What have you learned since you started writing stories for Literotica?

[MelissaBaby]

No, it's not you or this at all.
I'm at a spot where I sort of feel like a musician who learned to play by ear in my bedroom, and suddenly found myself in an orchestra full of Juilliard graduates.
I think I can contribute to AH from a reader's perspective, but not as a writer.

The only writing classes I took were in prison…

 

[StillStunned]

The only writing classes I took were in prison…

I've never taken any writing classes in my life. Even at uni, "creative writing" just wasn't a thing. All the literary and linguistic analysis we did was aimed at understanding other people's writing.

I've read books and listened to audiobooks about writing, but they seem to focus almost exclusively on plot and pacing.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

...

• don't do dialogue - do action

I disagree. As a reader, some of my favorite moments are dialogue.

As for formal education in writing ... successful writers usually don't have any, as far as I can tell. In the genres I read, Brandon Sanderson has a Masters in writing, and his thesis was a completed fantasy novel, but he's by far the exception. If you look at the famous writers: Asimov was a chemist, Clarke and Heinlein engineers, LeGuin studied French. Let's see, more recent ones. Barbara Hambly was trained in history, N. K. Jemison in education.

I guess Nalo Hopkinson is another exception, another writing Masters.

 

[StillStunned]

I disagree. As a reader, some of my favorite moments are dialogue.

As for formal education in writing ... successful writers usually don't have any, as far as I can tell. In the genres I read, Brandon Sanderson has a Masters in writing, and his thesis was a completed fantasy novel, but he's by far the exception. If you look at the famous writers: Asimov was a chemist, Clarke and Heinlein engineers, LeGuin studied French. Let's see, more recent ones. Barbara Hambly was trained in history, N. K. Jemison in education.

I guess Nalo Hopkinson is another exception, another writing Masters.

Elizabeth Peters was a trained Egyptologist, actually called Barbara Mertz PhD. Terry Brooks was a lawyer who was still practising while he wrote his first books.

 

[Statius]

Salman Rushdie has an MA in History from Kings College

 

[TheWritingGroup]

A more obscure writer, but Guy Gavriel Kay was a practicing lawyer through decades of his writing career. (He is retired from the law, but still writing as far as I know.)

I should maybe say: my degrees are in science. Not a scientist, but I've never worked in the fiction world (various industrial jobs).

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Elizabeth Peters was a trained Egyptologist, actually called Barbara Mertz PhD. Terry Brooks was a lawyer who was still practising while he wrote his first books.

Oh, yeah, Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist, specializing in the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). I have read that he really got into writing fiction when his vision deteriorated too much to distinguish species by studying their genitalia under a microscope.

 

[Imstillfun]

Biggest thing I learned was to ignore scores and bad feedback. Any score over 3.0 means over 1/2 the people liked it, that’s good.

 

[Erozetta]

Huh, I didn't realize all of these degrees required absolutely no English Composition classes at all to obtain.

 

[Statius]

Huh, I didn't realize all of these degrees required absolutely no English Composition classes at all to obtain.

Point taken

 

[StillStunned]

Huh, I didn't realize all of these degrees required absolutely no English Composition classes at all to obtain.

My English degree involved a few lectures on how to structure essays. That was all.

 

[old_prof]

Huh, I didn't realize all of these degrees required absolutely no English Composition classes at all to obtain.

I have a bachelors (in physics and philosophy) and a PhD (in Computer Science). A grand total of zero English classes involved in either.

 

[yowser]

Oh, yeah, Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist, specializing in the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). I have read that he really got into writing fiction when his vision deteriorated too much to distinguish species by studying their genitalia under a microscope.

This observation will cause a misapprehension. His butterfly work, while meticulous and insightful, was purely a hobby. (He did have some paid research positions but was strictly an amateur and self-taught.)

His aristocratic family was forced from Russia with the revolution. He wrote and had published poetry early in his life, but prose writing didn't really begin until exile in Berlin, then Paris. In the US he was on several faculties: my memory says Cornell and Wellesley, maybe others. Untrue about bad vision leading to writing.

Brian Boyd's two volume set, Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years, followed by the American Years are the best sourcebooks on him, and fascinating reading.

 

[Erozetta]

My English degree involved a few lectures on how to structure essays. That was all.

And that's more than many here have. Add to that your extensive work in editing and you have a vast array of knowledge to share with those who have had the opportunities or abilities to access none of that.

I'm not trying to make education in English out to be some negative, it's very much a boon to all here who you share your knowledge and experience with.

But when people here tout their experience and knowledge it is intimidating to others without that experience and knowledge, it has and does sometimes prevent people from writing. I was just saying having people without that side of things in their history is beneficial to people coming here for information on writing who also don't have that experience and education. They can see that not everyone has that experience behind them and those people do well, so maybe they can also give it a shot.

