We're in week four now, and finally doing some writing. The assignment this week is to set down the beginning of our short story up to the first scene. To recap, so far we have presented three possible story ideas (which had to be based on real life events that either happened to us or we witnessed), wrote two possible beginnings, and three possible titles. The editors chose which of our ideas and beginnings to proceed with for this weeks exercise, as well as which title to use.
I have a couple of nitpicks at this point. Early on the class was very vocal in the forum area, commenting on each other's experiences, being polite and supportive. When we presented our story ideas we continued bantering back and forth for the few days before the editors reviewed our submissions. We got blasted pretty severely by one of the editors for being amateurs playing at editors. Of course, the course material stated that we were to be active in the forums, commenting on our fellow student's work.
Not surprisingly, all comments stopped after that little outburst, which was a shame. It's not like we couldn't tell the difference between a fellow student's polite encouragement and the editor's replies.
My other nitpick is the quality of editing of the lecture material. It needs a good going over by a good line editor. Somehow that doesn't instill confidence. It's almost as if it were hastily written. Of course, we shouldn't expect book quality work, but it is distracting. Aren't we always told by editors to submit only our best material? Here, in a workshop by editors, we have editting mistakes. Oh well.
Anyway, the final verdict is still out on the class. We are only in week four of ten. So far I have learned to take a more critical approach to the underlying structure of my stories, something I had avoided before, somehow just hoping for the best. We'll see if I can produce a better story this way. Of course, the ultimate aim is publication.
No comments:
Post a Comment