Creative Writing Debate: Worthwhile or Worthless?
Delve into the ongoing debate on the value of creative writing courses, as discussed by renowned authors such as Hanif Kureishi, Will Self, and Fay Weldon. While Kureishi criticizes such courses as a waste of time due to perceived lack of talent, Self emphasizes the importance of unique self-learning in writing. Weldon challenges the notion of set rules in writing, highlighting the ever-evolving nature of creativity. Insights from Hemingway and Chekhov further add depth to the discourse, offering varying perspectives on the art of writing.
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Carefully avoid adverbs and clich s like the plague Creative Writing Debates, Advice and Warnings
Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Hanif Kureishi: Creative writing courses are a waste of time.
Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Hanif Kureishi: (he teaches Creative Writing at Kingston University!) Creative writing courses are a waste of time. A lot of my students just can't tell a story it's probably 99.9 per cent [of the students] who are not talented and the little bit that is left is talent. A lot of my students just can't tell a story. They can write sentences but they don't know how to make a story go from there all the way through to the end without people dying of boredom in between. It's a difficult thing to do and it's a great skill to have. Can you teach that? I don't think you can.
Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Will Self: Some people swear by creative writing courses. I say, go and get a job, a fairly menial one instead. Otherwise what are you going to write about? Writing is about expressing something new and exploring the form in new ways. So unless you want to churn out thrillers or misery memoirs, you can't work from a pattern book. You need to autodidact.
Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Creative Writing Debate : Worthwhile or Worthless? Fay Weldon: there are no rules; you can't say "this is how you write a short story" or "this is how you structure a novel" because something good that doesn't follow that pattern will always come along to challenge that.
Writing Advice I think. Writing Advice I think. Ernest Hemingway: There is nothing to writing. All you do is just sit at a typewriter and bleed.
Writing Advice I think. Writing Advice I think. Anton Chekhov: My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying. This sounds more enigmatic than it really needs to. What word should replace lying ?
Writing Advice I think. Writing Advice I think. Jeanette Winterson: "My job is not to teach my Creative Writing students to write; my job is to explode language in their faces. To show them that writing is both bomb and bomb disposal a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing. My job is to alter their relationship with language. The rest is up to them. Is this more helpful?
Writing Advice I think. Writing Advice I think. Zadie Smith Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied. Um thanks, Zadie Smith Who s ready to become a writer!?
Writing Advice: Straight Writing Advice: Straight- -forward forward Toni Morrison: If there s a book that you want to read, but it hasn t been written yet, then you must write it.
Writing Advice: Straight Writing Advice: Straight- -forward? forward? Kurt Vonnegut : no semicolons Stephen King : no adverbs Colm T ib n : no flashbacks
Damn Damn Mark Twain: Substitute damn every time you re inclined to write very ; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. What s his real advice here?
Elegant summary of narrative structure Elegant summary of narrative structure Billy Wilder : In the first act of a story you put your character up in a tree and the second act you set the tree on fire and then in the third you get him down.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Elmore Leonard: Never open a book with weather. Avoid prologues Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Hilary Mantel: Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Jonathan Franzen: The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis". You see more sitting still than chasing after.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Neil Gaiman: Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. Laugh at your own jokes The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.)
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Michael Moorcock: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else. Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters. Carrot and stick have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Rose Tremain: Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be. Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Sarah Waters: Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters' stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist's.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Philip Hensher: How can I create characters that are memorable and engaging? (Top tip introduce them in small groups, and out of their customary context.) There doesn't seem to be enough happening my characters just keep telling each other how they feel about each other, and then they have an affair or kill each other or have a baby. But then what?
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Kathryn Hughes: Just because you are trying to learn how to write, it doesn't mean that you need to employ an entirely new vocabulary. Be ruthless about cutting out any word that you wouldn't use naturally in everyday speech. In real life no one calls a book "a tome" or says "she descended the stairs" or refers to "my companion". A book is a book, people walk down the stairs and a companion is actually a friend, or a lover, or a colleague or someone you were standing next to at the bus stop. Be specific and be real.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Stephen King: An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Writers Rules and Advice for Writing Michael Morpurgo: The prerequisite for me is to keep my well of ideas full. This means living as full and varied a life as possible, to have my antennae out all the time. Ted Hughes gave me this advice and it works wonders: record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.
Practical Advice Practical Advice Diana Athill: Read it aloud to yourself Margaret Atwood: You need a thesaurus Will Self: Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. Geoff Dyer: Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something. Ian Rankin: Don t give up Me: Have fun!