I have no formal education in English beyond middle school, my high school classes largely involved going over the exact same stuff I learned at my middle school previously as I moved states and the new state had a significantly lower quality education curriculum. My education is effectively at a 7th grade level. I was in the process of taking my first English Comp course when I dropped out. Anything else I've learned I've picked up by doing and reading and having my errors pointed out to me by more educated and experienced writers than me.

 

[Erozetta]

I have a bachelors (in physics and philosophy) and a PhD (in Computer Science). A grand total of zero English classes involved in either.

Congrats, you're an outlier.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Self-confidence on my skills, writing in English, and erotica being the place where I needed to be the most, but avoided it previously a lot because of misconceptions and immaturity. It lead me towards a philosophy that is doing wonders for my life: libertinism.

I could go deeper on this, but I think I need 40K characters, and I can't write that on my phone, or on this interface at least. It'd work better as both a R&E submission, or a Substack post.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

My degrees involved one English composition course. It was startlingly useless.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Huh, I didn't realize all of these degrees required absolutely no English Composition classes at all to obtain.

Depends where you do them. My understanding is that US university degrees commonly have a requirement for students to take some humanities courses no matter what their major is, but not all countries have that restriction. I completed two degrees in Australia without taking anything other than STEMM subjects; the last time I did any "official" English education was in high school.

 

[SkyBubble]

I disagree. As a reader, some of my favorite moments are dialogue.

Often (not always), you can use dialogue to keep moving the action along.

 

[SkyBubble]

A more obscure writer, but Guy Gavriel Kay was a practicing lawyer through decades of his writing career.

Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason mysteries, was a lawyer.

T.S. Eliot worked for Lloyds of London.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Depends where you do them.

Agree: 'composition classes' is an unfamiliar concept to me. In school I found English a boring subject, and there was certainly no attempt at teaching us how to write. One teacher gave me a book on grammar because I would be wasting my time on what the others were doing.

In university I did both sciences and humanities, but nowhere was there any idea that you had to pass some standard of writing ability. I've never had any training in writing, and I'm not sure if it would have made any difference. What I see of 'how to write' teaching or books is mostly 'how to write gripping, well-selling adventures with conflicts at the one-third point' sort of thing, and I've never had the slightest interest in either reading or writing any of that.

 

[Erozetta]

None of the courses any of y'all took required written reports or essays in order to pass them? There were no points in your degree where written work had an impact on your ability to get that degree? (I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious. I can't fathom getting a degree without writing playing some element in the process.)

Very little education doesn't rely on some degree of knowledge on how to write.

In the US, the quality of education can vary wildly in a hundred mile radius. It varies even more when you cross state lines in various regions.

The year I graduated, my high school changed the requirements for graduation from proving proficiency at an 8th grade level, to proving proficiency at a 10th grade level, but their tenth grade level was my previous school's 7th grade proficiency marks, or lower than the previously lower acceptable rate of proficiency for the state. I was only one of two students in my school to pass every section of the test on the first try. I only had to pass English and Math.

I didn't have a job or further schooling after that to continue my education in English. I read and knew how books were written, but I didn't know why they were written that way. I didn't know anything about style guides or constructs in storytelling. My education stalled there at that 7th grade level that was "good enough" for the state Iived in.

Anyone who has gotten a degree, has most likely had writing as an element of that degree. Through reports, essays, projects, whatever, writing was most likely a fairly significant element of that education, which meant the education in writing continued even if in a practical yet indirect way.

I legit don't understand why people are dismissing that or downplaying it as though no longer taking English specific classes puts their education on the same playing field as someone who dropped out of high school, or someone who never continued their education beyond high school. That education and practical writing experience is a good thing. Education is much more than singular classes people take. It's the practical application of skills to communicate their proficiency within their chosen degree, all of which requires language comprehension and writing skills to some degree.

It's the equivalent of putting a high school football player on a professional team. Some will excel and fit right in without blinking an eye, others are gonna be scared shitless. If you put two or three high school players on the same pro team, they are more likely to feel less intimidated and be willing to take a chance instead of buckling immediately under the expectation of playing at a pro-level out of the gate.

The pro players are still going to have a ton of technical skill, understanding of the sport, and personal experiences they can teach the other players, but the more inexperienced players have to be willing to face the challenge and step onto the field for any of it to be useful. If they are too intimidated to even try, we're all at a loss for it because the potential to teach and help someone else in the same way we were is lost to us all.

I'm just trying to normalize the idea that being average is good enough to share our knowledge. Expertise is always going to be in demand, but it's easy for the person with the simple approach that works for them to be talked over as though their experiences aren't as valuable. And I'm not saying anyone has done that, just that maybe we should all consider that we effectively don't know shit about each other's education or experiences with writing and we can be a bit tactful in our assumptions that everyone knows what pov means, or that everyone is familiar with the Chicago Manual of Style.

