Writing Classes I wished I had

Refining Writing Educating

It hasn’t that been long since I graduated, but college already feels like a distant past. Which means I’ve reflected on it and what I wish had gone differently, especially in terms of classes.

The main creative writing classes at my college were writer’s workshops, which is when you write something, everyone else reads it, and you have a group discussion about it. I already had experience with these workshops going in, thanks to writing classes for teens that I had signed up for. By graduation I was a little sick of the format.

Thankfully that puts me in a mindset for thinking of even slight variations on the standard. So I outlined some classes I wished I had taken, but weren’t even options for me.

Fantasy Writer’s Workshop

This one was actively discussed during my time at college, namely I recall a class where the proposal for this was brought up and I had a chance to give my opinion. Which was that it was needed, but for those outside the world of creative writing classes I suppose it makes sense why the need would be confusing.

Not all writing professors are accepting of all genres, and by all genres I mean the speculative ones. My first creative writing class in college was with a professor where you had to get permission to write fantasy by going over your idea with the professor first, something other genres didn’t. That inherently sets a clear hierarchy of genres.

I envied the person who immediately transferred out of that class due to feeling their YA writing wouldn’t be respected, because they were right. Of all the writer’s workshops I’ve been in, especially in college, that was the only one where I felt my writing just wasn’t understood.

Saying people didn’t understand it is a cop out defense most of the time (all the time when used for classics), which is why I didn’t fully trust the feeling. But, I didn’t feel that way in any other workshop, and I still feel that way about that one. So I should trust it.

Thankfully most of my other creative writing classes were with a professor who while unfamiliar with fantasy, accepted it and his lack of familiarity. That was enough for me.

However, instead of fantasy writers having to go off word of mouth over which professors accept them, it’d be nice to have a clearly designated class for the genre, with a professor capable of spotting when someone is bending to genre conventions the story would be better off pushing. And it’s easier to develop as a writer when not in a hostile environment.

Or college writing classes could stop being an environment where fantasy writers need to do research on if they’ll be allowed to write their genre.

Feedback and Revision

It is both a feature and flaw of writers workshops that your feedback is generally coming from writers somewhere around the same level as you. One aspect that I came away wishing the workshops focused on more was the quality of feedback received. Critique itself is a skill that like writing needs to be consciously developed.

Instead of a full on separate class I could see some tweaks to the standard workshop formula that would help emphasize these skills.

Having a writer’s second workshopped piece be a revision of their first means that you get to see what your feedback on their prior draft led to for the author. For your own writing you get more hands on experience with the revision process instead of starting from scratch again. And then you see what feedback your second version gets. That would bring the classroom writing experience closer to the practical one.

There could also be more discussion of feedback itself, how to engage with the text in a way where you can help your fellow authors in the room. A bit of time dedicated to going over how to tactfully detail why you think part of a story doesn’t work would do a lot for the quality of a writers workshop, give people a bit of a push to give the deep criticisms that can be awkward to say in the third week of the semester.

As absurd as it sounds, I would have absolutely been on board for a professor giving feedback on my feedback (but not in front of the rest of the class). Maybe I should have gone to office hours for that now that I think about it. Either way, I think a built in process where people can be told ‘here’s how your feedback can be more helpful’ would improve the class quality as a whole.

My college did have editing classes, but just as writing them is different, novel and short story critique is different. The editing class I took was on novels while the writing classes were for short stories. Which was a bit of a mismatch.

Even now I sometimes have doubts in my ability to give helpful comments to my writer friends and others. Though I know I’ve improved that skill so I don’t have that doubt as often.

Serial Fiction Class

While I was in college I’d have most likely not taken this class even if it was offered, but I don’t recall anything like this being offered. Serial fiction has had a quiet boom with the internet, Substack is really only one later part of it. I partook in it without consciously thinking of it, because it’s the default with fanfiction. So I think there’s both solid grounding for a serial fiction class and an understandable reason why there wasn’t one at my college.

Also, while I’ve had thoughts on how writer’s workshops could be adjusted to improve feedback itself, the ideas aren’t flowing as smoothly for a class on serial fiction. It has the same problem as novels, it’s hard to fit into a semester sized class with multiple students. I could barely fit my novel into a senior thesis sized hole by only doing parts of it.

One trick I saw another student do was that they submitted chapters of their novel as their workshop pieces, with the last one being the outline of the entire novel. It was very much a bending of the rules, but what if there was a class where that was the intended method? I think they were on to something there.

There is also one potential advantage I see for a serial fiction workshop class, which is that the usual writer’s workshop system my college used led to sizable gaps between when you shared your own writing. Which could be taken advantage of to represent the natural time gaps that define the process of serialization.

Maybe all you need for a serial fiction class is to take a standard writer’s workshop class and give it a specific focus, like with the fantasy writers class idea. Either way I wouldn’t have known how relevant that class would turn out to be for me. And now I’m getting a crash course on serial fiction with Battles Beneath the Stars.

Researching for Fiction Writing

I did have a class that was outright called ‘Research Writing’ which I fondly recall, but in that case the writing was non-fiction. And as I often have to stress, different kinds of writing are different, they require different skillsets.

Fiction writing of any genre can require some form of research, even just for inspiration. I like to write about mythology and value faithful depictions, so it’s especially relevant for me. Meanwhile I don’t care much for historical accuracy aside from particularly glaring inaccuracies, but for plenty of people anachronistic fashion can be a dealbreaker.

Instead of another workshop class, I could see it as more of a ‘turn in a story every now and then to the professor’ type class. Where each story needs to involve some research with the process being shared as part of the assignment.

This class idea was absolutely prompted by the fact that I wish I had it right now, so I don’t have the clearest idea of what exactly would be taught in lessons. But I’d hope for something on how to tell when you have enough research and can move on to writing. And how to stick with dense academic reads, since I’m not the best at reading those even when I care a lot about the subject.

But you can’t keep going to writing classes and reading books on writing forever. At some point you need to go out and start doing things instead of relying on curriculum or formulas other people laid out. So I’ll develop these skills by practice, outside the structured environment of a classroom.

It’s too late for me to benefit from most of the ideas laid out in this post, partially for the obvious reason of graduating and not wanting to go back to school. But hopefully this has given some other people ideas on what to look for in their writing education.