When you disagree with your writing teacher...

[Luckydog7]

So just started a writing course. Really excited as I've listened to lots of online lectures and found them really inspiring and this course is based on lots of feedback and exercises.

However, what I'm getting is completely at odds with what I have already learned that I'm sitting in class feeling annoyed. We studied a piece of writing from 100 years ago. Everyone was gushing, I thought was terribly old fashioned. Written like a screenplay, all dialogue and stage direction. All tell and no showing.

Apparently we should come up with a theme then write our story around that theme...which seems backwards to me. Surely themes emerge, especially if you are a discovery writer.

I write speculative fiction which I don't think is our teachers genre. Maybe thats it?

So essentially, for you, this course will be about allowing your mind to become a little more … flexible, and acknowledging that there are other points of view than your own?

🤔

It's a subjective craft. I don't think it's surprising that your teacher's approach is different from what you've learned online.

Did you give your honest opinion about the extract you studied? It might have been that one or two people gushed and others were afraid to say anything different. Was it by a famous writer?

I think you should give your teacher's approach a chance - try some theme-inspired writing as an exercise and see what happens. It might be that your teacher plans to give you lots of different techniques to try as the course progresses.

Good luck!

Interesting - can you tell us what the piece of writing was?

It was a short story by Anton Chekhov - Hush. Wonderful prose and imagery but...yeah hardly good practice for modern writing (in my opinion).

@CountryCousin it kind of the opposite of ME needing to be flexible I have no problem with starting with a theme if that is someone's effective working method but it was presented as the way we MUST do it. I have been taught that you write what you are interested in an interesting way and it is really the audiences job to read theme into it. Books don't have to have a moral or a message to be entertaining and readable, you don't have to come away thinking 'I have learned something about the world'.

I wouldn't dream of critisising the teacher in the class or undermining her, i just think her approach is rigid. Good for her it it works for her (she is a published author afterall) but people write in different ways and i really think its important to tell students that how they approach writing isn't 'wrong'

I wasn't the only one who took issue btw. a couple of others struggled. The other fantasy writer now i mention it.

OP "Wonderful prose and imagery but...yeah hardly good practice for modern writing (in my opinion)."

but different styles of writing are popular at different times, with different people.

I have been on some short courses and didn't like some stuff or agree with the tutors all the time. And I had my favourites. That's just a variety of teaching.

I did have one chap who was very "must do" this but I just wrote what I wanted. Is it that it's limiting your work?

If it's Chekhov, won't it be in translation? Translation isn't quite the same art as creative writing - it seems an odd choice for a creative writing class.

Yes I thought an odd choice. As feedback i did say it was very old fashioned, telling not showing and that it came across as a screenplay, us watching from the side lines rather then immersed in the story. I would make a great play!

She said we could all be professional writers but i think a more modern example would have been better for aspiring writers. I doubt her book was written like that for example. or that Chekhovs style would be popular in a novel today.

Regardless, i've been given homework that is quite broad so will make of it what i will. I'm hoping the first session was just a kind of introductory lesson and we can get more practical in later sessions. Less waxing lyrical about being confident in our writing and more HOW to write. What makes an engaging character, how to catch the attention of the reader in the first chapter. How to avoid info dumping, weaving exposition into the narrative. etc etc

I've had translated stuff used a fair bit in classes.

hope you find the next session more useful.

Chekhov is a genius. Anyway, regardless of how good or bad you think another person’s work is, there’s always something to learn from it, I think. I write literary fiction, and I still learn things from bad spy novels or sci-fi — might be something technical, pace, dialogue, scene transitions. When I’ve taught writing, I’ve used Chekhov, but also Ursula le Guin, John Updike, Dick Francis, Elizabeth Nowen, China Mieville, Kim Stanley Robinson, Arundhati Roy etc etc.

Unless you choose a teacher who writes in your specific genre and very much writes the type of thing you write within that genre, you’re going to have to deal with different approaches and priorities. You sound rather inflexible..?

Well I would simply enter into a discussion with your teacher over it - you could still learn something, possibly more than you might expect. In teaching most things there are often layers where a subject matter is discussed at a certain level of simplification - it avoids getting into the very low level details that perhaps don't fit in with a simplified description which is often needed to get the main general ideas across without confusing the students by giving an overly detailed view.

