Alec Campion Was Right About These People.
I've gotten my reviews back from our first writing exercise in my fiction class, being three peer reviews (well, two, one of my reviewers didn't show) and one from the professor himself. I've been having my doubts about this gentleman, as he assigns the most unimaginative prompts EVER for these exercises. For example, this past prompt we had to pick one classic character stereotype from a short list of options he gave us ("the aging film star", "the domineering wife", etc.) and write a short character sketch, from roughly 400-700 words, that distinguishes the character from their cliche. That was it, the entire prompt.
So I sat down and wrote out a snippet about a young man who's lost his lover, a pirate queen caught and hanged by the British Navy, those jerks, and drowns himself in liquor every night (having chosen the stereotype "the drunk"...imagination unbounded. Can you blame me for doing it up interestingly? And if the writing isn't interesting, what's the point?) My peer reviewers wouldn't stop raving about the exercise: seriously, they didn't say one negative thing about it, and positively gushed. Which was sweet and made me glow all happy, if not necessarily instructive.
My professor, on the other foot, is a pill and a half. Aside from correcting one or two complicated turns of phrase and punctuations, most of which were fine as-is, he said only two things about the piece. One of them was a little note at the very top of the writing: "isn't this a little long?"
It was a paragraph over two pages.
And the font was big.
Cry me a river, prof.
The other major remark he made was a short paragraph just after the end of the story, that went a little something like this: "Sarah, you had great characterization and fluid narration, and I don't want to limit your creativity," 'Of *course* not,' thought I with a sneer, "but I wanted you to write about what you know in these exercises. You should be using examples from your life and experiences to write, and as you write more about the real world that you live in, your writing skills will develop more, blah blah blah reality, blah blah blah some unintelligible scribbles about doing research, blah blah blah."
And that was all.
I could just spit.
Is this or is this not a FICTION class?! I know everyone else in the class (with the exception of the incapable person who wrote about gangsters driving around and shooting eachother for no reason and with no punctuation In Script Format) did their little pieces on insipid twenty-somethings having dull conversations about nothing or caught up in ridiculous personal dramas the authors probably borrowed from the TV show they watched while writing the exercise, and I know because I *read* everyone's exercises, but honestly?! Nobody cares about that sort of drivel! And that's all anyone's life *is* right now (although I'd love to see what the professor said to Mister Script-Formatted Gangster Author, who was obviously Not alive in 1950). If that's all anyone ever writes about, we're all going to be going out of our minds by the fourth exercise! While critiquing my assigned stories, I was hoping my fellow classmates would grow some inspiration during the course of this semester, but obviously that's contrary to the professor's mission here.
In a FICTION class.
RRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!
Maybe that cute redheaded fencing club coach would be interested in running away with me to live in the slums of Naples or London or New York or sommat.
So I sat down and wrote out a snippet about a young man who's lost his lover, a pirate queen caught and hanged by the British Navy, those jerks, and drowns himself in liquor every night (having chosen the stereotype "the drunk"...imagination unbounded. Can you blame me for doing it up interestingly? And if the writing isn't interesting, what's the point?) My peer reviewers wouldn't stop raving about the exercise: seriously, they didn't say one negative thing about it, and positively gushed. Which was sweet and made me glow all happy, if not necessarily instructive.
My professor, on the other foot, is a pill and a half. Aside from correcting one or two complicated turns of phrase and punctuations, most of which were fine as-is, he said only two things about the piece. One of them was a little note at the very top of the writing: "isn't this a little long?"
It was a paragraph over two pages.
And the font was big.
Cry me a river, prof.
The other major remark he made was a short paragraph just after the end of the story, that went a little something like this: "Sarah, you had great characterization and fluid narration, and I don't want to limit your creativity," 'Of *course* not,' thought I with a sneer, "but I wanted you to write about what you know in these exercises. You should be using examples from your life and experiences to write, and as you write more about the real world that you live in, your writing skills will develop more, blah blah blah reality, blah blah blah some unintelligible scribbles about doing research, blah blah blah."
And that was all.
I could just spit.
Is this or is this not a FICTION class?! I know everyone else in the class (with the exception of the incapable person who wrote about gangsters driving around and shooting eachother for no reason and with no punctuation In Script Format) did their little pieces on insipid twenty-somethings having dull conversations about nothing or caught up in ridiculous personal dramas the authors probably borrowed from the TV show they watched while writing the exercise, and I know because I *read* everyone's exercises, but honestly?! Nobody cares about that sort of drivel! And that's all anyone's life *is* right now (although I'd love to see what the professor said to Mister Script-Formatted Gangster Author, who was obviously Not alive in 1950). If that's all anyone ever writes about, we're all going to be going out of our minds by the fourth exercise! While critiquing my assigned stories, I was hoping my fellow classmates would grow some inspiration during the course of this semester, but obviously that's contrary to the professor's mission here.
In a FICTION class.
RRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!
Maybe that cute redheaded fencing club coach would be interested in running away with me to live in the slums of Naples or London or New York or sommat.