eph's guide to creative writing |✎| lesson 1 up! (3/18)
Feb 15, 2017 10:39:17 GMT -5
perfectlypink♥ likes this
Post by eph 💕 on Feb 15, 2017 10:39:17 GMT -5
*3/18: Sorry about the walls of text! There's not much I can do about them for the moment.
**Loosely based off of Alice LaPlante’s “The Making of a Story”
An introduction
(ft. an explanation, some disclaimers, and a pep talk)
Hello! I’m Eph, the mind behind “The Absence of Rain.” If you didn’t already know, this year I entered college as an English major. As of January 2017 I’ve been taking an intermediate creative writing class at my university. It’s been a fantastic learning experience so far; as I’ve learned so much from this class, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned, no textbook required. For those of you who are curious, however, the text is the one mentioned above: Alice LaPlante’s The Making of a Story (its earlier edition, Method and Madness, also works). Disclaimer time: I don’t own the ideas that will be mentioned later in this thread. I may expand upon them or give examples from my own personal experience, but LaPlante is the one who masterminded it all. Check out her books sometime if you can.
I imagine that many of you who clicked on this thread are here to improve your writing. Let me just say a few things: first, you are not as bad a writer as you think. A lot of the time, we writers tend to put other writers on a pedestal. We think we’ll never be as good as Stephen King or Maggie Stiefvater or even Erin Hunter. The first thing to do right here, right now, is abandon your tendency to compare yourself to others. You’re here to improve your writing, not someone else’s. It’s good to aspire to write like a certain author, but if you take that mindset as far as wanting to write their stories, you’ve gone too far. Read a lot of books, yes. Take inspiration from them. But at the end of the day, your writing is yours alone, and this guide is meant to help you look objectively at your own work and determine your strengths and weaknesses. You’re not as bad as you think. But you’re also likely not as good as you think. Before you continue any further down this page, do your best to stifle your tendency to compare your work to others’. Don’t think of your writing as good or bad. It’s just words on a page, but it’s also your words on a page. There’s always room for improvement, and I hope you’ll find the road to that improvement here.
More reading??
(a note on creative writing, especially creative nonfiction)
Before we jump into the big stuff, I’d like to note something about creative writing. While fiction is, no doubt, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “creative writing,” keep in mind that the term applies to all manner of creative writing, fiction and creative nonfiction alike. As this is a fanfiction forum, many of you likely came here for fiction tips, but I must put in a shameless plug for creative nonfiction as well, especially memoir. You’ve probably heard to “write what you know,” and doing a bit of self-reflective memoir every now and then is a great way to dig a little deeper into your own self and find answers to problems you didn’t even see before. I only say this because I took a memoir class during the fall semester and came to a lot of good revelations about myself and about the world in general. It definitely allows for a fresh perspective when it comes to writing, so if you’ve never dabbled in creative nonfiction, give it a look sometime.
Contents
(the bare bones of it)
Here you’ll find the big concepts we’ll cover. This list is subject to grow and change over the course of the semester, as I learn more.
I. Our first job as writers: to notice
a. Creating a real world
II. Fools explain: unsolved mysteries
a. Don’t tell why something is, tell how it is
- The Rose Bush
III. Show and tell
a. Narration (telling) vs. Observation (showing)
b. Details as luggage
IV. Revision
a. What works? What doesn’t work?
b. Being able to change your draft
Lessons
(the good stuff)
Here the concepts introduced in the table of contents will be expanded upon.
So you want to write? Step one: Notice. Start by thinking of something you’ve noticed in the past twenty-four hours. It can be as big or small as you want. Here are some examples:
Notice how the above examples are simple observations made using the senses. There’s no explanation provided for why the road smells like fried chicken, for example, or why the first classmate is always late. It’s nothing but things you can pick up just by noticing. But these things can be very telling about people’s personalities, and readers can make inferences about your characters based on the details you choose to include about them. The way the world looks and smells and feels; how people dress or how they react to things: these are the little details, the everyday things, that you want to start picking up on as much as you can. Noticing is an invaluable skill for a writer.
Exercise 1: It’s Not (Technically) Stalking
Find a place where you can people-watch, preferably a place where people are stationary for at least a short period of time, such as a library or waiting room. Find a place to sit where you can observe someone else, preferably a stranger, from a short distance: don’t stare outright at them or give any indication of what you’re doing. Make notes (mentally or on paper) about the way they look, how they act, their expressions and reactions to things. If they’re talking to someone, how do they speak? Do they complain a lot? Is their voice nasally or deep? Do they keep sniffing, as if they have a cold or an allergy? Do your best to take note of these things. After a few minutes, you can move somewhere else and review your notes if you’d like.
Now, imagine this person is now a character in your story. You can give them a name if you like. Your assignment will be to insert this character into one of the following scenarios:
Imagine this person just received bad service at a restaurant. You can decide what constitutes “bad service:” burned food, rude waitress, etc. How do they react?
They just learned they got a bad grade on a paper. Are they upset? Do they try to argue their case with the teacher? What do they do?