Why are you there if you know more than the person teaching the class?

Based on what you have said there are gaps in your knowledge and understanding - particularly if you can't see the benefits of Chekhov. Instead of criticising and looking for things you think are problems, open your mind and listen. (Still astounded that you totally missed the point with Chekhov.)

I don't really understand your point about themes, but completely agree that if you want to write contemporary fiction (which you do by the fact that you're writing today, not 100 years ago) then the bulk of your study should be... contemporary. That's not to say pulling apart a bit of Chekhov or Austen is a bad thing for one session but I wouldn't think it should be the entire course content.

Reading Chekov, who is economical of description, is useful, especially if you want to write contemporary or fantasy fiction. I agree that themes (or issues) can be a pain and that a story does not need a moral or a message (God forbid!) but you do need to think a bit about your audience and not make them work too hard (they won't bother reading to the end if you make them work too hard!) If you are writing speculative fiction then you need to heavily research what you write to give it verisimilitude. Ursula le Guin and JRR Tolkien both wrote on what is called 'secondary creation'. Tolkein's exposition is in a book called 'Tree and Leaf'. Le Guin has written several including Dancing at the Edge of the World, The Language of the Night, and Steering the Craft (which contains exercises). Other writers also write about this genre, but I have found Tolkien and Le Guin engaging, interesting, and not technical. Reading beyond the genre you want to write will be helpful - one does not have to stay within the genre rules, after all. Write detective novels set in the far future or romances in an imagined past. Clarke, for example, said that science fiction can encompass any genre.

NB Disagreeing with your teacher is no bad thing, out of such disagreement you can learn.

The story in question - Hush - is interesting. It paints a portrait of a would-be author who works all day having 'to write to order'. I suspect the point your teacher was making (apart from the merits of the writng) is that in many senses a writer must write to order - otherwise one goes off plot or writes something that won't sell to the intended audience. Also, Krasnyhin is a domestic tyrant, his writing is treated as sacred, his wife is at his beck and call. The work he actually does all day he dismisses, rather than put his heart into it. Self-important, he does not use his actual work to further the work he wishes to do. Not an example to follow. Neat.

Personally, I think Chekhov was quite a decent writer....

It sounds as though you would be better suited to my writing tutor and me to yours! I love prose, imagery, authors like Chekhov, writing with a meaning and themes - writers like Zola who kickstarted a social movement. I'd rather eat my own hair than read fantasy let alone write it! I am sticking with my tutor because he is the opposite of me which has in fact been helpful from a writing point of view, plus he knows the industry whereas I don't. It is really helpful to know what people who are different from me think of what I write. But it is a bit uncomfortable at times, what he finds boring and pointless I love and vice versa.

It is worth explaining your worries to your tutor and seeing what they say though.

Thinking something from 100 plus years ago is irrelevant is a bit bonkers - think of Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens. Not your taste but definitely not irrelevant. I wish more of the ilk of Chekhov were being published today.

If your teacher s suggesting that you ‘must’ do it this way and that any other approach is wrong - red flag.

There is no right or wrong way to write - only the ways that work for you.

So, yes - this teacher would seem, at the very least, inflexible.

If she seems a good teacher otherwise, no harm in sticking with the class (could be useful to experiment with an approach antithetical to your own) but don’t second-guess yourself just because you're the learner and she’s the teacher. Trust your judgment.

A short story on the subject of writing by Chekkov seems a reasonable introduction to a writing course. I doubt everything will be similar in terms of style and period. Plenty of sensory details would take little tweaking to fit a contemporary or speculative piece. The energy and word choice he uses when telling convey the atmosphere as effectively as detailed showing would but more succinctly. Good telling when appropriate is important and often neglected.

I'm not sure why starting from theme, if the theme is one of your choice, constrains your discovery writing to the extent you find the teacher rigid. Every story must start with some idea which could associated with various themes. A theme can be as loosely defined as love, war, family, or whatever at this stage. Perhaps the exercise is to help you see potential themes early on in the discovery process. If the story evolves so the main theme eclipses the initial apparent theme that's probably fine.