers/educations in journalism fired their desire write fiction, but it did not prepare them to do so. By comparison, I spent many years writing advocacy pieces for people with disabilities and had a fair level of success, with op ed pieces published mostly in Newsday (the Long Island daily newspaper) and a letter in The Wall Street Journal (I don't point to letters to editors as publishing credits, but I was particularly proud of that one). If I am ultimately successful as a writer of fiction, someone may some day point to my advocacy pieces as how I got started, but it won't be true. Advocacy pieces are much closer to reportage than to creative fiction, and their distance from fiction is great, indeed. James A. Michener attended Swarthmore College and Colorado State Teachers College. His career goal was education, not writing fiction, and he taught at CSTC for several years and then at Harvard for one year before going to work for MacMillan editing social studies textbooks. He didn't consider writing fiction until after his stint in the navy during WWII, which led him to write Tales of the South Pacific. In his later nonfictional writings, he argued for the value of a liberal arts education. C. P. Snow, author of the brilliant Strangers and Brothers series, studied chemistry at Leicestershire and Rutland College and went on to a masters degree in physics. He went on to a scholarship at Cambridge where he earned a PhD in physics. In 1930, he became a fellow at Christ's College. He held numerous senior civil service positions between 1940 and 1960. Herman Wouk studied philosophy at Columbia University and started out working in radio in "The Joke Factory" and later worked with Fred Allen for 5 years. Leon Uris was the son of a Polish-born paperhanger. At age 6, he wrote an operetta on the death of his dog. He failed English three times and never graduated from high school. He served in the Marines in WWII and afterward worked for a newspaper, writing on his own in his spare time. His first sold piece was to Esquire magazine in 1950. Tom Clancy (hey, even I have to do some light reading!) was born in Baltimore, as was Uris, and attended Loyola, majoring in English Literature (which, by the way, is what anyone majored in if they hankered after a career in writing back when I went to school). He was also in Army ROTC, but was rejected from actual service because of poor eyesight. After graduation he went to work in insurance (as did I). It was while working for an insurance agency that he wrote The Hunt For Red October. I discovered all of these writers while in my teens, except for Clancy, who came to me much later. I am struck not only by the diversity of their backgrounds but also in the writing elements that appeal to me. Where Hemingway is terse, Michener is verbose. Both Wouk and Uris wrote about the struggles of Israel, but in very different ways, while Clancy had the audacity to suggest that an American man educated by Jesuits might actually be able to solve that conflict by reliance on the Vatican (The Sum of All Fears). Jay, I don't think anyone here would argue that writers should not learn their craft. Michener donated masses of materials to the Library of Congress so that future generations of writers could benefit from them. He also wrote on the subject of writing, never in a prescriptive way, but only saying what had worked for him. He recommended Erich Auerbach's work of literary criticism, Mimesis, which does not group works of similar approaches together to show that a single approach has been successful, but rather compares and contrasts vastly different works to show how each accomplished its goal (beginning with the Old Testament). To your general statement that a writer needs to learn his/her craft, I can only offer hearty agreement. But your insistence that such can only be accomplished one way is puzzling.
Yeah - the how-to variety. btw, if you haven't read various author's views on such things as planning and "pantsing", you haven't read enough books. The contradictions are pretty obvious.
One other tidbit that has nothing to do with this discussion, but does involve three of the writers I listed above: Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea for a special edition of Life Magazine devoted solely to that work. Michener reviewed it, and Life liked his review so much they invited him to write a novella for a similar issue the following year. He did, and wrote The Bridges at Toko-Ri. Herman Wouk reviewed that, and Life invited him to write a novella in what they hoped would become an annual edition. Wouk declined, and the idea died.
Actually, the thing that amazed me when I read of this (in Michener's memoir) was that all three writers involved were favorites of mine.
