Hmm, another tough question. Boy, you're good at coming up with them

Let's see. Can good writing be taught . . .

Honestly, I believe that good writing is a mixture of passion and practice. You have to learn Craft, what its components are. You have to harvest your potential and fill your Writer's Toolbox with a writer's knowledge to become efficient--you must master Telling and Showing, Character Development, along with many other tools and skills every successful writer commits to memory.

At the same time, a writer must feel passionate about their writing. They have to have the tenacity and the will to get their stories out despite everyone else's opinions. It's my belief that if someone was meant to be a writer, published or unpublished, they'd write no matter the adversity they face. Writing is in our blood--it's the oxygen we breathe. Good writers write because they have to, because it's their passion.

Anyone can write. But not everyone will have the passion to write no matter the odds.

So, in conclusion, yes, good writing can be taught. But without passion, I doubt the stories they produce will be full of life. Then again, without the skills and knowledge successful writers utilize, all the writer will have is the potential, unharvested and un-nurtured. Innate talent and learned skill must be combined for the writing to be 'good', as you put it.

Amber

I think that talent is the wrong word. I think the necessary factor is interest. Interest, delight, in language well used, and years of wide reading, paying close attention to how marvelous sentences and paragraphs and, ultimately, plots are put together. We have to develop our judgment, and make ourselves aware of the approaches that other writers have used, and decide what we are comfortable with and what is compatible with our particular vision. To rely on rules and, even worse, formulas, will result in eminently forgettable prose.

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No, it is not talent. It is interest, fascination with beautiful constructions that carry a story. Yes, writing can be - not taught - it can be learned. But we teach ourselves. It comes down to the willingness to do a lot of hard work. It is hard work, and a lot of self-doubt, and a lot of pain. 

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Amber is right. It takes guts to write. And tenacity. It is not a choice. It is a vocation.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 5/23/2015, 4:52 PM--

The mechanics of writing can be learned, though it's harder for some of us than it is for others. I learned to ride a bicycle. That was easy. But dancing? Maybe I could learn that, but it would be a long painful apprenticeship, and I doubt anyone would ever think me a good dancer.

For me "good (fiction) writing" requires the ability to connect with an audience. "Good writing" combines a journeyman's skill at the mechanics with the emotional intelligence to pull the readers into the story, to make the story real for them, at least for a little while. This emotional intelligence may be learned too, but it's harder even than learning to dance.

Interesting perspectives indeed!

Another question I am musing over--if "good writing" can be taught to a student with the passion to learn, what are the best ways to teach and learn the skills you need?

I just do not think it can be taught, per se. I think you must be exposed to excellent writing, and helped to understand why it is good, and then the onus is on the reader, to learn to see it themselves. 

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I have read nine chapters of a work this weekend, it is cliche all the way, yet it has dozens of five star reviews on Amazon. I'd say it is so juvenile that it is aimed at YA, except that I think YA-ers are more sophisticated than that. With that kind of positive response (they can't all be her friends) the author may build a paying career. I wish her the best in that regard. 

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Perry talks about emotional intelligence, a worthwhile story. I am talking about artistry. Both are essential. We find our own way to these Holy Grails. Or not. No one can do it for us.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 5/26/2015, 1:46 PM--

Lucy wrote,  "Another question I am musing over--if 'good writing' can be taught to a student with the passion to learn, what are the best ways to teach and learn the skills you need?"

There are a lot of right answers to this one. I’ll try.

1.       Find encouragement in focused, strength building criticism delivered in a safe environment by a competent teacher. The competence of the teacher is important. My biggest waste of time was in my one college course in creative writing. The professor was in over his depth.

2.       Study the mechanics from respected sources.

3.       Read a lot, including outside your own genre. Ask yourself why the author used this technique there, or that word in this sentence.

4.       Write, working for quality over quantity.

5.       Practice complementary skills. Elementary school teachers have told me that music, math, and foreign languages build ways of thinking that strengthen reading and writing.

6.       Watch people. Try to decide why they do what they do. Ask yourself why she walks that way.  If it has less to do with her and more to do with the shoes, ask yourself why she wears those shoes.

7.       Submit on a schedule. Send shorts to magazines, journals, club newsletters, church bulletins. Send stories or chapters to contests. Building credentials will keep you engaged in writing.

