Turn It In/Action/Random Quotes/My Story Critiqued

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Apparently, we've reached the point in Clarion that people are either reluctant to turn in stories or they have no stories to turn in. We only had three stories today. Andy says to turn them in, even if they're half-assed.

Andy talked about action in stories. Don't make action irrelevant. Are story conflicts resolved through violence? Ass-whippings conclude nothing. Two people going at it solves nothing. Andy's not opposed to violent stories, but you have to deal with the social issues of the people involved. Violence has to serve some purpose other than head-busting.

Also look at how much exposition is going on. Is there a lot of dense text? There shouldn't be. Read James Ellroy. He writes brutal novels, but you see very few blocks of exposition. Most of the story is told in action and dialogue.

Experiment with forms. Tackle things you may not be able to handle. Try things a little beyond you.

Random Quotes:

Beautiful prose can convey muddy information.

Don't conceal or delay something from the reader that the POV character obviously knows.

Dashes are distracting. Use them sparringly.

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My story "Community Service" was critiqued. I think I can safely say this was my weakest offering of the workshop. And while several people thought the writing was good, several pointed out (and rightfully so) that the story is heavy-handed, preachy, cliched, and avoids the hard questions. Andy cautioned that afterlife stories invaribly invite harsh comments. "Use the theology you want and disregard the rest." He recommended stories by James Van Pelt to see this done well.

I didn't really have much to say at the end of the critiques, other than "I take fully responsibility for subjecting you to such a lousy story." When I think about it now, I realize that the critiques could have been much more harsh. It really is a lousy story. Okay, so I've given myself permission to write crap, and there it is. I can either dwell on the fact that I've written a crappy story, or I can get to work on another one. That's one of the great things about Clarion - If you write a real turd, you don't really have time to dwell on it for very long. Right now I have to dwell on the fact that I have my conference with Andy this afternoon.