Creative Writing Course – Week #9
Week 9 is the first week of the second term of my creative writing course. To recap, the three term course is split up like this; Term 1 – Chapter 1. Term 2 – Chapter 2. Term 3 – Chapter 3. Each chapter is worked on over a term and then handed in at the end, marked and then returned the following term.
So this week I got my first chapter back from the tutors, all marked and complete with editing suggestions. To cut to the chase – I got a 2:1. I'm quite happy with that, not sure what I was expecting really. In a way it's a bit of an odd experience to have a piece of creative writing marked so forensicly, but that's the nature of a course like this – there has to be some kind of benchmarking.
Once we'd all absorbed our grades and comments, the course re-started with a round-up of some of the things we needed to be aware of collectively. These were pitfalls some or all of us had made, aspects to look out for and improve on etc.
Clarity Of Meaning – Try to be simple, effective and direct in your writing. Regular use of a dictionary and thesaurus can help immensely.
Lack of Incident or Over-description – Avoid passages that don't inform the reader or move the plot on. Similarly, lingering over description can have the same effect of not progressing the narrative. Overly descriptive prose can cause the reader to skim read or skip sections of your writing. As readers, we've all done it.
Clichés – Try to avoid the use of clichés. Often these are down knowingly in the sense that it will be recognisable to the reader, but these should also be avoided. Over-used phrases and descriptions can betray a lack of imagination in a writer.
Stilted, Boring or Unrealistic Dialogue – If dialogue between characters reads badly to the reader, they won't believe in your characters, which will eject them straight out of the text. For writing set in a particular location, the dialogue has to befit the people speaking, so keeping it consistent to country/region/era/dialect is important.
Show Not Tell – Put your reader into the scene with the characters. Passing off great sections of action by informing instead of describing the acts is a good way to miss out on pulling the reader into your work.
Time to go and re-read my work for any signs of the above!
We had to hand in a first draft of chapter 2 for a look-over by the tutors. I'd written mine some time back, but I'm still unsure of the direction I want it to go in, or if I should switch chapter 3 into chapter 2. Hopefully comments back on it next week will help me decide. I'm temped to do the switch around so that I can show a constrast in two of the main characters, and also so that I can put on display another style of writing, to see what kind of reception it gets. We shall see.
As we'd all shared large chunks of our first chapters with each other in the class, we went around the room and discussed what we were intending to achieve in chapter 2. This type of discussion is almost like group therapy, your thoughts and motivations for writing shared with about 15 other people. It was also suggested that we hear some readings of our 2nd chapters next week too, so that should be interesting.
As for me, it's back to editing parts of chapter 1 and no doubt making changes to subsequent chapters.
