by Charlie Fabre
What I learned through my Creative Writing BA and MA and why I definitely recommend taking a class if you can
I knew I wanted to be a writer before going to university: I’d been writing since I was a young kid, and I had made up my mind that that’s what I wanted to do for a living when I was 16. So I talked to my mom about it and she suggested that I look at what universities would offer a creative writing course, which I thought was just ridiculous – I didn’t need to be taught how to write, you can’t teach people how to write. That’s insane, a waste of money, and a waste of time.
I didn’t want to study creative writing when I was 18, but now I’m 22 and I have a Creative Writing BA under my belt and I’ve just completed my Creative Writing MA!
I didn’t realize that, as much as writing is talent based in some respects, there is still massive amounts of technical work that go behind it, and you need both talent and an understanding of the craft in order to write a publishable novel (or poem, or short story, or screenplay, etc.). If I hadn’t gone and studied Creative Writing at a higher level and just written a novel with no further knowledge (as was my original plan), I wouldn’t have improved in the ways that I have, and I wouldn’t have found the genre and medium and style that works best for me.
Now, it’s easy to say ‘Oh, just go to university’. Not everyone can afford to, and I was incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to pursue both a BA and MA at Lancaster University and Royal Holloway, but really this advice goes for any form of teaching, whether it be an academic university degree, or a late-night weekly creative writing class. Here’s what I learned during my degrees and why I think that if you can, you should definitely take a creative writing class.
Define Your Style
Style is essentially what makes your writing and story unique to you. It’s what sets one author apart from another and creates the literary voice of the piece. Before I went to uni I was writing a lot of YA Fantasy, but I was writing it in a really stiff and un-interesting way, and this was mostly because I was just copying the fantasy I was reading without actually trying to make it original. I was telling the story in the way that I thought I had to, in a voice that wasn’t my own, and that ended up making it actually quite hard to write because I wasn’t getting the same enjoyment by trying to copy someone else’s style.
When you’re starting out it can be a good idea to copy other author’s style as a way of practicing, but as you grow as a writer you’ll want to distance yourself from that. Style is something that comes with experience, the more you write the more you’ll find sure footing and find what makes your writing authentic.
My style has grown so much. You can really sense it when comparing work I wrote when I was 18 to work I wrote when I was 22. It feels more like myself and I know that I can write like that. I think a lot of what holds young writers back is this idea that there are rules, but there aren’t! You can be as creative and experimental and niche as you like.
Find your form and genre
A phrase that was commonly repeated by my tutors was ‘Good writers are good readers’ and this is definitely true, especially if you are a genre writer. To really perfect your writing in crime, for example, the key is to read lots and lots of crime novels. That’s not to say that you should read lots of Christie and copy Christie. You should read lots of different authors and different kinds of crime – written by men and women, different settings, protagonists, etc. This is what’s going to help you understand the ins and outs of the genre, how it works and what makes it work, and that will also help you to find the areas in which you can add something original to the mix through your own style.
I think what really helped me in taking a creative writing course was that during my workshops I was prompted to write in different forms and genres. Even though I’m a short literary fiction writer and I mostly employ third person narratives, I was asked to write and submit poems, or excerpts of a drama or a comedy. Things I wouldn’t have written in my spare time. But it pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and see what these different genres and forms can bring.
I say I’m a short fiction writer, but when I started my course I wanted to write long novels, maybe with sequels, and it’s through the course that I discovered a love for short fiction, something I had never considered. I also discovered that I love writing non-fiction which was especially a no-no for my younger self. So it’s really valuable to do something different and maybe you’ll end up finding that you like it.
There’s no rush
Your first draft is NEVER (or very rarely) going to be the one that gets published and that is normal and this is true for every writer you can think of. A first draft is necessary though, and it’s the hardest step, because once it’s all out on the paper, it’s so much easier to figure out the kinks and edit everything.
I used to think I could just write my story all in one go and that it would be perfect and consistent in tone and characterisation, and that I would love it and it would be the best thing in the world! I mean, that would be ideal, but that’s not the case. There is genuinely no rush to get it done. I wanted to publish my first novel at the age of 22 (the age I am now) out of some vanity because the great authors of the past published so young, so I was desperate for my first go to be the final product, but surprise surprise: it got me nowhere.
Editing is crucial. And before that, planning is as well. This doesn’t mean you need documents and documents filled with every single minute detail of your novel. However, planning an outline, creating brief character arcs and using basic story structure will be such a blessing further down the line. I was a notorious anti-planner, and still I tend to hurl myself into projects without thinking where it’s actually going to go, but knowing the basic goals and outcomes of your story will help you so much along the way. Yes, it takes time to think about and sometimes you just want to get going straight away, but I promise you it will be time well-spent.
It’s often said that writing isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Don’t go alone
Lastly, and this is the one I find most important, writing should not be an isolated experience. Sitting down to write is usually (depending on your process) done better alone, in peace and quiet, but after that, when it comes to your edits and your rewrites, you need to share it.
This can be daunting, it feels really intimate sharing your work with others, and it feels personal when you get feedback and it’s negative, but it’s necessary. The two university courses I was on made us do weekly feedback sessions with the class. I assume most universities and writing classes will be the same. It was really scary at first, but what ended up happening was that I was getting feedback from people with lots of different perspectives which was so valuable to my work. I started considering aspects and problems that I hadn’t thought about before. There’s so much to learn from other people, teachers or peers, and for me feedback and workshopping in a small group is key. We also became really interested in each other’s projects which feels so great to know that you’re writing something people actually want to read.
Feedback isn’t personal. It’s not a direct attack on you, and if someone doesn’t like what you’ve written, that’s okay. You’ll never please everyone. But what feedback is is a way for you to see how you could improve and also to get out of your author’s headspace and view the work as a reader, because those points of view are different.
This isn’t to say you should share your work with every single person you know and ask for their input – that’s probably going to be too much – but you should find one or two people whose opinions you trust and ask them to take a look and help where they can.
If you’re interested in writing and publishing your work one day, taking a creative writing course isn’t always necessary. I’m sure plenty of authors have done it on their own, but it can definitely help and it certainly set me on the track I currently am today, and I feel so much more confident in my writing. I know what I’m doing.
This article is coming at a time when Swim Press is starting to post Swimming Lessons’ (writing tips and advice) on our social media, and we are also offering a feedback service for a small fee. Hopefully we’ll be doing more soon. Maybe we’ll host our own workshops? But we are very much invested in helping you guys write and find your footing in the literary world.
We’ll be opening a question box on our Instagram soon where you can ask us anything about all things writing and publishing.
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