No, they never, as far as I know, taught creative writing courses, they taught professional fiction writing, a very different thing, if for no other reason than that the participants want to be there rather then because the university required them to take the course. The goals of the two are also very different. And it's not a claim, it's an easily verifiable fact. I don't advise "reliance" on the books—whatever that is. I advise reading what the pros have to say, given that the things they mention actually, and repeatedly, resulted in sales for the one providing the information. I suggest books by Swain, Bickham, and Dixon only as the people whose work appears to have produced the best results for the students using them. A glance at Swain's Amazon page will show more than a few who feel they owe their writing career to him. They're also the authors I find quoted the most by other teachers of the craft. It's there in Hemingway's work, and obvious in the long passages of exposition,backstory, and editorial comments by the narrator . It's obvious in the author-centric presentation. Vonnegut, before he sold anything obviously took steps to learn the craft of fiction as it exists today because he was a teacher of writing, not journalism. You cannot make the statement that he took no steps toward learning the differences between nonfiction and fiction compositional techniques because you know nothing about the man and his personal life. About twice a year I get a note from someone who took my advice and dug into the techniques of fiction, and have had success in selling their work as a result. I hope you realize that if they go forward and become a success, someone like you will someday point to them as an example of someone who became a success with no training because it's not documented in Wikipedia. One way? I never said that. Hell, I didn't take one way to get to the state I am, however limited that may be. I've talked to editors and agents. I've attended workshops and hung out with successful authors. I spent six years as a member of the RWA (fun being the only male in a roomful of women thinking about romance) talking about writing and what makes it work. What I'm pointing out is that you are not going to learn what publishers are looking for, with any certainty, if you ask people who haven't been able to sell their own work. Something like Bickham's Scene and Structure is free in most public libraries. It makes no grand pronouncements that you must do this and not do that, it analyzes what storytelling for the printed word is today, and why. It gives insight into the process and evolution of the concepts and techniques. It lays out the available tools and their function. And it does that for one reason: so as a pathfinder you're not cutting a trail through someone else's woodlot crying, "I was here first. I am the great innovator!" Not taking advantage of that, given that even paying for a book or two on the subject costs less than a Saturday night out with a date, would seem rather foolish, because you can choose not to use any given tool, but you can't use the tool you're unaware exists. How many people here, labor daily on writing without knowing that a scene in fiction is something very different from one in film or stage? And that's so basic you cannot write a scene that works without realizing it, any more than you can fail to answer the three questions a reader needs answered quickly and expect them to have context for the action in progress. One of the reasons I closed my manuscript critique service was because I got the same thing, over and over, from people who weren't even aware that there were differing compositional skills available. The words of the story changed. The plot changed. But the approach was, in over 95% of what I saw, was written in the style of a twelfth grade English homework assignment because that was all the writer knew. These were sincere, nice people, who honestly believed that they had learned all they needed to know about how to write in school, and had learned how to construct fiction by reading for pleasure. After a while it became torture to plow through it, writing the same comments I'd made in the last ten manuscripts, so in the interest of sanity I closed down. They weren't paying me enough to keep on.
Nobody's forcing university students to take creative writing courses. Granted, students aren't always there for the right reasons (i.e., they want an "easy A"), but taking these courses is certainly not a requirement. I'll leave it at that.
Actually, I did not say that he took no steps, I said he did not study creative writing or take writing courses (come to think of it, I didn't actually say that, either, but I did imply it). I have read everything that Michener wrote about the craft of writing, including Literary Reflections, My Lost Mexico and his memoir, The World is My Home. In this last, in the chapter entitled "Writing", he describes a terrifying night landing on the island of Espiritu Santo during the war and the decisions he came to afterward. One of those decisions was to begin writing about greatness, which led him to his first published work, Tales of the South Pacific, which won the Pulitzer Prize. In his various writings, he advocated being as widely read as possible and to study works of literary criticism, as I have already mentioned. He also mentioned some specific novels as excellent examples of specific aspects of writing. So you agree that one need not study the techniques of writing through "how to" books? That a comprehensive study of literature and literary criticism is another viable course?
Jay, most of what you say makes sense, as in, I understand what it is your saying, whether or not I agree. I'm not not sure though, about the difference between creative writing and fiction writing, as you define it, or perhaps, as it is generally understood. I look at some creative writing programs offered by local universities, that have within them, fiction writing series. You see my confusion; I feel like you are advocating the same thing that you are discouraging.
I can't. There are no "how to books." With a how to book on cooking you follow the directions and get a pot roast. With a how to book on carpentry you follow the directions and get a birdhouse. But books on writing do not provide recipies or rules. None of them say, "Do exactly this and you'll be a competent writer. They talk about structure and technique. They talk about what POV is, something that not even one in ten hopeful writers understand. They think POV refers to which personal pronouns you use. They think the character you talk about is the POV character. And until they learn better, and understand how POV shapes the story for a reader they are not going to turn out readable prose, from an acquiring editor's point of view.
