0 HOW TO BE A GOOD WRITER

Why a creative writing class ? 

To come together; people of similar interest, of comparable talent. To meet and share ideas, to give and take. I don't want published writers in beginners class : since we all have different experiences, we can bring in new ideas and take some advice which we received in the class. 

How do you teach creative writing ? 

I in the Socratic approach, as my teacher Wallace STEGNER at Stanford university taught the class. I don’t think you can stand before a black board and teach creative writing as you can teach history or mathematics. Writing is so subjective, each writer approaches it differently. Who am I to say that this is how something should be done, but not that way? Taking the Socratic approach is the best out - we all participate, we all contribute. The students teach one another through their discussion of a piece of writing on the table. The duty of the teacher is to set the environment, get you to the class on time, get the discussion started and to pick it up when it begins waver or drag. But the students must do most of the talking - all students not only one or two, but all. 

What is creative writing ? 

The term means imaginative writing, as opposed to expository writing or factual writing. Though the creative writer draws from factual sources, sociology, psychology, politics, religion, etc., etc., etc., he should use all of that information imaginatively - never factually. The short story or novel is to produce in its reader the pleasure of an aesthetic experience. 

Who is a creative writer ? 

The creative writer must have something to say, and if he is to be a writer the demons will not let him or her alone until they have said it. The real writer does such and such whereas the want to be writer does this. The real writer writes, Goethe said, everything has been said. The problem is to say it again. The young writer must have the ego to believe that what he has to say is as important as anything that has been said before. In a sense he is right, because no one before him has written about this particular moment on earth. At the same time the young writer must be as humble as the most humble. He must realize that he will never know all of it, and for the rest of his life there will always be something out there that he could learn. 

What are the tools of the writer ? 

The tools of the writer are words, words, words. The writer builds images with these words. To convey to the reader a feeling of love, hate, envy, jealousy, fear, evilness - all the possible emotions - the writer must make you see, hear, feel, taste, smell through the images he creates out of words. The writer does not have to be a great intellectual - but he must be able to use words to grasp your attention, hold your attention, until he is ready to let go. And if he is good enough, he will have your attention long after you have put down the book - all of this is accomplished through words, made from those twenty six little letters of the alphabet. 

How are those images made ? 

That depends on the individual writer. Flaubert once told his protégé Guy de Maupassant to describe a scene of action in a single phrase - or better yet, a single word. Faulkner could probably use an entire page, or maybe even more to describe that same scene, because he would add so many other details. Yet it would be the same scene. 

Who am I to say what is the right way, and what is not ? that all depends on the temperament and vision of the writer. Although I have used more of the Flaubertian, Hemingway, Turgenev approach - that is, the shortest way and quickest way of getting to the point, I will never tell a student not to use Faulkner's approach. What I tell my students is to read both Flaubert and Faulkner, and the 73 other books plus about another thousand, and by then you should have your way of describing the scene of action. It may probably take years of writing to find your own way, your own narrative voice, but the easiest way is to read, read, read and write, write, write. 

Dumas said a writer needs a passion and four walls. I will add that he also needs a table, a chair, pencils, lots of paper, a strong imagination and he must be willing to take risk. He must be willing to say what he thinks is important, whether this would ostracize him from the group, from family, exile him from his own country - whatever. If he wishes to be serious he cannot ever think about what can happen to him : he has something to say, and it must be said. The demons won't let him rest until it's been done. 

That is the difference between the writer, and the person who wants to be a writer. The want to be writes when inspiration hits him - which is very seldom - maybe once or twice a week. He worries about who will read him and who won't. He is also afraid of criticizing the wrong people. He is afraid of being ostracized, or maybe even shot. The writer does not have time to think about any of this. He is too busy writing. 

I would like to quote a passage from "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines, and a machine no unnecessary parts? This requires not that the writer makes all of his sentences short, or that he avoids all details and treat his subject only in outline, but that each word tells." 

Use natural language 

To quote from Strunk and White again : "Write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you. Using words and phrases that come readily to hand, that is everyday words. Dialect will be necessary at times, slang necessary, profanity necessary at times. But I suggest that this should be used sparingly." Another quote from Strunk and White : "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective has not been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. This is not to disparage adjectives and adverbs. They are indispensable parts of speech, and there are times when you must use them - but do not depend on them as you would on the noun and verb." 

Do not overwrite, do not overstate and please do not affect a breezy manner, to think that anything and everything you write is important. Avoid the use of qualifiers - words like rather, very, little, pretty and, another suggestion by Strunk and White - and I can't agree more. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I have had students to turn in a piece of work after only one draft of a story, and they are so gullible that they think should get an agent. I tell them that anyone can write a first draft. Good writing, real writing sometimes requires a dozen rewrites. Hemingway rewrote the ending to "A Farewell to Arms" over twenty times. I rewrote my first novel about twenty five times. This is what Strunk and White have to say. 

Don't try to embellish your writing with symbolism in a sense every word is a symbol. Write simply, truthfully, and from deep inside of yourself. Don't try disguising your writing with symbols that only you or you and a couple of your friends know about. Trying to be clever will only cause your reader to lose interest in your story. Write simply and to the point, and if the writing is done well the reader will get the message. 

Point of view 

This depends on the writer and the story. Some writers are more comfortable writing from the omniscient point of view, others from the first person point of view. Faulkner has written some of his works from the multiple point of view. Some stories cannot be told but from the omniscient, others can be told very well by one of the characters in the story, it all depends on what the writer has to say, and with what form he is the most comfortable. I have done them from all. 

 
by Ernest J. Gaines