There are a lot of people on Lit who have never written a story before but want to and I've seen them come here with questions that get snarky replies because it's basic writing knowledge. Or their questions are never answered because no one wants to take the time on someone that green. Or someone who can write but English is their second or third language and they are struggling with some basic stupid English rule that is tripping them up.

This group has a vast array of knowledge and experience with writing from a variety of backgrounds that range from writing professionally to working retail. We all come at it from different approaches and with different ideas because of those differences.

What if, instead of replying to someone who says something that worked for them with "I have been writing professionally for xx years and that doesn't work because..." We can consider that different techniques can and do work for people of different experience levels.

I've seen it happen where someone will respond to something like that with a response like "Oh, I never considered that approach, I'm glad it works for you. This is what I would do in that situation." And I'm thrilled when I see that because that is educational. That gives information without dismissing the experience of others. It offers options to explore instead of strict rules that need to be followed except when this or that particular writer decides not to with no explanation on why they chose not to follow that rule. (And I'm no help there because my response is "Wait, that was a rule?" Which is also valid, but not so helpful when trying to learn.)

But, anyways, I've written way too many words that aren't on my WIP, so I'm gonna head off and do that instead of sleeping today. I also don't recommend that approach. Sleep is good for the writing brain. (Usually.)

 

[MelissaBaby]

None of the courses any of y'all took required written reports or essays in order to pass them? There were no points in your degree where written work had an impact on your ability to get that degree? (I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious. I can't fathom getting a degree without writing playing some element in the process.)

Very little education doesn't rely on some degree of knowledge on how to write.

I certainly had courses in which I wrote reports and essays, but it was just assumed that students had the ability to do so, there was no requirement to mandate courses to teach us how to do so. We were high schools graduates, iafter all, t was safe to think we'd know how. (she said, only semi-sarcastically.)

 

[Bramblethorn]

None of the courses any of y'all took required written reports or essays in order to pass them? There were no points in your degree where written work had an impact on your ability to get that degree?

TLDR nothing resembling an English composition class.

Undergrad: no essays. Mathematical proofs for the maths-y subjects. Written lab reports for science-y subjects, which were basically filling out a standard template (Aim, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion). I think we got a little guidance in what was expected to go into those reports, but precious little of it would've been relevant to fiction writing.

Honours year: writing a thesis (basically a short book about a specific topic, summarising knowledge on that topic). From memory we had a little bit of training on specific academic-technical stuff like how to do a literature search and how to format references, and a rough template to follow (abstract, acknowledgements, introduction, main body by chapters, appendices, bibliography) but beyond that we were just expected to know how to write, or to learn by doing.

Doctorate: couple of coursework subjects (pretty much the same as for undergrad), thesis (similar to honours thesis but bigger, and based primarily on original research rather than just summarising other people's work). Again, a little bit of training on academic-technical aspects but I don't think there was anything on, e.g., "how to write so your readers can understand you". In fact, some of the folk I worked with were quite hostile to that idea - they felt that trying to make the writing accessible was not "academic" enough in tone :-/

I legit don't understand why people are dismissing that or downplaying it as though no longer taking English specific classes puts their education on the same playing field as someone who dropped out of high school, or someone who never continued their education beyond high school. That education and practical writing experience is a good thing. Education is much more than singular classes people take. It's the practical application of skills to communicate their proficiency within their chosen degree, all of which requires language comprehension and writing skills to some degree.

Definitely not trying to downplay it. Just about any interaction with other human beings can teach skills that are useful for writing, especially interaction that requires communication. Writing my PhD thesis almost certainly helped develop skills that I use in fiction writing now, because it got me thinking about how ways to get concepts from my head into other people's heads.

But where I came into this conversation, I thought we were talking about formal training in English writing - the kind of stuff you'd get from, say, enrolling in a class titled "English Composition 101" - and there was none of that in my time at university.

Outside of that, I agree with just about everything you're saying here.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

None of the courses any of y'all took required written reports or essays in order to pass them? There were no points in your degree where written work had an impact on your ability to get that degree? (I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious. I can't fathom getting a degree without writing playing some element in the process.)
<snip>

I've got a BA. I chose my major so I could avoid having to take English 101 (English isn't my native language, I suck at spelling and I heard horror stories about the class from friends).

I then purposely picked courses that did not require papers, instead relied on midterms and final exams. That got me through all but one of my courses. In that one (a 400 level course) I had to write a paper.

So, it can be done, but it takes effort

Edit: I want to add that the fact that you are writing stories, and writing well, is a damn serious achievement. None of what I said above is meant to diminish that in any way.