Yet somehow, everyone who writes a report or essay uses the same compositional techniques we learned in our basic education. no way in hell you can get by without using punctuation, grammar, and the approach we were taught, because the reader expects to find it written in a way that matches their trained expectations. To assume that you can go from the general skills we learn in school to professional knowledge without any additional study; to assume that the compositional tricks we learned in our schooling are all there is; to assume that by reading a novel we will be able to intuit the paragraphs deleted by an editor and the rewrites that were deemed necessary; to assume that an editor has no expectations or no-no areas that a writer must be aware of, pretty well dooms the one who believes that to amateur status. Did the math classes we took in high school make us Mathematicians? Could we, without study become one? Hell no. How about Historian? Again no. We come out of our primary education knowing math, history, how to write, and a host of other general skills. But adding that capital W on the front of "writer" doesn't come free, any more than does the title Engineer, Doctor of Medicine, Plumber, or any other profession. All sculptors use the same tool set, and select those they need in a given situation based on acquired professional knowledge, not guesswork. As far as writing is concerned we graduate knowing how to use a hammer. And that's it because that's what employers need us to know. We can use big ones, little ones, and all sizes between. A lot of good that does us when we try to build something that requires a type of tool we don't know exists. And without that knowledge we'll use that hammer, in the way we were trained to use it, and then wonder why it doesn't work the way we hoped it would. Education gives us options. It widens our horizon. And, it stops everything from looking like a nail.
Sigh. No one is disputing that we have to educate ourselves in our craft, Jay. No one. What is being disputed is the idea that there is only One True Way to that education. Good grief...
@JayG, comparing creative writing to math or engineering isn't a good comparison. All a writer needs is an understanding of grammar, spelling, etc. Anything after that is where the creative part comes in. For example, there are millions of ways to write a good scene. On the other hand, in math, there are only a few ways to solve a problem (sometimes there's only one), so learning two or three approaches to solving problems makes sense in this context. Perhaps it's time to rethink your analogies.
One thing I'd like to add to this: Not only is there no One True Way, but constantly insisting that Dwight Swain and Jack Bickham (has anybody ever read, or even heard of, any actual novels either of these guys wrote?) are the high priests of the One True Way is misleading. Most of my favorite novels were written before the 1960s. I love Hemingway, Steinbeck, Conrad, Kipling, Joyce, Wolfe, and others. All wrote their stuff before Swain and Bickham wrote their how-to books. So much of what I think is wrong with most fiction today seems to have begun since the sixties. Could it be that Swain and Bickham have contributed to the destruction of literature? (I'm joking, of course, but kinda not ...)
To answer question number one, I have not and neither has my girlfriend or anyone else I have asked. To answer the second question, I don't think they have directly, but these "methods" and "rules" definitely lead to what I have called time and again "cookie-cutter syndrome." Hell, when I go in the bookstore these days, there's some authors like Patterson and Pinter that I can't tell their work apart. It all reads the same, has the same voice, paragraph structure, and so on - hence cookie-cutter. As an aside, I generally put these books down before I have eve finished one chapter. And that's being polite compared to my girl who calls them "garbage fiction" and thinks they re basically something that is only meant to be read while waiting on the dryer to buzz at the laundromat.
That might count if it was just their personal philosophy. But you're trying to paint Jack Bickham, a man who taught professional fiction writing at a university for twenty-one years, in addition to writing and selling seventy five novels, with that brush. You think the professors at the local university are relating their own personal views? You're including Dwight Swain, another teacher, a man who, when he went on tour with his workshops, used to fill auditoriums, and who has many giving him credit for their careers. There's Sol Stein, who was successful as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, editor, and publisher. And all of them in agreement on the basics of POV, what matters in a scene, and pretty much everything else. Any argument that accuses them of simply giving opinion is specious. And that has what to do with a reader enjoying the writing? Does it mean that your stories, uniquely, will be pleasing no matter how you write, because you're sincere and personally enjoy the way it reads? I absolutely agree that you can write in any fashion you care to...until you hand your work to someone else. Then, you and everything about you becomes irrelevant. The reader, using expectations developed by years of reading professional quality writing will make their own judgement without you there to ask about things they don't "get." If ywe write to please ourself we have the most lenient of critics. We're also abrogating our responsibility to take the reader's needs into account. When you read your own work it's a graphic novel, because the images live in your head and need only to be called up to complement the words. But as everyone knows my head is empty, so unless you somehow provide those images all that I have is words without context.