I can't speak for every CW course, but the ones I know about follow the same general format. The textbook used is matched to the course, and so talks about fiction, poetry, and all the variations that will be taught in one semester. The student reads the section on fiction and turns to the assignment, without teacher input and expansion of the textbook, which might be to write a story in third person, featuring so many characters, in such and such a setting, and... So in the end, what they learn is what they would have gotten by reading the textbook without having had to pay for the course. I don't know about anyone else, but I can read the text for myself. I expect the class to teach me what's not in the book. The first problem is that the book deals in generalities because the students are getting the flavor of fiction not being trained in how to write fiction professionally. The students then critique each other's manuscripts. But there are many students and not a lot of time, so it's cursory, and the comments are made, "Of the top of their heads," by people who know no more about writing than the one who wrote the piece. Of what use is that? And even were the instructor of a mind to go into detail on things like POV there is not enough time to have every student participate and do meaningful instruction. Add to that the problem that many of the students are looking for an easy grade and have not the slightest interest in becoming a writer. The grading reflects that. They're graded, not on the quality of the writing, but on if the story has the required setting and number of characters, etc. Sincerity and cooperation, in other words, not if they can use the craft they've been given. A student taking a course that's part of learning to be a successful writer will have time to chew the meal thoroughly. There will be far deeper analysis, and a textbook that's more like the one Swain or Bickham would have used, one in which each aspect of the craft has its own chapter. In that class people learn to write, and will be graded on how well they perform. In a CW course no one ever tells the sudent they're writing a chronicle, and informing, not entertaining. There's simply not time to do that.
I've never heard of this before. At my university, it was only required if you were going the creative writing route. Regular English majors did not have to take it. I'm sure this is the case in many, if not most, universities. You may be talking about courses that fulfill the writing requirement; these courses usually involve writing a lot of essays; they do not have to be creative writing courses, however.
Really? That's the best you can do? Trying to deflect the flow of the discussion by challenging a term that most of us have been using since long before this thread began? I'm disappointed. I think you know that when I use the term "how-to", I am referring to the concept of directly teaching writing technique as opposed to observing multiple and contrasting techniques in literature and literary criticism. You may call it whatever you like, but at the end of the day you are only willing to admit one way for an aspiring writer to learn, despite your protestation to the contrary. And that strikes me as illogical. Next morning edit: I've said - more than once - that "how-to" books have their place in the education of the aspiring writer. But they are neither fully sufficient by themselves to educate such a writer nor absolutely necessary. One can - and should - read extensively in order to familiarize oneself with all the varieties and vagaries of creative fiction. Only by doing so can one come to understand the differences, similarities and essential natures of such fiction. And the aspiring writer gains a much wider world view while seeing in operation the very concepts that the best of the how-to writers are seeking to impart. I think I'll call it the Michener Method.
