/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4734674]

>that moment of paralysing fear when you walk into a uni level creative writing class and you're one of two or three people who aren't full neckbeard/moustached-hambeast mode

I mean, I expected it to some degree, but holy shit I was not prepared for that.

ITT: creative writing class stories

[Anonymous No.4734689]

>>4734674
Try to genuinely help them with their writing. Practice and have fun with trying to cater your writing to an audience. Having a bunch of people willing to read what you write is never a bad thing.

Never been in a writing class, maybe this is shit advice lol

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4734714]

>>4734689
He just doesn't like what they look like.

[Anonymous No.4734717]

>>4734674
Not really creative writing class, but I took an online course at Stanford last year about editing for short fiction (work in publishing so why not).

>Awkward pakis who wrote laughable and very explicit erotic (I should say pornographic) stories
>Feminazi single moms who saw themselves as the next JK Rowling
>"Professional bloggers"
>etc

English isn't even my first language and I made far less writing mistakes than them. The fear of being perceived at that kind of people kinda scared me off of writing.

[Anonymous No.4734723]

Oh, I'm in one right now
>two fat neckbeard guys who drop spaghetti and talk about sci fi and fantasy
>three hambeast retards, one wrote a story about her friend getting her a job, then she was forced to save her cat at the vet then her friend bailed her out to save the farm (that plot arc..)
>semi-attractive hispanic girl who only writes Mary Sue characters
>a fifty-five year old woman who has never read a book in her life but thinks she's accumulated enough street smarts to write something interesting
>an eighty year old man who tries to interrupt class to tell his stories but the professor cuts him off because old people fucking suck at telling stories

this one black dude and I are the only talented writers in the class

[Anonymous No.4734741]

Anyone like OP and >>4734723 is a disgusting human being and has a very limited future as a writer- so much hot air.

[Anonymous No.4734750]

>>4734689
good advice were they not idiots. Autist critiquing my paper said that I should tell not show

[Anonymous No.4734751]

>>4734741
You have obviously never been in a creative writing class. For the most part everyone there writes fantasy. I fucking love fantasy, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that, right?

Well you're wrong. Have you ever read someone's writing and thought "holy shit this is bad" ? Most of the class writes at that level. About 20% are above that level and there's 1 or 2 in my class that are holy-shit levels of awesome, depending on what they're writing.

Each week of my class involves peer-review. The girls swap short stories and gush praise for each other and their shitness becomes self-perpetuating. It's truly terrifying to see so many girls writing love triangle supernatural romance and thinking that they shit gold.

And don't get me started on the neckbeards. In a conversation they'll be the first ones to tell you that Tolkien derivatives are over and done and that's just how it should be, but then you see what they're writing and it's a Tolkien derivative with elves and orcs and a nameless evil all written like a retarded puppy went scuttling across their keyboard and pressed keys as it went.

[Anonymous No.4734755]

>This one black dude and I are the only talented writers in the class
>Referring to yourself as a talented writer
Kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.4734841]

>>4734755
>being so cynical you can't accept an internet story for what it is and you have to express that anger

It sounds like you're the only one liable to kill themselves in this thread

[Anonymous No.4734847]

>>4734741
Were you that guy that took a creative writing class, got nothing but criticism, and then abandoned "academic writing" for being full of "pretentious idiots"?

[Anonymous No.4734888]

lel, creative writing class stories. ok, here goes.

sophomore year i took the intro creative writing class, which should have been re-titled a glimpse into hell. professor was a graybeard deadhead who had no idea how to get discussion out of students and tried every class to make himself seem like the only creative person in the room. challenged us to bring in our favorite songs, said his would be better, ended up playing bob dylan. played experimental films that would only have been interesting with acid. made us come to a artist workshop with a sign that said "close minded people not welcome". admitted he was an alcoholic. nobody ever talked in class and he never seemed to care. long silences of a minute or more happened every time. maybe the post-modernists here would have loved him, but god damn that class was awful.

by an extreme stroke of luck, however, the class i took as a senior was absolutely god-tier. prof was cool, funny, helpful, always engaged the class. everyone wanted to show up, everyone wanted to talk, everyone wanted to help each other get better. some of the other students couldn't write their way out of a cardboard box (some guy wrote like 8 pages about a dude who works in an office and gets his lunch stolen), some had really interesting stories to tell. only one or two pretentious types. i remember the conversation on the first day really well:

"my name is phil and i'm writing a novel"
"my name is janie and i'm also writing a novel"
"my name is anon and apparently i'm the only person in this class not writing a novel"

asked out a girl from that class and we went to the university charter day ball. didn't get any, though.

so all told, i had the goldilocks experience of creative writing classes.

tl;dr i love tits

[Anonymous No.4734898]

>>4734674
I've only taken two creative writing classes in college, but have both been at the graduate level. Maybe that makes a difference. The first was taught by a professional Spanish Playwright. Everyone in the class wrote one short play, it was read in class, and then the professor shit all over each. We then revised our plays according to his criticisms and turned the revised plays in as our final grade. It was honestly one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in college. Everyone learned a lot. Most of the plays were pretty bad, but some were surprisingly good.

It should be noted that the students in this class were Spanish masters and doctorate students. The good plays were often from those that had already been published, but there were a few others that were surprisingly good.