You're making the erroneous assumption that they invented the techniques they teach, and that everyone else slavishly adapted their methods, without having the brains to see what you do. Swain, building on the work of those who went before simply analyzed the writing of people like "Hemingway, Steinbeck, Conrad, Kipling, Joyce, Wolfe, and others" to see what made them work, and stated that in a straightforward understandable way. You can see motivation/response units, scene-goals and all the other elements the teachers point out in the work of your favorites. You do not see them in the vast majority of the work posted in most writing websites. It's not because they're deemed unnecessary by new writers, it's because until it's pointed out you won't know they exist and what they can do for you. A simple thing like a scene goal is an absolute necessity if the reader is to recognize tension when it enters the scene, and react as the protagonist does, as against being informed that the protagonist reacted by a disembodied voice. And unless the reader shares the experience with the protagonist you've deprived that reader of their reason for reading. You're informing instead of entertaining. The things I'm talking about aren't the nuances of making a story publishable, but the very basics of telling a story via the printed word. Objecting to learning the structure of a novel is like demanding to be able to write without the annoyance of learning grammar and punctuation.
So why not just eliminate the middleman and go straight to the source? When you read Swain and Bickham, all you're reading is their analysis of Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc. and what they think worked. A writer should be forming his own opinions and coming up with his own analysis.
What they think worked. You figure that university professors just guess at what works? If you tried to learn engineering (substitute the name of any profession you care to in place of engineering) in the way you think people should learn to write fiction for the printed word you might find it hard to find employment. I know it's kind of a conversation killer to point out what the textbooks say, but that is sort of the baseline, and an actual example of something that works that we can compare the results of other methods to. I'm kind of a stickler for results and concrete examples.
I keep hearing that Swain, Bickham, whoever sold 75 novels and taught all these workshops, but why is it that neither I nor anyone I know has ever heard of them or their novels? (As an aside, Scene and Structure is going for between $0.01 and $2.00 on Amazon with over 100 people getting rid of it... hmmmm...) It means exactly what it means: I couldn't give two shits what those in corporate publishing firms are looking for in writing. Even if I had a Pulitzer prize winning, guaranteed NY Times bestseller sitting on my desk, printed and ready to go, I wouldn't sell it to a publisher. To me, it's what you would refer to as "selling out," and borderline prostitution. I mean, why on Earth would I want to take one of my stories and hand it over to be butchered by the editor at some big time publisher, just because I might make a few bucks? Why would I stifle my creativity and message because they think it might be offensive or lessen sales? It doesn't make sense.
Again, you're comparing creative writing to things like engineering, which I maintain is a poor comparison. Sure, you can come up with creative ways to solve an engineering problem, but you're limited by the laws of physics. The rules of language, on the other hand, are not so rigid. Writers are constantly coming up with new ways to use language. In fact, a writer can break the traditional rules of grammar and still write a great book. Here's a passage from Nabokov's Lolita. You tell me if this type of writing can be learned from any textbook.
