Creative Writing Course – Week #7
Week 7 is the penultimate class for this term, meaning the first chapter of our novels have to be submitted next week!
A segment of my opening chapter was read aloud to the class by the tutor this week, along with several other people's work. I felt it went down well, with a few helpful pointers given by the group, some of which I've incorporated into the passage. Everyone submitted their opening chapters last week for the tutor to read over and make suggestions, so we got them back this week with comments. More of that later.
Once we'd heard everyone's work and offered our opinions and constructive criticisms, we turned our attention to things to avoid when writing. This was in part to do with things the tutor had seen in our work. I'll briefly list them here:
Adverbs – Use adverbs sparingly. See what I did there? Words that end in 'ly' are adverbs, and make for lazy writing. Think of another way to make your point. They're not to be avoided entirely, but overuse is the mark of an amateur. I checked my work for them and I think I just about escape that pitfall!
Clarity – You need to ensure you don't lose your reader. If the reader has to drop out of the text to work out what you're trying to say, you've lost them for good. It's an easy mistake to make, for the writer always knows what he/she is trying to show, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the reader.
Location – This is especially important for the opening of a piece of work. Your reader has to have an impression of where your story is set, to give it a sense of place. This applies to country, region, town and right down to room level. If this can be dropped into the chapter at a very early stage – all the better.
Point of View – First Person, Second Person, or 3rd Person – these are the main forms stories are told in. Getting this right and consistently keeping it correct throughout a novel is often hard, but it's essential. I'm going for 3rd Person Omniscient for my novel. Must keep an eye on getting and keeping it right.
Natural Dialogue – Bad or unnatural dialogue will break the reality of a story for the reader, and it's strange how something we all engage in every day can be hard to perfect.
Repetition – Be careful not to overuse words in close proximity to each other. This can often be solved by reading the work aloud, but even then a writer might miss them. Best to get someone else to read through your work and highlight any issues. The only exception to this rule is when it's for a distinct stylistic purpose, but that should be obvious to the reader.
Back to the feedback on our work. About half a dozen of us had our work read out by the tutor, the rest had theirs read out in the previous week. There was some really good writing, a variety of styles and genres, and hearing them being read by the same voice was very useful.
We all offered our support and constructive criticisms, all of which was noted down by the authors for attention at a later date. One thing I noticed is that most of the points raised were often things that had gone totally unnoticed or not previously considered by the writer, myself included. Readers, or listeners in this instance, pick up on totally different strands of the writing than the writer will. They appreciate certain word usages and descriptions you hadn't given much thought to, all testament to how useful having a room full of people to listening to your work is.
Having read through the tutors comments on my work so far, I made a few amendments and took on board some of the issues he'd raised, all very useful. The hard part is carrying on in the same vein for the rest of the novel, but it's all good practice.
The tutor made the point about my work that the hitman/contract killer genre had been done to death and that editors/agents/publishers don't want to see them. This comment comes after the reading of my first chapter on its own, without any of the subsequent chapters. Firstly, I'm not concerned by this because ultimately the story is not about hitmen or contract killers. The tutor is not to know, of course, he's only read about 1,500 words. It's about an undercover policeman who plays both side of the game when working with drug dealers. OK, so I might be guilty of writing in another 'done to death' (pun alert) genre, but just not the one he thinks;)
At the end of the class, I realised I need a title for my novel. My plan was to write it and then come up with something fitting when I had more of a feel for the piece, but of course it has to have a title for the submission of the first chapter. I realise that the title is not totally binding at this point, in theory literally any title will do, it can be changed later, but I'm still pondering it. I have until next Wednesday to come up with something. I have a placeholder title at the moment, so I think I'll stick to that right now until I can think of something.
I'll let you know what I decide next week.
