Starting a creative writing course, any advice?

[Luckydog7]

Starting a 9 week course on the 2nd May. Its one where there is lots of sharing of work and critiquing live in class. Does anyone have advice about how to give constructive feedback? Also should I work in my chosen niece genre or go for something more generic to work on my skills.

I'm a fantasy writer and have already written 40k words and have outlined a couple of other books too for context.

Should I take any work on my first day?

what is your goal of the workshop? Do you want to be a published author? If so I would stick with your genre.

Giving feedback I would focus on how you felt. So if you felt confused at a certain part, your attention span dipped, or you really felt the suspense. You can't go wrong with your feelings. I would always say something good, then the bad thing in the middle, then something good again. The feedback sandwich. You can also ask questions with the feedback such as 'are you trying to suggest they are flirting'?

Oooh - face to face?! Seems amazing now.

Firstly, I’d be surprised if they don’t, ahead of the start date, supply you with a full set of guidance points on how to behave in the group setting. These are likely to cover amongst other things: personal pronouns - the use of, and responding respectfully to others’ work.

I suggest you practise using sentences like this - I like how you did A and I think you could do B. (Where you’d naturally say but I think you could …)

If you feel a fellow student’s extract of their great work is … less than perfect, it’s helpful to ask them what the specific thing is that they wanted to achieve with that passage …

You said fantasy? Good luck with never ever being allowed to mention the most successful female fantasy writer of our time …

You need to be clear about what you want to get out of the course. Nine weeks isn’t long - won’t concentrating on your own genre be more impactful and bear more fruit?

Sound advice from both of you. Yes about my genre, I just don't want to be dismissed if everyone else if writing literary fiction or something else high brow. I suppose I will play it by ear. If the teacher gives us certain exercises then there is no reason i cant benefit regardless.

Yes I will need to tread carefully around the famous fantasy author issue. I live in a university town so if there are younger members in the group i may have to be sensitive. Saying that, there are also a lot of older no nonsense academics around and one of the early martyrs to GC regarding toilets is from here years ago so who knows.

RE what i want. I suppose i want to see if my writing is any good. For that i need feedback. If it isn't good i want to learn to improve it. There is a tiny ember in my heart that would like to publish but i realise that is probably unrealistic. I am on a amateur writing website so i would like the confidence to put my work up there.

I have a career in the creative industry and since i changed jobs into an area i'm really enjoying my creative meter is all filled up by the end of the day and so having more motivation to write would be good too.

I agree that you are likely to get guidelines on giving feedback. It is a really good thing to do, actually. Even more valuable than having your own work critiqued. Why? Because you have to think about why you think what you think. It's no good just saying "I thought that was really good." You need a "because...". Bear in mind that people are very sensitive about their work. It can be tough if you are forced to critique something you think is a pile of crap. However there are polite ways to fudge it. Such as "I found my attention starting to wander at around paragraph four. I struggled with understanding why the protagonist did x/following the plot thread due to the number of characters introduced in a short space of time, or whatever. I liked the vivid description of the surroundings." If it's not your preferred genre it is easier because you can use that as an excuse to some degree. "I usually read fast-paced espionage thrillers so am not best placed to comment on the heroine's interest in Victorian needlepoint."

One good way to practice your feedback skills is to go and read the first chapter of a book you like, or that you know lots of other people like. Pay attention to your own reactions. Is there a moment when you suddenly feel interested - hooked? Stop at that point and ask yourself what the author did there. Did they make you ask a question - "what is she hiding?" "how did that happen?" Or perhaps they alerted you to the possibility of an upcoming conflict - "he'll be in trouble if they find out!"

While you're on the course, you'll probably hear a lot of work that, while competent and basically fine, is not grab-you-by-the-lapels exciting. It can be hard to work out why it falls short in that regard. Keep an eye out for writing that has:

• long slabs of narrative with no dialogue or action
• scenes that go on too long
• characters who say exactly what they think
• scenes that end with everyone in the same situation or frame of mind as when the scene began (especially the main character)
• characters for whom everything in their lives is 100% fine and dandy, until the Big Thing happens that sets the plot in motion, Famous Five style
• characters who exist only to prop up the main character, & have no lives of their own
• characters without any goals
• any kind of journey (train, car, walk) in which nothing happens other than people successfully going from A to B
• paragraphs that exist only to fill the reader in on some backstory
• dialogue that does the same ("hey, remember when our parents died?")

All these are easy traps to fall into, so you'll be doing your fellow writers a favour if you can (gently) point them out.

Has anyone done a writing journal course?

How did it go?