Marking creative writing

It’s a subject of some concern to most writers who work in the teaching industry – how do we actually mark creative writing. (The other subject of concern is, of course, can you teach creative writing? – but more of that, perhaps, in another blog post.)

Warwick University covers itself thus:

Students as well as academic staff, at Warwick and elsewhere, often ask the question as to how one marks creative writing. Indeed, they often wonder if it is even possible? Surely, they say, this is a subjective response, a matter of taste? After all, what mark would one give to The Divine Comedy?

We would attest that it is a matter, certainly, of experience and wide reading. And that we all, as readers and critics, "mark" creative writing every day in the act of reading and the act of criticism or writing reviews. That, even as we talk about books and authors in our seminars and in our daily lives, we are making judgements. We are placing a metaphorical "score" against our experience of reading. And, while it would be wonderful and humbling to have Dante sign up for the Masters in Writing, we are aware that writing of that level and focus is rare. Exceptionally rare.

When I first started teaching Professional Writing and Editing at TAFE, we marked students only as Competent and Non Competent – meaning that if a student was marked as Non Competent, they could always return to the module/unit and repeat it until they were deemed Competent. Under this system students could focus on the comments they received on their writing, rather than on a graded system.

Of course, you could argue that graded systems abound in the publishing industry; best manuscripts awards, awards for emerging writers, umpteen best book of the year awards in every category and the ever-present best-seller list. There are also readers’ reports, editors’ comments and reviews.

Aside from all this are the casual remarks from innocent bystanders:
‘You’re a writer! Have I heard of you?’
‘Oh,’ says the nearly-famous one, a little chuffed, ‘perhaps. I’m X’
‘Hmm. No, no, I don’t think I have. Unless – you didn’t write for that comedy show on Chanel 10 – or was it 7? Or am I thinking of the actor? I might be thinking of the actor. You have the same kind of stubble as the actor. That’s what it is. Of course. Except he’s much more…well, he goes to gym. I guess you’re not so much in the public eye.’ (said in a kindly tone.)

or (at a Festival)
‘Oh, you’re the bird who wrote the vampire story?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘The one that was complete drivel, right? No shred of truth in the #$%^ plot, it was simply wish-fulfilment from start to finish?’
‘Well, I’m not sure about that. I mean, sure the plot may have been…and the characters were...but I have readers who…’
‘Yeah, that’s what I mean, love. There wasn’t any truth in it. Trust me, I know.’

I’ve worked as an editor and, in one publication where I worked, we had four piles: Over my Dead Body, No, Maybe, Yes.

The Maybe category often received a fulsome rejection letter – by fulsome I mean longer than a pre-typed letter: ‘Your submission may be perfectly acceptable elsewhere, but for a variety of reasons we cannot publish it in our publication.’

A fulsome rejection letter may have contained something like the following:

‘We loved reading your story but queried the narratorial voice in which it was written. Third person omniscient seemed like too large a voice for a very short, highly contained short story chronicling twenty-four hours in the life of a bedridden invalid. Was it strictly necessary to include three voice from her past, the voices of her three siblings and the (imagined) voices of the holy trinity? Perhaps if you revised this so the reader could focus on the poignant shift from past to present you’d have a stronger central character and a more credible plot.’

As a Prof Writing and Editing teacher I’m not allowed to return assignments marked simply Over My Dead Body (not that I did as an editor, either!). I have to justify my marks. So, I assign certain marks for certain elements of the writing piece and hope to balance the more subjective elements with the objective.

Before you become carried away that marking Prof Writing and Editing may be too subjective let me refer you back to the opening comment from Warwick University:

We would attest that it is a matter, certainly, of experience and wide reading. And that we all, as readers and critics, "mark" creative writing every day in the act of reading and the act of criticism or writing reviews. That, even as we talk about books and authors in our seminars and in our daily lives, we are making judgements.

The subjective elements, tempered by my years in the industry, working as a writer across a few forms and genres, as an editor and a long-time organiser of writing-related events such as festivals and spoken word venues, relate to style, language, charcter choice, plot and theme.. The objective relate more to the mechanics of writing and editing – proof reading, use of grammar, syntax and punctuation, character and plot development, structure, and use and understanding of writing techniques, such as narratorial voice, use of simile, metaphor and symbolism. Necessarily these overlap.

