So, I'm thinking that creative writing may be the wrong direction for me. I was assuming that people read creative fiction for fun right? Entertainment value yes? This would mean humor, deep characters, human interaction, romance ect. Apparently this is not the point. In my current creative writing class, all of these people, who are all Creative writing majors (the people that I would assume read much more often than most), are the most pretentious, needy, and uptight group of people I have ever had the privileged of sharing a room with. We do peer readings of each story we turn in, and this is what their notes on both my own and other people's stories have told me.
Any time that you leave ANYTHING unsaid in a story, it is apparently unclear.
I suppose I'm not supposed to expect my readers to be able to figure out what's going in the story without straight up telling them (perhaps they would like it in summary at then end of each paragraph...). Yet, if I were to directly explain what's going on and why I've included specific information, they would tell me that my writing is forced and unnatural. I've heard many times to not assume that your audience is dumber than you are, but it's getting a bit difficult to continually believe that.
Get to your point IMMEDIATELY, so early in your story in fact that you probably can't even have a point.
Admittedly, I often take a little time ,early in the story, to set up my characters and locations. I do this because, in my mind, I feel like there is much more impact if there are characters with enough information to get attached to and events that don't just come out of nowhere (because the things I write about would not happen in normal situations). With everything that I've turned in, my "peers" have pretty much said that the information that makes both my characters and events believable is unnecessary... From what I figure, no normal town would have a murderous motorcycle gang and a group of gay people that are out to kidnap and brainwash small children. It's also hard for me to believe that a normal man would be very concerned with the height of his coat hanger and die on the inside at red lights. Since this is not normal behavior, I would assume it only natural to take some time to set these people and situations apart from others... guess not?
I guarantee that if I had just "plunged" into either of these stories, that my papers would be continually riddle with comments like "this is not believable behavior," "people don't act like this," and many more questions that would allude to the idea that characters and situations need development... These people's time is apparently so precious (even though they are assigned to read my paper and would be reading someone else's paper if not reading mine) that more than a short paragraph of anything other than overwrought suspense is too much and therefore a waste of their time.
Humor is not a good enough reason to write a story; if someone is not falling in love, dying, or in some sort of unbearable mental anguish at all times, there is no plot.
I write for humor and I'm pretty sure that this is obvious. If you underline something in my story and write "this is funny!" next to it, then I have done my job and you should not, 2 pages later, tell me that there is no conflict, and that the story isn't going anywhere. You've gotten a strong enough grasp on the character and situation that I made something happen that made you at least think to yourself "hey, that's funny" if not actually laugh. Eff off!
Creativity should only be found in your story, not writing style.
This one is pretty minor, but it just accentuates that I'm probably working with the most pretentious dickheads ever. The main character's name is Larry, and Ron is his boss, here is my sentence "Ron puts down his pen, lowers his glasses from his eyes and looks up at the Larry that has arrived at his door." In saying "the Larry" I'm pretty much just toying with English, trying to create a low level of humor where there would otherwise be a significant gap of laughter in the writing. To one of the people that read and critiqued my story, this is apparently unacceptable. To me, this implies that if one does not closely follow every convention in writing and language that they are innately doing something wrong. Sure, it's not that funny of a joke, but I'm not sacrificing meaning in any way. You still know what's going on, but just because I didn't say something the way that you would have, or other people would does not mean that this is wrong.
If you're writing creatively for school, the minimum number of pages required is also your maximum.
I'm sure that everyone in my class, including my professor, understands that with creative writing, you pretty much need to write until the story is complete. Sure, I wrote a little over three times the minimum pages required, but my professor didn't even read my story, not one goddamned word. I can imagine quite clearly what happened. He hadn't set aside quite enough time for reading our class's stories, so he picked up my story, saw that it was long, looked at what the student grades were on the back, and stamped that on as my grade. Sure, the story I wrote was long, but it is your JOB as my professor to go over my work and grade it yourself. Yeah, you probably don't want to read my paper, cause it's way too long, but I don't care, that's what I'm paying you for. I haven't learned a single thing from this man, the least I can ask for is some feedback right?
I'm including a picture, so that this blog is the same as my post on Facebook.
This is Larry looking for creativity in the dumpster... That's where it comes from.
