Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In Which I Bite the Bullet

After my rant this morning, and a discussion with hubby, I signed up for the writing course.  It's offered through our local college and is only $95 for a six-week, 12-lesson course.  Today was the first day of the current session, so I just squeaked in under the registration deadline.

Time to bite the bullet - an expression used in regards to something extremely painful.  Biting down on a bullet was a way to release pain in the Old West, while they were digging another one out of your shoulder, for example.  The first lesson was a rehash of a previous course on story structure and what not.  I'm glad I skipped that course because it had to do with Outlining, Premise and The Three Act Structure.  It suggested starting with a theme and developing a premise and plot from there.

Urg.

I need wine.

I can't plan a story in a vacuum or decide ahead of time what will happen. My mind just doesn't work that way. I start out with some characters, put them in a setting and let them start interacting.  All that other stuff grows from there.  But, I got 100% on the quiz, which was all I needed.  I'm looking forward to learning about Dialogue, Scene Structure, Viewpoint, Setting and the like.  The course does seem to be very well set up and the lessons are clearly written and easy to follow.

Deep down, of course, I'm hoping that the course will simply confirm that I already intuitively know everything.  Because I'm an Abstract Sequential learner and that's just the way I roll.

Yeah, right.

9 comments:

  1. The only issue I have with going back to such a course (besides not knowing if you'll get a good teacher or bad one) is that I don't get to write about what I want to write about, but have to write about what the teacher wants.

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  2. It's great you're taking a course! But you should always go with your writerly instincts above all else! You don't always have to follow the rules.

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  3. huh i agree with you. I've actually read in quite a few books that starting with theme is a death trap because it winds up preachy. BUT i don't know if that's true.

    And hey, i think we all secretly hope that we are super duper awesome and the BESTEST EVER and then are a little sad when we're reminded that growing is a continuous journey

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  4. Ted, you can use your WIP for most of the assignments. Completing them is optional, anyway. The only thing that counts is the final exam, but I don't know what that consists of.

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  5. This sounds like an exciting challenge: starting with a theme and a premise? What did you decide to experiment with?

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  6. I'm not, Elaine. That was just the suggestion that the course materials made for starting a story. I don't think I care for that approach, although it seems to work well for many other writers.

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  7. A good teacher helps. But even a bad one teaches by giving you material for later writing in clueless characters!

    Hope your class is all you hoped it would be. Roland

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