No, I'm correcting a term that's semantically weighted to give the impression that books on writing technique advocate rules, formulas, and a cookie-cutter approach, when it's just the opposite. Why would you assume I can read your mind? When you give your words to someone else, you, your intent, and everything about you become irrelevant. It's what the reader takes them to mean. I don't know what you mean by this. If you mean learn the process by reading the product of multiple writers, that, demonstrably doesn't work. We all read, and in spite of that not one in ten can tell you what's different about the first paragraph of half the fiction we read. And if they don't see that they sure as hell won't see the underlying structure, or learn the ten "commandments" you'll find at the bottom of this article. In the case of "how to book," the average new writer takes that term to mean precisely what it says, a book filled with rules and specific instructions. In proof I offer the number of times you'll see, on this and the other writers sites, people railing against the "rules." Yet no one who's read one of the various books on the subject would make that statement because one of the very first things such a book says is that there are no hard and fact rules (except perhaps not to begin a sentence with a comma). You have it backward. I'm about avoiding the ways the writer will not learn: Guessing, and believing that people who have neither had success as a writer or done anything but talk to people as ignorant as themselves about it, can teach them anything but how to be just as unsuccessful. Personally, it doesn't matter to me if a given person chooses to wing it. It doesn't hurt me, and saves a spot on the shelf for someone who'll work to earn it. Is following the advice of an honored college professor the only way? No. Is listening to people who regularly sold their work the only way? Of course not. But it sure beats the hell out of guessing. Maybe I'm biased. Maybe it confuses me when people reject the idea of learning what helped writers like Jim Butcher begin selling his work in his junior year at Oklahoma University (where Swain and Bickham taught), in favor of the kiddie techniques we learn in first grade. But in the end, suppose you're right. Assume I am biased and insisting that educating yourself in the craft of the writer is the only way. Do you know of another method that, demonstrably, works more quickly, or with greater certainty? Were you able to achieve sales via another method? Do you personally know people who have? Are you advocating that people new to writing refrain from researching what the pros say is necessary? I took the "Just do it," path. I'd written six unsold novels before a paid critique showed me that like every beginner everything I thought I knew about writing fiction was wrong. Certainly, all the reading I did hadn't changed that. And of course I sold my work only after I did that study. So my personal experience says that knowledge beats the hell out of guessing. At the moment I'm waiting, fingers crossed to see if my editor blesses my markups to the page proofs. As Falls an Angel will be my fourth novel, and I am absolutely certain that without the knowledge I got from the books, the mentoring, and the workshops, I would have sold absolutely nothing. I freely admit that I have no particular talent for writing fiction. So if such information can result in someone like me selling their work, it can work for anyone. Is it any wonder I feel so strongly? But yes, I'm only one. So maybe we should take a poll and see how many people who have read either Swain's Techniques of the Selling writer, Bickham's Scene and Structure (or 38 Mistakes), or Dixon's GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict, learned nothing useful from them. Thus far, it appears that the people most vociferously in opposition to acquiring a writers education are people who have neither cracked the cover of any of those books, attended a workshop, or been mentored by someone who is a professional fiction writer. Because it's my practice to look at the writing of the people recommending something I don't agree with, almost universally, the loudest of the detractors (and I am not pointing at you) are making exactly the same mistakes I did when I first began—the mistakes we all make. Sorry this is so long. What can I say. I write mostly novels so I can't say hello in less than ten thousand words.
Jay, you're going to have to accept one simple fact. A lot of the people you're arguing with DO think they have talent in writing. This is the heart of the difference between them and you . I commend you for your humility and your seriousness toward looking like a professional writer and impressing publishers. Look more carefully at your opponents arguments. They mention writers like James Joyce and Nabokov as if somehow those guys apply to them. At least one post on opposition to yours tried to distinguish between aiming for a Pulitzer vs aiming for best seller, as if those are viable actions for an amateur writer. The reality is when you're a nobody you should be doing anything and everything just to get in the door. Worry about the Pulitzer when you can afford to. Unfortunately, many people don't see reality. They suffer from the understandable notion that somehow they are special, that they can do things differently.
So we should aim low because we may never win the Pulitzer or be a master prose stylist like Nabokov? Nonsense. And no one said anything about already having that sort of writing talent. What we're discussing here is how one develops that talent in the first place.
Now you have it backwards. You are assuming that the criticism so often leveled against such books is in fact the definition of such works. I just think it odd that you would wait until now, after the topic (and the term) have been bandied about incessantly, to suddenly take issue with it. I didn't. I assumed you were paying at least as much attention to what I was saying as to how I was saying it. My mistake. If someone were to ask me to define in a single sentence the essential difference between you and me, it is your proclivity to see everything (at least when it comes to writing) as one-dimensional, all or nothing. As a matter of fact, it must work at least for some, because the craft of writing fiction existed long before books purporting to describe how to write it. What you really mean (judging by your additional comments) is that it doesn't work for you. And that's fine. You've been through your process and you like your results. That's cool. But given what you've posted elsewhere about why you write and the kinds of things you like to write, I don't think it would work for me. And, in fact, given the road that I've traveled to get where I am now, I am satisfied that my method works for me. I'd like for you to be able to accept that, but apparently you can't. I'll go further than that - a lot of them treat what they read in such books as rules, and if you peruse this site you'll find questions based on them. It is this tendency that makes me hesitate in recommending any such books and prefer my method. And who, exactly, has been advocating that? Certainly not me. Absolute straw man. No one here is advocating that. No one. And you know it. Why you insist on repeating it is beyond me. I don't happen to think any one method works with certainty. You yourself have said that just learning technique is no guarantee of success, and I agree with that. I'm not done, yet. I'll let you know. As the lawyers like to say, the question has been asked and answered. But I'll say it again, just to be nice. I am advocating that people new to writing acquaint themselves with quality writing across several genres so that they can become fully acquainted with not only the techniques of writing, but the wide variety of stories that can be told, and that they augment this with readings of literary criticism. I'm advocating the same method that was advocated by a writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in his first published work, who saw that work adapted to a smash hit musical and a successful film, who published scores of novels, four of which were made into films and two into TV miniseries, and who wrote nonfiction that ran the gamut from Kent State to the Electoral College to the craft of writing. It's a method that allows for varying definitions of success and varying goals in the kinds of work one wants to publish. It's hard work but, even if one turns out not to have what it takes to be a writer, it will still leave one greatly enriched.