I am currently in the second class. It is also being taught through the Spanish department of my school. We had a few novelists come in and workshop with the class. They were all relatively big names in Spanish Lit. Everyone's short stories are impressive. I don't think there's one person in the class whose stories I don't like. There are a couple of people writing literary essays and academic papers for the class. These interest me less, but the quality is still really high.

Maybe it's just that these classes are taught at the graduate level instead of the undergraduate level. There's a huge difference in quality I imagine.

[Anonymous No.4734908]

I'm taking one now as a filler class.

Only 6 people. No one excessively bad surprisingly. All normal fuckers actually.

Most of their writing leaves something to be desired, but it's whatever. They're all chill.

[Anonymous No.4734943]

>>4734674
>>4734723
>>4734751
>>4734888
>>4734898
You dumb niggers are taking fucking creative writing classes. If that doesn't characterize the degree to which you morons are wasting your lives, I don't know what does. You're in no position to judge.

>Bonus: You're posting on 4chan.

[Bunny No.4734946]

So OP hates his class bc of how they look?
I enjoy my class. No one dresses fancy, and there isn't any hot babe-but they are nice and funny. There are some amazing poets. One girl got her teen romance story published by amazon. Another one writes passionate, bizarre stories. Another one likes to lean on the 4th wall.
The rest don't share their stories so I don't know.
There was this one time when someone brought a bunny to class. He stole this bunny from its mother. He hid it in his coat all day and didn't give it enough water. We were all gushing over it. In the end, he brought it home several days and it died (I only know bc I heard he mentioned to his friend that he stored its body in the freezer and was going to bury it when he get home)
>it's a strange class, and I'm the strangest one of them all

[Anonymous No.4734954]

>>4734946
I don't hate the class because of how they look. We are talking about first impressions here. Walked into the first class of the semester and was greeted by that. I don't hate the class or the students at all really, but I have no respect for the way most of them write.

>>4734943
This isn't for my degree. The details are kind of long but basically I ended up with only 3 classes this semester instead of 4, so I enrolled in the arts faculty to take a creative writing class because hey, I like to write, thought it might be fun.

[Anonymous No.4734989]

>>4734943
It's either impossible to waste your life or impossible not to, depending on your perspective. Whatever you think you're doing that is worthwhile, I'm here to inform you that it's not.

[Anonymous No.4735020]

>>4734674
I'm the only male in my creative writing class, even the professor is a woman.

[Anonymous No.4735027]

Speaking of writing classes, what does /lit/ think of Brandon Sanderson's writing videos?

[Anonymous No.4735036]

>>4735020
This is really important: are any of them hot?

>>4735027
I watch them selectively if the title interests me, but in all honesty I'm a long way past the writing 101 that he's teaching. But his lessons on publishing/getting published are always helpful.

[Anonymous No.4735849]

you seem like a fugly fatass though, OP

[Anonymous No.4737675]

>>4734674
>be in upper-level undergrad creative writing course at mid-to-high-tier university
>peer reviewing story
>linear narrative, but the events are presented out of order
>can't quite tell why, it doesn't seem to really serve any purpose
>ask the guy who wrote it
>"it's because it's a postmodern short story"
>mfw

[Anonymous No.4737708]

>>4737675 here with a follow-up: but, really, I don't want to be too cynical. Most of my creative writing class is really good, it's just that a few people are writing shit (and they often complain about their grades, so it's not as if their taking of classes far above their level is going unpunished).

[Anonymous No.4739450]

>>4734674
>>4734723
>>4734751
>>4734888
>>4734898
>>4737675
There is a theme here, and I agree with it. My two experiences were both structured so that everyone read everyone else's stuff. No hiding.

The 200-indexed undergrad was a disaster. People who came to writing for all kinds of wrong reasons: axe grinding, wish-fulfilment (muh movie rights), snowflake complex, etc.

Four years later the 600-indexed seminar, mostly grad students, was useful and productive. Washed out all the ninnies by then. The survivors had the vocabulary and the critical faculty. The ability to read, and then to read forensically. To describe what their reading experience was like, and to separate critique of the piece from critique of the text-producer. They were crafting narrative, not just guessing.

The biggest difference was the dread/eager contrast when confronting the stack of drafts for the week. Here are eight 200-level stories for nest Tue. Ugh. Here are 12 600-level stories for a week from Wed. Yissss.

It also made me much more empathetic to what agents and eds feel when confronting their slush piles. Like how you feel about restaurant workers, after you've worked in a restaurant.

[Anonymous No.4739465]

>>4739450
Doing it twice, years apart also lent insight to what is snorted at as "a workshop story." Someone here certainly knows this term for a gem-polished, by-the-book, standard issue Contemporary Short Fiction As Defined By The Iowa Group Currently In Charge.

But I'm not sorry for having complied. I think to sell anything today, it is a phase that has to be first reached, in order to be surpassed.

[Anonymous No.4739484]

>>4734946
>There was this one time when someone brought a bunny to class. He stole this bunny from its mother. He hid it in his coat all day and didn't give it enough water. We were all gushing over it. In the end, he brought it home several days and it died (I only know bc I heard he mentioned to his friend that he stored its body in the freezer and was going to bury it when he get home)

...Dude...what...