To the OP, @Alesia, the important thing to remember is balance. It is imperative that you trust your reader, lest you over-explain, over-detail, and oversimplify. However, don't give them so much credit as to think they think like you. As others have said, "needle" alone has no context in which to imply drugs, but neither does "syringe" in my opinion. I might have said "used needle." But as a reader who usually doesn't think of drugs, I would need something more concrete to get your meaning. Someone with experience in the drug world might jump there. The thing about readers is that you cannot trust them to be the same or think the same. As was pointed out, many readers look for different things to satisfy them. However, what no reader likes is to feel like they've missed something. Your example is simple enough that if you had mentioned narcotics shortly after this piece (or before) a reader could make the connection. However, you should never let your trust of the readers limit your choice to use more precise vocabulary. Syringe is closer to what you mean, so it's a better fit. The point to writing is to be clear about conveying your meaning, not what the reader expects you to mean. You have to give them their expectations via your context and your setting and so on, thereby promising them certain information that you've set yourself up to give. And so what if they have to look up a few words while reading your stuff. Good for you and them! Reading should challenge the brain a little bit. You should be able to learn something like new vocabulary; otherwise, you need to check your reading level. Regarding the discussion of how to learn. @JayG. has made a lot of good points during his time here, as well as a lot of uncertain assumptions, and @minstrel, @thirdwind and the others are right as well. What is the "proper way" to learn to write fiction? Simply reading a lot of good fiction will help a lot. Joining writing groups and forums with more experienced writers will help too. Taking classes, and reading books and articles about writing fiction are great (and in my opinion imperative). The fact is one needs an education in writing fiction; however, one needs an education in a way that they learn. Personalized learning is very effective, and for something like creative writing, Tailoring one's education to one's learning style can yield great results. The only way any method will fail is if the new writer refuses to accept anything that contradicts them. "It is hard to fill a cup which is already full," as was said in James Cameron's Avatar. With a humble, and hungry attitude, you can learn through more than one method. The key is to realize that there are sources of information that you need in order to improve. Techniques of the "selling" author may not be what everyone is looking for. I'm not out to be commercialized. I just want to complete a work of art to the best of my ability so that, one day, if someone reads it somewhere, I can say to myself, "I did that and I'm proud." OSHO, who wasn't a writer but a spiritual teacher, said that we should be creative for the sake of being creative. Chasing ambition opens the door to disappointment and shallowed creativity. We should create to fulfill ourselves, and if success or fame come, then good. If they do not, it is also good. Whatever your purpose for writing, you must know why you write. That may help you to learn how you should write.
@Alesia you should settle on one avatar. I keep wondering who the new kid on the block is. I never studied literature much while at school, opting instead for engineering and math. In an effort to catch up a little, I recently listened to a series of lectures on the English novel through The Teaching Company. The lectures start at Pamela by Samuel Richardson (1740), which academics suggest is the first true novel and ends with the Modernist's, the last in the series being Wolfe. The lectures don't obviate the need to actually read all the great fiction English fiction, but rather tries to hit on the highlights of the earlier major players and their greatest novels, while tying together the various forms. Who did what and when. Who was influenced by who, what and why. That sort of thing. Even if the lectures continued with writers into the late 20th century, I doubt the narrator would have touched on Swain or Bickman. I'm guessing that's pretty obvious even if they did publish a few books. I try and mix my reading between classics and literary novels and commercial fiction. I'm might even pick up a romance one day as long as I know no one is going to see me. I'll tell you though, to me, and maybe I'm not educated enough to see the nuances of it all, but having read those two dumb books (Swain and Bickman), I see at lease some structure in all those categories of books that used to elude me. So my hat goes off to those of you who get it without having to have the obvious pointed out to them. But for my meager self, I find @JayG's method of inculcating his beliefs to be of value. As I find those who insist other techniques to be of value, of value. Thinking back to the OPs original question: what do actual users call their syringes? I heard an addict being interviewed on CBC a while ago and he referred to it as his rig.
Depends on where you are and who you're talking to. I've heard "rig" before, but me and my crew always just said "where's my needle?" except for one really paranoid Mexican guy who would ask if he could "borrow a pencil" which basically meant, "let me bum a needle off you."
And your ignorance in some way relates to their teaching writing at Oklahoma University? Yet you believe your opinions on how to write are relevant to people who would like to do more than write for their own pleasure. I submit that if you truly didn't care you wouldn't post your writing for others to read. Nor would you ask people for their opinion on them. Seems to me that writing for your own pleasure, and then pleasuring yourself in public is not a lot different. Simple fact is that there is an unwritten but valid contract between reader and writer. They give us of their time and we make that time worthwhile. And we don't do that by saying, "I don't give a damn if people like or hate my writing, I just write for myself...and then inflict it on others. Roseanne Cash pretty well answered that with, “Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.” But I think Isaac Asimov put it better with, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ ” You can write anything you care to. You can hold and express any views you care to. But you do not have the right to disparage those who do care for pleasing their readers, and those who wish to work in the profession, as if you're in some way morally superior. Nor do you have the right to belittle the educational establishment simply because you choose to remain ignorant.