The marks, however, are just marks. If you want to learn more about writing, you need to pay attention to the comments – both on the overall comment, the marking criteria, and within your assignment. Please don’t make the mistake one student made which was to equate one comment with one mark lost. There will be some assignments I might make ten comments on – all in reflection of something you’ve said and that student might have an 18/20 mark, other papers might only attract five comments and be marked 10/20.

In the end, I think it pays to read the comments carefully and try to learn from them. When I receive a reader’s report, I might disagree vehemently with some of the comments from the reader but I’ve learnt over the years that my initial response is often too hasty and too defensive. If I let the report sit for a week or so while I do other things – walk the dogs, knit, cook soup or work on a poem – I can come back to it with my editor’s hat on and see where the reader is coming from. Sometimes I still disagree, in which case I take it up with my editor. I take it up without being aggressive. This is quite important to me. I prefer to be as courteous as I can when dealing with anyone other than telemarketers. An aggressive approach to my editor erodes the trust and friendship we’ve built up over the years and, in the end, achieves nothing.

It’s a similar process with reading reviews. After my initial, defensive reading of a review, I prefer to leave them sit for a while – sometimes months – before returning to them to see what I can learn from them.

I know students don’t have the time to let an assignment sit for months but what you can certainly do is try to overcome your initial defensiveness before you approach a tutor for explanations and you can approach tutors with courtesy. We’re on the same side, after all. We’re trying to make you better writers which is why, presumably, you’re doing the course. Working together we can achieve our common goal. Hostility, defensiveness and rudeness stand in the way of what we all want –a piece of writing which is as good as it possibly can be.

The wisdom of P. G. Wodehouse

I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere as they call it, and that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.

Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises its eyebrows, and can't make out what you're talking about.

P. G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, Project Gutenberg, 2007

Want more info on P. G. Wodehouse?

Creating a submissions calendar

One way of making sure you remember the dates of potential publishing opportunities, is to create your own submissions calendar.

The Victorian Writer's Centre newsletter contains information about competition and publishing opportunities and, if you're not a member, you can always see it at your local library.

It's an easy enough task to set up an excel spreadsheet listing the dates of various competitions, word lengths and genres of submissions and any other information you need to know before submitting. Some of this information will be valid from year to year, so you might want to headline big competitions at the beginning of the month, as well as note the exact date.

Submitting work regularly also reduces your own anxiety about whether or not a work is accepted for publication or shortlisted for a competition. If it becomes merely another administrative task for that month, you buy yourself some distance from the event - and that can be an important attitude to establish and maintain. It prepares you, too, for the editing process which can be quite fierce. You will have started to view your own work with more objectivity.

A busy calendar of submissions should keep you on track with both writing and revising. If you receive written rejections from publishers or journals, do read them and listen to what is being said. It's difficult not to be disappointed when your work isn't favourably received. We all fear rejection. But you don't want that fear to overcome your love of writing or your ability to revise. So try to cultivate a professionalism that distances you from your work and allows you to revise and self-edit rigorously. Do listen to comments from others and learn to sift through them and work with the ones that ring true to you.

Talking about talking

What does speech say about a person? The language a person uses in their everyday speech can tell us a lot - it can sometimes tell us the geographical origins of a person. Queenslanders often end a sentence with 'eh?'. In N.S.W. togs are used, rather than bathers. In Queensland, cocktail franks are called cheerios. In Sydney you drink schooners, in Melbourne, pots. Dialects are extreme examples of this, although it's not a great idea to litter written dialogue with dialect - it can make the reader impatient. Dialect can often be suggested in written dialogue through the placement of words, rather than a literal rendition, a more elegant approach.

Language can indicate age, education, status and gender. If a fifty year old man uses the word 'awesome' in its current colloquial sense, this could tell us that he's a little try-hard in the popularity stakes - useful for conveying the character of an insecure teacher, for example. Or, he might be using it ironically, again, useful for conveying particular kind of person, possibly a little pedantic, perhaps a little pompous? A teenage girl who uses text speech as actual speech in dialogue belongs to a certain set. Many teenagers abhor the use of 'lol' and 'rofl' as actual words.