8.       Persevere. If you want to do this, keep at it. It’s not a short or easy road for most of us.

I'm trying to cover Mimi's artistry in 3, 4, and 5.

--edited by Perry on 5/26/2015, 1:49 PM--

Perry, as a former creative writing teacher, my curiosity is piqued by #1. What made this teacher incompetent? How did that play out in the classroom?

What have other BC members' experiences in creative writing classes been like? Has anything particularly great--or terrible--happened in a traditional class for you?

Lucy wrote "Perry, as a former creative writing teacher, my curiosity is piqued by #1. What made this teacher incompetent? How did that play out in the classroom?"

Another professor had taught the creative writing course for years. His sections were full, and I was scheduled with a guy who had never taught the course before, and was doing it as an overload. It was 1970. College campuses were the centers of protest against an unpopular war in SE Asia. Some professors, especially liberal arts professors, especially this professor, would do anything to keep another young man in school, safe from the draft. This meant, among other things, that the professor let us choose our own course grade. 

 The professor was a New Age let's all get together and chant our own mantras kind of guy. He had us push the desks into a circle. He sat in one of the student desks and told us on the first day that we probably knew more about writing than he did. There was no apparent curriculum. We sat in a circle and shot the bull until someone was finally brave enough to read something they had written. The rest of us tried to be supportive, but we didn't know how to offer any constructive criticism. No one had to read. We only read when we wanted to. I passed out copies of and read a Rocky and Bullwinkle script, and my classmates smiled and applauded. The script was crap.

The professor brought in an anonymous poem for us to look at. It was crap and we said so. He was sore, and we realized then that he had written it himself, and was proud of it. He had never published anything but the scholarly research articles he needed to advance in the tenure ranks. He's still alive, and he still hasn't published any fiction.

The guy was pretty self important. I knew him better than most. He was my major advisor. I took him trout fishing once, and it was the same there. He talked a good game, and couldn't catch a fish. I could go on, but I won't. It was a lost school term, a lost opportunity. 

--edited by Perry on 5/26/2015, 8:34 PM--

Wow. That reminds me of that David Sedaris essay where Sedaris gets hired to teach a creative writing class that coincided with his favorite soap opera, so he had the class watch it together.

For those who have taken good writing classes, what materials, lessons, etc., helped you to learn how to become better at critiques?

Lucy, I'm full of half-baked opinions, and I know it. And I work it, amusingly, I hope. Anything I say should be taken with that firmly in mind.

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I think strategy can be taught, but not music, not the stuff that makes me stop and read a line again and again, green with envy. What do you think?

I truly do not know. I loved what you said, Mimi, about the necessary factor being interest.

Interest is definitely what's motivating me lately. I feel really interested in the WIP, figuring it out, all the hows and whys and whos. The novel feels like a really hard and nuanced question.

I think interest counts more than talent. By which I mean, interest in reading, and taking lessons from, the best. 

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Interest, that I have. Talent? In some areas. I lack discipline. I go overboard, in many directions. Yet my style is a reflection of my non-linear thinking, and I probably can't write any other way. And I know myself well enough to know that in the end, I'm going to go my own sweet way, wise-ass atheist cat and Virgin-Mary role-playing whore and all. In terms of commercial, I'm a disaster. Add my other nonsense, and a paper doll on top, and, with luck, I've got a goof on the order of Amanda McKittrick-Ros. I would love to be the Amanda McKittrick-Ros of the twenty-first century.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 5/28/2015, 6:50 PM--

As a matter of fact, I find this on today's blog, by Kerri Kolen, an editor at Putnam:

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From Word One, the voice will set a manuscript apart. And then pretty soon thereafter, I will be able to tell if the writing is singular or not, as well. Those two qualities are so incredibly important for obvious reasons, but also because those are the qualities that are very difficult, if not impossible, to teach a writer or tease out in an edit.

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This is my view as well. Mechanics can be taught. Voice and style, I say not.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/2/2015, 11:49 PM--

Can good writing be taught?

No. Yes. It depends. (On the intelligence and experience of the writer + the clarity and incisiveness of the inspirational teacher.)

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/11/2015, 10:51 PM--