Bea wrote:
It sounds like you're into deep genre. Do some research on the industry
standards for that genre (there are usually strict rules and formulas
that writers are expected to adhere to to fit their novels into a specific niche
to make it "marketable.") I think there's even a website call "Deep Genre"
where you can get advice.
If you tone down the sex, you might be able to crack the YA market.
YA fantasy has done well recently.
Just remember, when agents and publishers are choosing which books to back,
they are usually thinking in terms of "which shelf in the bookstore will that go on?"
If it doesn't fit on a shelf, they don't want it.
Oh, well most of my writing definitely fits into genres, usually dark fantasy, but it also tries to ignore many of the cliche trends of those genres. The problem is rather with professors and their disrespect for genres they have no knowledge about.
Ancalagon wrote:
To an extent, you may just have to let go. It's quite unlikely that a single student is going to change the minds of a large number of like-thinking faculty in the same department, no matter how right you are or how wrong they are. Pick your battles.
I wouldn't recommend writing erotica or graphic horror for school writing assignments. It's not just that it might not be politically correct -- these things can be an acquired taste, like very spicy food. They're used to bland food, so don't make it too spicy, or they'll be thinking of how bad their tongue hurts instead of how good it tastes.
I have to disagree strongly with your suggestion that creativity is best without limits. Often, limits help creativity quite a bit. They narrow your focus, and generate intensity, like a laser does to light.
Whether or not you ever end up writing any actual stories about fancy british people sitting around being fancy and british, trying it could be a useful excercise. If you are writing a story with a boring setting, with boring technology and no magic, you will have to find something else to make it interesting. Witty conversations full of irony and double-meaning, humor, philosophical speculation, and suspense can all be done in a boring English sitting room at tea time just as well as on the deck of a star cruiser or in the 18th level of Hell. The humor can be easier with fancy british people, since they're a bit silly already; funny on the 18th level of Hell would be a bit tougher.
lol, I don't submit erotica. When I was complaining about the lack of sex and violence in what we READ, it's more a smaller problem of the larger issue that what we read is BORING and lacks anything exciting. It's not that to be exciting something needs sex or violence, but rather that it doesn't have ANYTHING that's exciting or interested in entertainment--it's all BS pretentious wannabe-art-house-not-as-deep-as-it-thinks-it-is type short fiction. Flannery O'Connor and James Joyce type crap.
And I never said that I thought there should be no limits to creaitivity--of course there should be. Good storytelling demands it. Rather, my point is that one should not conform to the limits of the REAL WORLD. Big difference.
eristocrat wrote:
As a genre writer, you're going to make a lot more money writing than anybody else in the room inlcuding the prof, if that's any consolation.
Hah, very true. I tell that to my classes ALL the time. I fully intend to make a career out of my writing, which is impossible for most of the other students because their writing isn't the least bit user-friendly.
gbollard wrote:
To be honest, I never understood why anyone would go to college to learn creative writing... surely that just kills creativity.
These people are doing you a favor. They're showing you the sorts of reactions that critics and many lay-people will give you when you write your stories. You need to learn to toughen up against these sort of people and do what you want.
Honestly... I'll use George Lucas as an example. (even though he's not technically a "writer"). He's got a story to tell and he's going to tell it his way. He got all kinds of rejections in the beginning until his story suddenly (and unexpectedly) got wide acclaim. Then... when he started tinkering and making the prequels, he got hounded by fans who decided that he was doing it wrong.
He's kept on doing what he wanted - not what the fans wanted.
Perhaps he's lost popularity but he's still telling the stories HE wants to tell. We can choose to go along with him or we can find some other "author" to follow.
Be like that.
I don't see how they're doing me a favor. They're not reading it as anyone in my intended audience would. They're reading it as people who have no interest in the sort of writing I do would. I'm not trying to appeal to people who have absolutely no interest in anything to do with magic or vampires with my writing; I'm trying to appeal to those who DO like magic and vampires but also want a good story to go with those things (since all too often there isn't one). As for George Lucas, he's a f**king horrible writer/director and I sure as hell am not going to emulate HIM. Even the people in his intended audience agree that he's creatively bankrupt. And that's really what it's all about: audience. I'm not going to change the kind of writing I do or go against my passion just to appeal to an audience that I have no interest in writing for after college. I shouldn't have to, that's my whole point. I should be able to persue the genres of my passion without feeling like I'm looked down upon for it. Teachers should NOT have such a silly bias. They should have eclectic taste.
MizLiz wrote:
I had a lot of profs like that (creative writing was my other major). It's why I dropped out. I don't have any genre that I stick to, but I can't stand BS rules.
One prof thought she was doing us a favor by pretending to allow any genre, but she gave us "just one rule" and told us that we couldn't kill anyone in our stories. No one could die. No deaths. None. Her logic was that the death of a character is a cheat. If there's a conflict, an author might try to resolve it by whacking the grandmother so the family can make up at the funeral. So, rather than just punishing amateur writers who would do that (with an F or a talking to or a horsewhipping or whatever it is she would have done), she stifled us. At the start of the class, I had a story ready to go but then I couldn't use it because a central point was the suicide of the main character's sister. It was relevant, not a cheat, but I still had to write something else.
I ended up writing a story I didn't care about and got an A in that class anyway. You'll find that this is what you end up doing. You pander. You have to play their game.
I didn't want to play anymore.
Do you?
I actually don't mind assignments like that, heheh. They can be interesting experiments. I do like to experiment and foray a little out of my element here and there....
Ancalagon wrote:
There are ways of breaking the rules without breaking the rules, if you get creative enough.
The Pit and the Pendulum would be a good example of avoiding the 'no death' rule. Nobody actually dies, even though the theme is death and the whole story is centered around it. You could write about a midieval torture chamber and include quite a bit of graphic violence without actually killing anybody off.
People accused Edgar Allan Poe of never writing a tale with a moral, so he wrote 'Never Bet the Devil Your Head', in which the moral is that you should never bet the devil your head. In it he makes fun of tales with a moral and those who like them.
Horror can be done without blood and guts -- just look at almost anything Alfred Hitchcock did. It can also be done without any element of the supernatural -- Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' are good examples.
Although it's set in a very boring, ordinary suburban neighborhood, Calvin & Hobbes doesn't really have any limit as to how weird it can get, because Calvin is so imaginative.
Here, here. Though I disagree about horror, to a certain extent. While I don't think blood and gore should be what horror relies on, they certainly help, being one part of the whole piece IMO. There's gotta be a connection to the characters, there's gotta be the atmosphere and timing and buildup of emotion...but I've never been at all scared by Hitchcock or Poe, or even Lovecraft. More to the point, half the reason why I write horror and dark fantasy is because I come up with sick-ass images and deformed creatures that I'd like to get out of my head. Writing's how I do that.
28 Dec 2008, 5:53 pm