A writer can show shifts in status through language. A once confident phrase can become pleading - and it's repeated use can add to a scene. A phrase used by a character can also be used against them, again adding an ironic twist to a scene.

Above all, dialogue needs to sound as though it can be spoken. We never write dialogue as it is said in real life - it would be full of repetitions, pauses, filler-words and noises. Below attempts to replicate that kind of dialogue.

'I was like, um, you know, just there, when he, um - gosh did you see that? Wow, that was awesome. Yeah, well like I was saying, I was just, you know, um, hanging out...'

'Hey look at those shoes!'

'Yeah, cool. You know my mum, she's like whatshername? You know, she was, I don't know, rich or something.'

'I didn't know your mum was rich?'

'No, not my mum. You're so stupid, you know. You don't ever - anyway, it was this other bitch.'

'You just called your mum a bitch.'

'Oh piss off. You're a biach'

So, by the time you come to the end of that, the plot is lost completely!

What a writer needs to do is to create authentic-sounding dialogue that stays true to the characters. So you need to think of age, education, gender and status. You also have to direct your dialogue so it stays focused.

One of the best ways to test dialogue is to read it aloud. Can you read it without stumbling over words or phrases. Does it sound stilted? A trap for new writers is to avoid contracting verbs, but we use these contractions in our every day speech unless we want to convey a certain emphasis.

'Did you hear what I said?'

'Sorry, I wasn't listening.'

as opposed to:

'Did you hear what I said?'

'Sorry. I was not listening.'

(See how I've emphasised the tone change in the second example by putting a full stop after the word 'sorry'.)

The other tip I'd like to give here is not to over-use dialogue tags. We've all read articles or stories where dialogue tags have been over-used and come away with a feeling that no one in them actually said anything. Characters whimpered, screamed, considered, pondered, wept, sobbed, sighed, whispered, shrieked, wailed and even cogitated but never once said anything. Your dialogue should indicate to the reader how your character is talking. Dialogue tags should be used sparingly - that way they retain their power. To avoid over-using 'said' - allow the proper placement of dialogue on the page and enough observations between lines of dialogue to indicate to the reader who is speaking.

'I don't know what you're talking about.' Michael was bored with the conversation. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes! They'd been talking around the same topic for ten minutes. Unbelievable.

'I just think you take me for granted. You're not even listening to me now. Look at you, checking the time. Do you even know how often you do that?'

God. She had that look. Honestly, he loved Lara. But after she'd been with that mother of hers she was impossible. 'Honey?' He tested the word but Lara shook her head stubbornly.

'What did I say, then?' she asked.

'That I don't respect you.' he said.

'And?'

'That I take you for granted.'

Of course, the best way to study dialogue is to go forth into the world and eavesdrop! Good luck.

New online magazine!

This issue specifically addresses self-censorship in memoirs, so read on...

How Not to Respond to a Review - or a workshop critique!

Check it out! Now, when someone workshops or critiques your work, think back to how uncomfortable you felt reading the author's repeated defenses of her own work! A much more professional approach is to make note firstly of the good things that have been said about your work. And I do mean make a note! It's very easy to hear what people thought could be improved and much harder to remember the elements they enjoyed or thought worked. So, make a note in your writer's journal 'X said my characters were well developed. Y liked my writing style. Z felt my descriptions were vivid.'

Then, calmly and professionally make a note of the areas that need improvement - and notes to yourself on how this might be accomplished. This should help put you in the mindset of revising, rather than defending your work.

1. Opening para needs work - can I introduce the character straight away involved in some action which will show the reader who they are rather than tell them?

2. Mrs. B is too cliched - maybe I should model her more on Aunty May - give her A.M's mangy German Shepherd rather than the spinster cats? She could walk past the local school muttering to it. Kids think it's called Adolf? When really it's Alf?

3. Middle section needs more action - think about it, but there are possibilities to use the best friend situation more. (Or the breakdown in the marriage?)

4. Ending too weak. I'll think about that. Is it too throw-away? But what I emphatically don't want is a too-neat, every tied-off ending. It might be weakened by other problems - partic. the middle section. Leave this revision to last.

