Hey kid, you can’t learn this in school! (Best read in a film noir voice, circa 1946-ish) This adage is used by some, maybe too many, writers when they talk about learning to write. Like that Somerset Maugham quote about how no one knows the rules of writing… ipso facto insert your latin here… so nobody can teach it. Hogwash, balderdash, and horse feathers. Pardon the rough language.
I’ve taught many classes on design, illustration, and just plain old drawing. In my college illustration classes, I begin with the fundamentals of drawing: line, classical lighting, perspective, drawing the figure, etc. I had students in my class who already had a fine arts degree and came to my class to learn about illustration. At one class, I handed out a sheet about 2-point perspective. One of the students spoke up, saying that in four years of her university art degree no one had ever given her a hand out. I said, “well, they should of. There’s stuff to learn.”
In my last post, I talked about reading being my first teacher, and it was. But like studying great drawings or paintings, you don’t necessarily learn to draw by simple observation (or in the case of writing, reading great books.) This can be argued. I don’t care. Like I told that student, there’s stuff to learn.
I’ll cover craft books in another post, but here I want to talk about writing courses. Certainly, not all are created equal. I had a good start with a prof in a college class—interestingly, this was the same prof that taught the literature class that I mentioned last time. Hey, small college. I took his creative fiction course and dove into the first assignment… poetry. Ugh. I sucked, and I knew I would. But what I carried with me from that early instruction was to be specific and particular (wait, are those the same thing?) When choosing something to write about, he told us, don’t use the abstract to describe things—big concepts like happiness, loneliness, fear, or even death, contain nothing tangible that the reader can grab onto or experience. I still think about this when I write now. It’s a version of Chekov’s, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” BTW, this quote (which is questionable if Chekov ever said it) has been used to defend the overused and misunderstood adage “Show don’t tell.” I did a bit of digging and saw this quote was a paraphrase he wrote in a letter to his brother.
“In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”
For me, this better explains what I’m getting at.. seizing on the small, specific details.
Fast forward a number of years, and two decades of being an illustrator, and I began to really want to learn how to write. What rules were the equivalent of 2-point perspective for the writer? I can’t recall the year, but a number of respected online schools and courses had begun to emerge. I landed on a school called The Gotham Writer’s Workshop. I decided to try them out for a few different reasons:
I’d seen a book they put out on writing craft, so they seemed legit.
They were out of New York– the centre of publishing, and home to approximately 5 million writers.
Their name was GOTHAM! I mean, how cool was that?
I enrolled in an intro class, maybe 12 weeks long, which consisted of written lectures and assignments. Each of the lectures focused on a different craft subject. At this point, I had been fumbling along, re-writing my first novel numerous times, without really knowing what I was doing. I’m not sure why none of my high school English teachers talked about this stuff, or not even the college guy I liked—but when I first read a lecture on Point of View (POV), and then one on Dialogue, and then Scene versus Summary… well, MY MIND WAS BLOWN! Why didn’t I know this stuff? Why had no one ever given me a handout on this?!!!
I know writers read this substack, so maybe I was more unschooled than most. But I drank this craft water up like I’d just crossed the Sahara and found the sweetest oasis with an extra camel for everyone. The Gotham exercises had us put this new learning into practice, which we posted online for both the other students and the instructor to comment on. On that note, I will say that this was my first writer’s group, and I learned right away that not everyone is good at analyzing. The instructor’s feedback was extremely valuable, so much that I hesitate now to take courses that only offer other student feedback.
Some of the exercises I recall were particularly good. Write a story in first person, and then write the exact same story in third-person (limited). Observe the differences. Or write a story using the past tense, then write the same story using present tense. Observe. A big one for me was learning the difference between scene and summary. We wrote a short exercise using only scene, without drifting into any narrative summary at all. Try it… it’s damn hard. I was amazed at the energy shift that happened within the stories when the POV lens changed, or when all traces of summary were gone.
Fast forward some more years to when I started to publish my first stories, some which grew out of these exercises at Gotham. I continued to take courses, including a Master Class at Gotham. I still take classes, or I guess more accurately, worshops now. Some of the best ones have been put on by the magazine One Story. I’ve collected a lot of rejections from this mag, but I really respect what they are about, and the quality of fiction in their magazine is stellar. My one criticism of those workshops is that there’s no direct instructor feedback. But many of the writers who participate are experienced, so that makes up for it, almost.
To return to what I mentioned about not everyone being great at analyzing fiction. I’ve found that some writers who I admire are not equally skilled at giving constructive feedback. I adore the work of the Canadian Writer Guy Vanderhaeghe, who has won some of Canada’s top awards, some of them numerous times. I was lucky enough to start an email correspondence with him a number of years ago. Though some sleuthing, and an acquaintance with a college roommate of his, I scored his email and boldly sent him a story. To my surprise and delight, he read it and responded. His feedback was pretty general, pointed out a couple of things, but not in a way that I could really apply them. He did say one thing, “Well, you sure can write.” I still go back to that quote when I’m feeling low about my work.
I think I’m actually pretty good at studying and analyzing fiction. Perhaps it’s the teacher in me. I’m often asked to read other’s work. I try to be clear, and even bold (without being destructive), in my feedback. Often, I learn a lot about my own work by analyzing others. Snippets of past lessons come back to me when I’m analyzing these stories and novels. Like the idea of camera distance and POV. Or the overuse of narrative summary and how it deadens the pace of a story. The last story I analyzed I talked to that writer about clarity… and I realize now, I was calling back to those first lessons on being specific.
Don’t write that the guy drove a car… write that he’s driving a 1975 Ford LTD the colour of a freshly cut lawn.
I’ll leave it there. But yeah, I think you can teach this stuff—and you can learn it, too. There’s a dream workshop that I would love to go to, with George Saunders, on the island of Crete (or some fancy expensive place, I forget.) Really, I’d take a course with Saunders if he taught out of a basement ref’s room in the ice hockey rink. Because, I’m still learning.
Shoot me your thoughts on this - either here, or on the old twitter box. Have you taken (or taught) a course that changed the way you write? Tell me about it.
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Many years ago, when I decided to write seriously (instead of just plodding!) I took a one year evening class. Techniques must have been taught, but I don't remember. What it did for me was force me to write a lot, and I mean an awful lot, in a very short time, with assignments due from one week to the next, and teachers' reviews. I learned to write fast and not overthink. That's good training. Then life happened and my good resolutions vanished for many years. Ten years ago, I set my mind to it again in earnest. Covid made me take classes again - no travel, might as well learn something! I took 2 classes with One Story - good basics - and one with Carve - deeper dive. Everything I wrote for these classes has been published, so yes, something good came of it, no doubt.