After you’ve chosen your scenario, write for 15 minutes or as long as it takes for you to fill a single page of looseleaf. You may type your piece if you want, but I challenge you to change up how you usually write: if you usually write on paper, type; if you usually type, get out a pencil. The scene should be short but should have a main character, a conflict, and a resolution.
Exercise 2: Simply Notice
Take the idea from earlier in this lesson: notice. Go somewhere, preferably somewhere with people, where you can observe the world with as many senses as possible. Take note of everything you notice; don’t try to interpret or explain, just record. Try to pick up on the little things: the way people walk, how they react to things, the place and time of day. Write at least 150 words, including as much detail as you can. You may use first person, but only if you’re observing, not explaining.
The goal of these activities is to help you notice how the world works, the little things especially, since they so often go unnoticed. After all, it’s hard to write about the world without doing your best to capture it in its entirety. This is especially important when writing about people: about humans. We’re multifaceted. We do weird things sometimes when we think people aren’t looking. The goal here is to start to understand how things really are. You’ve probably heard the idea that fiction is based in reality. That’s what you’re trying to accomplish here. The real world doesn’t always seem believable--but in order for fictional worlds to work, they have to be even more real than reality, leaving no room for error. In writing, you’re creating a brand-new world. Thus, the first step: notice. Notice how this world works, how the people in it move and live and breathe. Then transplant that reality into yours. It’ll be all the more real for the little things.
FAQs
(ask an English major)
Got any writing-related questions that aren’t covered in the lessons? They’ll be answered here.
Q:
A:
Reading List
(check these out)
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Other Stuff
(in case I forget anything)
[WIP]
**Loosely based off of Alice LaPlante’s “The Making of a Story”
Though this be madness,
yet there is method in ’t.
—Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2)
An introduction
(ft. an explanation, some disclaimers, and a pep talk)
Hello! I’m Eph, the mind behind “The Absence of Rain.” If you didn’t already know, this year I entered college as an English major. As of January 2017 I’ve been taking an intermediate creative writing class at my university. It’s been a fantastic learning experience so far; as I’ve learned so much from this class, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned, no textbook required. For those of you who are curious, however, the text is the one mentioned above: Alice LaPlante’s The Making of a Story (its earlier edition, Method and Madness, also works). Disclaimer time: I don’t own the ideas that will be mentioned later in this thread. I may expand upon them or give examples from my own personal experience, but LaPlante is the one who masterminded it all. Check out her books sometime if you can.
I imagine that many of you who clicked on this thread are here to improve your writing. Let me just say a few things: first, you are not as bad a writer as you think. A lot of the time, we writers tend to put other writers on a pedestal. We think we’ll never be as good as Stephen King or Maggie Stiefvater or even Erin Hunter. The first thing to do right here, right now, is abandon your tendency to compare yourself to others. You’re here to improve your writing, not someone else’s. It’s good to aspire to write like a certain author, but if you take that mindset as far as wanting to write their stories, you’ve gone too far. Read a lot of books, yes. Take inspiration from them. But at the end of the day, your writing is yours alone, and this guide is meant to help you look objectively at your own work and determine your strengths and weaknesses. You’re not as bad as you think. But you’re also likely not as good as you think. Before you continue any further down this page, do your best to stifle your tendency to compare your work to others’. Don’t think of your writing as good or bad. It’s just words on a page, but it’s also your words on a page. There’s always room for improvement, and I hope you’ll find the road to that improvement here.
More reading??
(a note on creative writing, especially creative nonfiction)
Before we jump into the big stuff, I’d like to note something about creative writing. While fiction is, no doubt, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “creative writing,” keep in mind that the term applies to all manner of creative writing, fiction and creative nonfiction alike. As this is a fanfiction forum, many of you likely came here for fiction tips, but I must put in a shameless plug for creative nonfiction as well, especially memoir. You’ve probably heard to “write what you know,” and doing a bit of self-reflective memoir every now and then is a great way to dig a little deeper into your own self and find answers to problems you didn’t even see before. I only say this because I took a memoir class during the fall semester and came to a lot of good revelations about myself and about the world in general. It definitely allows for a fresh perspective when it comes to writing, so if you’ve never dabbled in creative nonfiction, give it a look sometime.
Contents
(the bare bones of it)
Here you’ll find the big concepts we’ll cover. This list is subject to grow and change over the course of the semester, as I learn more.
I. Our first job as writers: to notice
a. Creating a real world
II. Fools explain: unsolved mysteries
a. Don’t tell why something is, tell how it is
- The Rose Bush
III. Show and tell
a. Narration (telling) vs. Observation (showing)
b. Details as luggage
IV. Revision
a. What works? What doesn’t work?
b. Being able to change your draft
Lessons
(the good stuff)
Here the concepts introduced in the table of contents will be expanded upon.
I: A Writer’s First Job is to Notice
So you want to write? Step one: Notice. Start by thinking of something you’ve noticed in the past twenty-four hours. It can be as big or small as you want. Here are some examples:
- The way a stretch of road in the middle of nowhere mysteriously smells like fried chicken. There are no fast food restaurants -- or any restaurants at all -- in the vicinity.