Part of being a professional writer is being able to distance yourself from criticism and the editing process - it's not personal. Any critiqueing, whether it's from an editor, a workshop group, a writing tutor or a friend-reader should be about making the work itself stronger. It's one of the hardest lessons to learn, but if you can learn it in your apprenticeship, it will save you from appearing unprofessional. The golden rule in publishing is, of course, never reply to a review unless they actually have a fact wrong - and even then, think a long time before you send the email! Too often you'll simply look whingey at best, unhinged at worst.

Reading as a Writer

I first started my journey reading as a writer when I was on my poetry apprenticeship. I began looking at how poets put a poem together, the images they used, the way motifs or images piled up in a poem, the way line breaks worked - or didn't - and how and why a certain poet was recognisable.

It took me a long time to take this slowed down reading to prose - partly because when I picked up a novel or a short story, I was immersed in the story - reading to discover what happened next.

Reading is one of the most important tools for better writing, however, and when I started to write novels, I began to read novels in the same way as I read poetry. Ahha! That's how that plot element is introduced! That's how the central character is first introduced. This dialogue has a subtext the characters aren't aware of, which enriches my reading experience and furthers the plot. Oh, and how beautiful this passage of descriptive writing is - but look, it's not just describing a setting, it's also adding to my understanding of a character. Sometimes these observations were more about the nuts and bolts of writing - why has this author chosen a multiple point-of-view over a limited point of view. Why have they written in the present tense. If I go through this piece and change it to past tense would I lose anything? Wow - there's an historical inaccuracy! And so on.

Textual analysis is often shunned by new writers - and new students. They 'did' it at school. It ruined the work for them. Writerly analysis will never ruin a work for you - it should, rather, enhance your reading experience and enlarge your writing knowledge. You need to be able to discover and analyse how an author puts together a piece of writing - what tools and techniques he or she is using.

This year - as with every year - I'm keeping a reading journal. In that journal I make notes about important aspects of the books I read - sometimes I'll include quotations from the book to illustrate what I've noted. Sometimes I'll list other books by the author that I'd like to read or interesting biographical notes. A reading journal my mother bought on sale recently also has a section that asks what the reader was doing when she or he was reading the book - I quite like that as re-reading an entry with that chronicled can bring back a specific time and place, so I'll be adding that to my reflections.

Most of all this year, I'll be reading slowly - I got an e-reader for Christmas and I'm in love with the ability to make annotations on it. Having grown up in a secondhand bookshop I hate the idea of writing on an actual book - and highlighting a text? Never! But the e-reader gives me this opportunity without actually wrecking any pages, which is wonderful. It also allows me to easily look up any unfamiliar words - and I want to improve my vocabulary this year. As you age, your vocabulary narrows unless you're quite attentive. In this field I can't afford this to happen so I'm going to be vigilant about learning and using new words.

I'm also going back to memorising poems - I did this in 2009 and part of the way into 2010 and it was a wonderful way of analysing poetry - I had to really think about the order of the words and lines of each poem. There were poems I had loved which I loved less after the experience of memorising them - reading a poem over and over again made me very aware of any weaknesses in it - but there were also poems that became talismanic. Poem-amulets to hold against hard times.

Finally this year I'm also learning French - I learnt French throughout school and into university but I've gone back to the very beginning. My daughter and I are studying it at the Alliance. Learning a different language makes you much more aware of grammatical rules, the sounds of words and the structure of language. So I'm sure this experience will also influence the way I read. When you read texts in a language you are learning, you must read slowly - so it's a good reminder to slow down in English as well. The other advantage is that you must often read aloud - to hear the words. I'm taking that back to English texts and reading some passages aloud - even if it's only to the dogs! I read all my own writing out loud - it's a wonderful way of hearing what I haven't got quite right. Reading other people's writing aloud will help further develop my critical ear.

Last night I finished Shane Maloney's Stiff - his first Murray Whelan book. Maloney's dialogue is spot on - the world of Labor politics, grass roots and power-mongering gives him a rich canvas of different voices and jargons and he exploits that beautifully. The plot is nicely convoluted and although you never quite believe that Whelan can be as stupid as he often is, Whelan's a sympathetic character, sceptically idealistic and dealing with his own problems throughout. Good holiday reading! And also useful for anyone who wants to delve into mystery writing - Maloney is so obviously at home in the world he's portraying that there's no faltering in his voice of authority.

Must go and write up my reading journal!