FWIW, I've recently read Scene and Structure and am about 2/3 of the way through the Swain text and have found both useful. I can't for the life of me, understand the consternation surrounding these books. Maybe I missed it, but, I would pay much more attention to anyone who said, yeh I read them and have found them to be of no use because... or, watch out for... that's not exactly right... or some such thing. Instead, now when I read a book, I say, oh my gosh there's the start of the sequel, hey, there's a bit of internalization, those keywords make it obvious whose point of view we're in, or dozens of other small, but not so trivial facts. I know all you guys are way smart, but this is stuff I didn't know, and I like it that I can see it now. Perhaps I'll never be able to write it, but at least I see some of it.
I'm starting to wonder in these books aren't a little like a well thumbed Penthouse or Hustler, some proudly admit to "reading" them, while others hide them under their mattress, only to be seen once the house goes quiet. Edit: @EdFromNY, I wonder, if just maybe, this guy didn't also have a little teeny peek into a How-To book or two, without mentioning it to anyone on his bio, after all, it's not savory of character to have to admit to a literary crowd of such recklessness.
From the introduction to Literary Reflections by James A. Michener (1993): So, while you may wonder, I do not. Moreover, Michener's description of his process brings to light something else to be considered: what guarantee do any of us have that any writer, no matter how respectable and respected, will capture the key elements that will do so much to enhance our own individual styles? @JayG's oft-repeated maxim, "our job is to entertain, not to inform" is, in my view, extremely limiting and very wrong-headed. When I read, not only do I seek to be entertained and informed, but maybe also inspired...awed...moved...(add any other appropriate verb of your choice). If the expert I am consulting believes as Jay does, his advice isn't going to be very helpful to me. It's the same thing that requires me, when doing research, to consult primary rather than secondary sources. At the end of the day, the writer of an instructional work on fiction, no matter how worded or structured, is a secondary source.
@jannert - Actually, I have to do so in my work. I work for the federal government and often have to do write-ups on tax law, which have to be based on code, regulations, cases and rulings.
I write historically-set fiction, and anything that comes from my chosen period, newspapers, diaries, etc, provide an insight that just doesn't happen when you read books ABOUT that period. For example, newspapers on microfilm or digitised online give an idea of the common perceptions of the day, what things were called as opposed to what we call them now, etc. Personal letters to family and friends give a great overview of how people spoke to each other—assuming a bit of 'letter formality' of course. Textbooks of the day, instructional books etc, all give a flavour of the period (in my case, the late 19th century) which is missing from the overview books written by scholars, which are written to prove a theory or tie together various elements of the period. And then there are things like railroad timetables, cookery books, mail-order catalogues from the period (FABULOUS insight into daily life, prices, etc.) Maps. Photos. Endless fun and fodder for a writer. I suppose the further back in history you go, the harder it will be to find this kind of source material. But hey, if you've got it ...use it. I can read hundreds of books on the American cowboy life, but nothing BRINGS it to life like the writings of Charlie Russell, or Teddy Blue Abbot and others who were cowboys. Just ace...
@EdFromNY @thirdwind If you actually glimpse through some of these how to books you'll find even those writers explicitly state that the most important thing an aspiring writer can do is read/study the greats. That is probably where you develop/hone talent (to respond to your post, Thirdwind). Ultimately the proof is in the pudding. If you're years and years in writing with no success, it's time to reevaluate your efforts.