- The two people you saw walking along the sidewalk on your way to school: one was a young woman, dark hair, tall and thin, wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts and neon running shoes. The other person was a man, middle-aged and balding, wearing a thick coat and boots, his shoulders hunched against the cold even though the woman seemed completely unphased by the temperature.
- How one classmate always brings a black paper cup of coffee to class from a local coffee shop, never from Starbucks. He’s always got coffee with him, no matter the time of day. He’s also perpetually late, bustling into class with his cup in hand just as the professor starts class.
- How a different classmate always smells like a bakery: warm and sweet, like cookies and fresh-baked bread. You’ve noticed that her laptop’s background picture is of a gray tabby cat, still young-looking; the picture is a bit out of focus and the lighting is dark, but every time she opens her laptop it’s there.
Notice how the above examples are simple observations made using the senses. There’s no explanation provided for why the road smells like fried chicken, for example, or why the first classmate is always late. It’s nothing but things you can pick up just by noticing. But these things can be very telling about people’s personalities, and readers can make inferences about your characters based on the details you choose to include about them. The way the world looks and smells and feels; how people dress or how they react to things: these are the little details, the everyday things, that you want to start picking up on as much as you can. Noticing is an invaluable skill for a writer.
Exercise 1: It’s Not (Technically) Stalking
(a little more challenging)
A preface to this one: this is literally the assignment my professor gave my class: go out and low-key stalk someone, and then insert them into a piece of fiction while fabricating as little as possible about them. In short: make inferences about them that help you figure out who they are. The way they hold themselves, how they talk to different people, what they’re wearing or eating or doing. Fun, right? Here’s a little more information.Find a place where you can people-watch, preferably a place where people are stationary for at least a short period of time, such as a library or waiting room. Find a place to sit where you can observe someone else, preferably a stranger, from a short distance: don’t stare outright at them or give any indication of what you’re doing. Make notes (mentally or on paper) about the way they look, how they act, their expressions and reactions to things. If they’re talking to someone, how do they speak? Do they complain a lot? Is their voice nasally or deep? Do they keep sniffing, as if they have a cold or an allergy? Do your best to take note of these things. After a few minutes, you can move somewhere else and review your notes if you’d like.
Now, imagine this person is now a character in your story. You can give them a name if you like. Your assignment will be to insert this character into one of the following scenarios:
Imagine this person just received bad service at a restaurant. You can decide what constitutes “bad service:” burned food, rude waitress, etc. How do they react?
They just learned they got a bad grade on a paper. Are they upset? Do they try to argue their case with the teacher? What do they do?
After you’ve chosen your scenario, write for 15 minutes or as long as it takes for you to fill a single page of looseleaf. You may type your piece if you want, but I challenge you to change up how you usually write: if you usually write on paper, type; if you usually type, get out a pencil. The scene should be short but should have a main character, a conflict, and a resolution.
Exercise 2: Simply Notice
(a little simpler)
Not up to "stalking" someone? That’s absolutely understandable. Try this instead.Take the idea from earlier in this lesson: notice. Go somewhere, preferably somewhere with people, where you can observe the world with as many senses as possible. Take note of everything you notice; don’t try to interpret or explain, just record. Try to pick up on the little things: the way people walk, how they react to things, the place and time of day. Write at least 150 words, including as much detail as you can. You may use first person, but only if you’re observing, not explaining.
The goal of these activities is to help you notice how the world works, the little things especially, since they so often go unnoticed. After all, it’s hard to write about the world without doing your best to capture it in its entirety. This is especially important when writing about people: about humans. We’re multifaceted. We do weird things sometimes when we think people aren’t looking. The goal here is to start to understand how things really are. You’ve probably heard the idea that fiction is based in reality. That’s what you’re trying to accomplish here. The real world doesn’t always seem believable--but in order for fictional worlds to work, they have to be even more real than reality, leaving no room for error. In writing, you’re creating a brand-new world. Thus, the first step: notice. Notice how this world works, how the people in it move and live and breathe. Then transplant that reality into yours. It’ll be all the more real for the little things.
FAQs
(ask an English major)
Got any writing-related questions that aren’t covered in the lessons? They’ll be answered here.
Q:
A:
Reading List
(check these out)
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
- My absolute favorite book. Thoroughly enchanting and heartbreakingly beautiful. I can't do this one justice. Please, read it.
- Fantastic fantasy read. Reminiscent of the Septimus Heap books in the best ways. Multiple storylines weave together to create a perfect tapestry of an ending. Includes my favorite thing, which is the way perfectly ordinary nouns are capitalized: the Tower, the Traders, the Road, the Witch. Good stuff.
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
- Shameless plug for my favorite author. If you haven't read her stuff, get on it. This one's got Celtic lore and deadly horses and a charm that manages to persist even through the peril. #goals
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
- A lovely reminder that writing novels in verse (or at least reading them) is a great idea. Harrowing, emotional, lovely. I keep coming back to this one.
Other Stuff
(in case I forget anything)
[WIP]