Although I agree with what you say - to a point Jay G, I can also find holes in it. Craft can become template. Your book can become a Mad Libs fill in the blank form. Case in point on another thread someone brought up the Image Dictionary where there slogan is - Your book is a puzzle we fill in the pieces - say huh? For me a writer is a more than a story teller, he/she's part artist and in order to be a true artist you need to find your own form, your own vision. Part of your learning also comes when you can also abandon form. Be flexible and daring. As for Ignorance vs Knowledge. Knowledge is always changing whose to say what is written in blood? Centuries ago a man headed off to prove the world was round. I would rather be a writer who thinks like Columbus.
Heh. Homie's using the italics on the "not" here. Shit just got real son. You do NOT have the right, understand here, NOT! As in, you know like when you have a right to do something, like, you know, sleep and eat, shower, shit and shave; well you can shit and shower and shave all you want, even at the same time if you wish because you got that right. You have the right to shower your body, shave your face and shit your pants but you do not have the right to disparage those who do care for pleasing their readers and those whom wish to work in the profession as if you're in some way morally superior! Now you sit there and you think about that and get your priorities straight pal because you're shooting blanks right now. Oh and just so we're clear... you know how, in the paragraph above, I clarified that you don't have that right? Well, you don't. M'kay. Not one bit. Don't. As in the antonym of 'do'. The negative of it. Meaning the opposite thing. Don't. Do not. Do not. So, there's that.
As someone who worked in engineering for forty years, I can tell you from direct experience that you're dead wrong. Engineers solve problems. We're often called on to do things that no one on earth has ever successfully done before. In programming everyone learns the same skills in using a given language, but what they do with those tools literally changes lives. They not only have and use creativity, it's what we hire them for. Everyone who designs aircraft studies aeronautical engineering in some form or another. You think it doesn't take creativity to design a plane, or a car, or anything else? The idea that somehow, we, who went through school with thousands of others; who watch the same entertainment; who read the same books; who have the same desires and needs as everyone else, are somehow magically endowed with the ability to "create" with more skill than all of the others is unsupportable, if for no other reason than that if it worked you would already be a success. No profession just comes to us. The number of people who leave high school knowing how a scene on the page differs from one in film and on stage is small enouth to be statistically irrelevant. The number who leave high school ignorant of the fact that the only storytelling skills we know are verbal in nature and part of a performance art that is impossible to record via words on a page is about the same. Half or more of the novels we pick up have something different about the first paragraph of every chapter. We see it every time we read a book printed in that style. But ask ten people to tell you what it it and damn few can without looking. And that's something so obvious it's right in front of us. How in the hell can we intuit the important things when we don't see the obvious. Well, let's see... He was the son of a journalist. You don't think his father taught him anything about how to write clearly and with flair? And his job as Wellesley was resident lecturer in comparative literature. You figure he was hired by a university without have had training and study in that field? Lolita was written many years after he began teaching. So the answer is, hell yes it can be learned. And he serves as an example of why it's necessary.
Those things do take creativity, but again, you're restricted by certain rules. You don't have that level of restriction in creative writing. This implies that there are only a few things we should be looking for. The beauty of literature is that we can all read one piece and interpret it in different ways. That in turn affects how we write. If we all studied writing through the eyes of one teacher, our writing would probably end up looking the same. This kind of proves my point. He studied and taught literature. Which is exactly what I'm advocating. Also, you keep bringing up journalism, and while I agree that it can help a little, creative writing is a different beast. Creative writers don't usually employ a journalistic writing style. By the way, there are a lot of writers who don't come from writing backgrounds and are still very good writers. A lot of sci-fi writers, for example, are/were scientists. So it's definitely not necessary to have any formal education in English, literature, or creative writing.
