"Twit" is more of an insult here in Texas, United States. I wasn't aware it was a mild expression of disapproval in the UK.
I've spent the last five years studying creative writing, and the thing listed in my post above are simply what puts me off in writing. I'm aware that popular books and fanfiction abound with emotional markers as dialogue tags, but for me that indicates only that the writer has a place where he or she could improve their text. I don't expect others to agree with me on this, but I have found it common in my studies. In the beginning, I thought the idea of staying with "said" and "asked" was silly, but over time, I was convinced that my original stance on that topic was uneducated and the mark of my immaturity as a writer. Here, I mean immaturity as someone new to the craft and the study of the craft, not as a comment on the person's personality.
I do not think creativity can be taught, however, I think it can be coaxed, guided, studied, and disciplined. I believe I can teach my students techniques that they can incorporate into their own styles as writers. First, they have to know what kind of writer they want to be. The literary, academic, popular, and fanfiction worlds all have different standards and different rewards. Each writer has to decide where he or she wants to be. In my own field (literary and academic), we don't tolerate emotional markers in our publications and do reject stories (or occasionally ask for a rewrite) that contain them. The journal manage gets about 3,000 submissions a year, but we only publish about 40 to 50 works per year. We're a mid-teir journal (not the best nor the worst of our literary class), however, we get to be pretty picky about what we choose to publish. What I've learned as an editor are the things that most put other editors off when going through the slush pile of submissions, and I pass this along to my students in addition to workshopping their stories, teaching about revision, and getting them to finish something.
I find the semester confining, but it is a part of the university system. Currently, I am teaching an Introduction to Creative Writing for Non-creative writing majors course where my students spent a measley five weeks on each area (poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction). This course is very limited in scope and time, and I see my cheif job as to encourage these budding writers to explore their passion for writing while pointing them towards some modern successful writers and some technical tips to improve their work. I meet with them individually to discuss their writing desires and try to direct my lectures to give each student something he or she is seeking to improve. Sometimes, this is about plotting. Other times, it's about story constuction. Last week, I assigned everyone to go eavesdrop in the Union building for 30 minutes taking notes on actual dialogue and then give me their thoughts on real dialogue versus written dialogue and the problems associated with it.
But yes, creativity is more concise and uniform when taught in semesters. This is a danger of becomming to inundated in the system, of only accepting the "accepted" way of doing things, and of getting mired in rules instead of learning them so you can learn to break them. One of the reasons I enjoy fanfiction is that it is so very looked down upon in my field. I find value here and want to find a way to make it more accepted in the world of academia.
I've spent the last five years studying creative writing, and the thing listed in my post above are simply what puts me off in writing. I'm aware that popular books and fanfiction abound with emotional markers as dialogue tags, but for me that indicates only that the writer has a place where he or she could improve their text. I don't expect others to agree with me on this, but I have found it common in my studies. In the beginning, I thought the idea of staying with "said" and "asked" was silly, but over time, I was convinced that my original stance on that topic was uneducated and the mark of my immaturity as a writer. Here, I mean immaturity as someone new to the craft and the study of the craft, not as a comment on the person's personality.
I do not think creativity can be taught, however, I think it can be coaxed, guided, studied, and disciplined. I believe I can teach my students techniques that they can incorporate into their own styles as writers. First, they have to know what kind of writer they want to be. The literary, academic, popular, and fanfiction worlds all have different standards and different rewards. Each writer has to decide where he or she wants to be. In my own field (literary and academic), we don't tolerate emotional markers in our publications and do reject stories (or occasionally ask for a rewrite) that contain them. The journal manage gets about 3,000 submissions a year, but we only publish about 40 to 50 works per year. We're a mid-teir journal (not the best nor the worst of our literary class), however, we get to be pretty picky about what we choose to publish. What I've learned as an editor are the things that most put other editors off when going through the slush pile of submissions, and I pass this along to my students in addition to workshopping their stories, teaching about revision, and getting them to finish something.
I find the semester confining, but it is a part of the university system. Currently, I am teaching an Introduction to Creative Writing for Non-creative writing majors course where my students spent a measley five weeks on each area (poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction). This course is very limited in scope and time, and I see my cheif job as to encourage these budding writers to explore their passion for writing while pointing them towards some modern successful writers and some technical tips to improve their work. I meet with them individually to discuss their writing desires and try to direct my lectures to give each student something he or she is seeking to improve. Sometimes, this is about plotting. Other times, it's about story constuction. Last week, I assigned everyone to go eavesdrop in the Union building for 30 minutes taking notes on actual dialogue and then give me their thoughts on real dialogue versus written dialogue and the problems associated with it.
But yes, creativity is more concise and uniform when taught in semesters. This is a danger of becomming to inundated in the system, of only accepting the "accepted" way of doing things, and of getting mired in rules instead of learning them so you can learn to break them. One of the reasons I enjoy fanfiction is that it is so very looked down upon in my field. I find value here and want to find a way to make it more accepted in the world of academia.
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