Hey /lit/.
I just finished an advanced creative writing workshop last semester, which ended up being a irritating experience. Most of the students were snobby, pretentious upperclassmen who equated good writing to whether or not a piece conformed to their own personal tastes. They focused heavily on expressing whether a piece was good or not rather than talking about what in a story worked/didn't work and why. They opted to criticize instead of being constructive. They'd share where THEY would want the story to go and do for them --rather than looking at the story as it is. (They'd openly say that something was "bad" or "fell flat on its face" or that something is "wrong" just because they didn't like it.) What further made this infuriating is that these wannabe literary critics could barely write themselves.
I'm retaking an entry level class in the fall, and though I'm sure the same issues won't appear in full (since beginners aren't so confident in their writing and tastes being gospel), I'd still like some advice on making workshops more pleasant and rewarding. Perhaps general rules to set up or practices to employ?
tl;dr: General creative writing/ workshop advice thread, I guess.
Pic unrelated.
>>8169256
imo workshops are always very dependent on the instructor leading the discussion but if you get stuck with a shit cohort there's not much you can do other than seek feedback elsewhere (ie the instructor, during office hours)
>>8169256
This is fairly typical. All the old models of "how to write well" have been dismissed or reduced to "one model among many". People look for what "works for them". Thus, they read your work through their own tastes and opinions, not someone else's theory or convention.
You can help push your fellow students away from this. I suggest you look at the workshop process as a roleplaying opportunity.
When you read another student's work, take on a new identity. What would a fascist think of it? What would a Buddhist? Pick a writer you don't like, try to imagine what they might see in the work. Then offer the viewpoint, "If I were a communist, blah blah blah". "If I were a feminist, blah blah blah".
Some other students might pick up on this, and you'll all stop thinking about yourselves so much.
Also, this is a great exercise to use when making your own art, regardless of medium. It gives you a chance to make things that would otherwise be out of character. I spent a couple weeks in art school making diagrams and scale models of neo-fascist architecture for a nazi-occupied america. It was interesting to get outside of my own head, which was at the time plagued with uncertainty about my own identity.
>Writing Workshops
poor fool
>>8169271
to me, workshops are more dependent on the other students. the instructor can only guide so much. but if you have a bunch of people who are good at writing or at least good at critiquing (which is it's own skill), you'll be inspired by the work that the other people are doing and get good feedback.
>go to a snobby, private liberal arts school to study creative writing
>take a few writing workshops all filled with aspiring creative writing majors
>these people are around twenty years old, claim they've wanted to be writers their whole lives, and still don't know how to use commas or punctuate dialogue properly; even worse, they don't care to learn
>almost every single one of their stories are half-assed and clearly written the night before they're meant to be workshopped, defeating the whole point of critiquing them since they didn't even try
>stories are either rambling, self-indulgent hipster garbage pulled straight out of a /lit/ critique thread or fanfic-tier fantasy bullshit
>still act like snobby, pretentious cunts despite not being able to write worth a damn
>they don't even seem to actually write in their free time at all, they just dress like what they think writers dress like and play pretend for $60k a year on daddy's money
>even the professor merely skims through the stories and offers pretty lame advice, although I can't blame her in the slightest
>often the only changes I wind up making to my stories post-workshop are re-arranging a sentence or two; usually wind up discarding 99% of what everyone says because it's wrong, ill-fitting, or stupid
>mfw I get published in the first semester of my freshman year
>mfw I'm the only one in the class to get published since, four years later
>mfw I dropped out soon after because it was all a giant waste of time and money