I think the farther along you are, the more you can trust your readers, because they trust you more. Anyway, with regards to the off-topic slam down (you can tell things are getting heated when writers break out the bold and italics): Cartoonists have stylized ways of representing characters; they might make one really tall because he is an authority figure, or give one narrow eyes because he's shrewd. I think the better cartoonists know full well how to draw an anatomically correct figure. They learned that stuff then stepped out and personalize their work. I wouldn't read about scene and structure so that I could emulate it, I would read about it so that I understand it and know when I'm making something unique. We don't learn about other cultures or history just so we can do what they do/did, we study them because there is always something to be learned. Writers are avid readers; basically Cookie Monsters but with words. Why would they refuse to analyze different perspectives on their craft?
Not just mine, about twenty people, three of which work in the publishing/book distribution industry. They may have been good teachers, but tht has no relevance to me since I did not attend college at OK university, and I didn't care much for their "how to write fiction in ten easy steps!" manuals. Again I state, It's not about the goddamn publishers. When you are going to self-publish a work, it helps to get ACTUAL READER feedback, not the opinions of a bunch of suits who work in an office and think they know my story better than I do. Completely taken out of context. I am a SELF-PUBLISHER. That means, I do not, nor will I ever sell my work to a commercial publishing house. Not only is it a personal choice, it is a political stand for me. I don't believe in large corporations, or big business of any kind. That goes back to watching my town end up in the dumpster after Sam Walton came rolling into town, not to mention their lack of paying employees a living wage, deplorable overseas factory conditions, and so on. If I can support the little guy, or do it on my own, I will. Simple fact is, I write for the reader. That is the difference between me and a commercial publisher. I don't give a rat's ass if I make so much as one dime off my manuscript. A publisher is out to make top dollar, and they only market stories with a premise they think might help them achieve that goal. That's how we end up with such poorly written works of fiction as 50 Shades Of Grey. That story wasn't chosen on the basis of craftsmanship - it was chosen on the premise that BDSM and XXX scenes sell books. I've done alot of research, and *GASP* taken creative writing and fiction writing, not once, but TWICE! Honestly, I got nothing from either of them other than the feeling that I was liquid metal being poured into a mold - their mold; a mold where my work was being judged not on the basis of creativity, but weather or not it fit their predetermined outline of how a fiction story should be written. God forbid you have the balls to break a rule. That's a big no-n0 right there. And you sir, on the same token have no right to berate people who choose to break free of the formal education system as being somehow ignorant. Just because you've managed to sell a work or two (oh my god, let me give you a pat on the back) doesn't make your advice the end all, be all of creative writing, nor does it make Swain, Bickham, or anyone else's word that you constantly parrot the absolute last word in writing fiction. There are many roads to knowledge. Which path a particular person chooses is up to them, and them alone.
As are writers. Punctuation and grammar for one. Fail to use them and the reader never gets past the second paragraph. You don't think you're using the compositional rules that were beaten into you over twelve years? It's all right to study those nonfiction techniques for twelve years? It's all right to demand that journalists learn more about their profession. But learning the compositional techniques for writing fiction for the page is unneeded? It would really be nice if we could just write what comes to us and be acclaimed for our brilliance. But have you not noticed that no one is offering you a contract? Nor are there any publishers hanging around this and the other online sites snatching up the wonderful writing. Were your method viable they would be here encouraging us to write that way and submit our work. Say what you care to. Advance any theories you please. But until it works for you, you cannot recommend it to others as a method of learning how to write on a professional level. What I'm suggesting—looking at what the pros have to say—demonstrably works, even for someone with as little talent as me. And for many years I've gotten several letters per years from someone who, as a result of my suggestions has undertaken a study of writing craft and achieved publication. Can you point to people who have used your method, at your suggestion, and achieved publication as a result? No one requires you to do anything. And I'm certainly not trying to bully you into buying a copy of anyone's book. But I damn well have a right to complain when, after I suggest that learning craft helps, you tell people that getting an education isn't necessary, without providing a proven alternate. And saying that there are lots of people who did it that way doesn't count. If they follow my advice and look into craft a bit they have the option of ignoring what they learned. So they lose nothing if I, and the universities are wrong. If they pass up getting a bit of education based on your advice and you're wrong haven't you just killed a potential career? Well, since you take away the responsibility of the writer to say what they mean and mean what they say, here you are, the ultimate novel: Concise, accurate, and it allows the reader total freedom of creativity to take it any way they care to. It's not my work though. I copied it from Ronald McKinel's masterful collection of short stories, "My." I would have provided the entire thirty two chapters, but that would be greater than fair usage allows. Wake up. Writing brilliantly is your job. You are providing the reader with a self-guiding trail. You're lending them your imagination to help them play an adult game of Let's Pretend. The entire point of it is to entertain—as in, we entertain them, not rent them a room with pictures and graffiti on the wall where they can do as they please. And the only way we can do that is to begin by knowing what our target reader finds entertaining. Not what we enjoy, but what they expect and react to. And they do not teach us that in high school English classes or an undergrad CW course. Nonsense. You're assuming that all he did was to study literature, without any instruction on into how it was written and what the elements of a scene were. Assuming that he did it all himself, or that he was taught nothing, only told to read the work without discussion, is a specious argument because that's not how such courses are conducted. You cannot accept the fact that the man taught what you say one should learn to do without help and then use him as an example of how you're right. If he believed that teaching is unnecessary he would-not-have-been-a-teacher. You're making the completely unjustified assumption that they never read any books on writing, never talked with writers or editors, or were mentored. How in the hell would you know anything about the private life of such people? But forget that. Here's all that matters: Does it work for you? No comment of, "But I don't write for publication." No, "I will be published someday." Does it work for you? You didn't start writing yesterday or last year, so it either works or you have a date at which it should either have worked or you take another path. Is that five years? Ten? Where are you on that path? To be taken seriously, a technique has to work for the one giving the advice. The advice that you will hear in a commercial fiction writing course works for the students and the teachers. To be a viable alternate any other approach must have more going for it than a belief on the part of the one espousing it that it is viable. Can you show me one university where they teach writing by having the students do nothing but read and analyze fiction without mentoring or guided discussion? Because if you can't, you're saying that all the universities are wrong and you're right, even though it has not yet worked for you. And that's a faith based explanation.
I am not making that assumption. I know they didn't invent those techniques. I did notice, reading Swain's book, that the examples he quotes are not the writers I mentioned, but rather pulp hacks like Lester Dent and Carroll John Daly. Their techniques are fine for the kind of work they wrote, and for their audiences, but as I keep trying to tell you (and you keep missing), not all readers are the same, and they're not all looking for the same things when they read fiction. From what I've read of the list of writers I gave, Swain gave them little attention. Have you ever read East of Eden? The entire first chapter is a description of the Salinas Valley. No characters at all emerge until later chapters. Ever read A Farewell to Arms (surely one of the finest novels in 20th century American literature)? The first chapter and a half just sets the stage - we don't know where we are, what time we're in, or whose skin we're in. But the writing is beautiful, so people keep reading. Okay, first, informing and entertaining are not mutually exclusive. And the first sentence just quoted, that if I've done what you say the reader has no reason to read, is simply incorrect. Once again, you think all readers are the same and are looking for the same things from the books they read. This is not true. Fairy tales begin with "Once upon a time ..." and maintain a respectful distance between the reader (usually a child) and the protagonist - the farthest thing imaginable from free indirect style - yet the child is enthralled to the end ("and they lived happily ever after."). It is the imagination of the reader that connects him with the protagonist, not necessarily any given technique used by the writer. Give the reader credit. Look at my sig - I believe the statements I made there.
I have to say that, I have not read all these super long posts, but it is a fine line between making everything very simple and treating the reader like a child, and writing a book that the reader will understand and enjoy. The key, is to be consistent.
