How to Choose a Good Writing Class

I’m a harsh critic. I want it all, and I want good service. A firm hand shake. To much to ask? I don’t think so.

However as an aspiring writer if you’re serious about getting better – not just to the point where you’re good, but to get to that place where you might actually make it, then you’re going to have to start with the formal training, workshops, and eventually (gasp) social mixer networking events.

When considering a writing class, remember that most of the best writing instruction is dirt cheap or free. Remember it, and go back to it again. You can learn to write for free. It just takes longer and won’t be quite as glittery.

If you do go to writing workshops, you do it to have a good experience. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re not in the right place, and perhaps you’re not even a writer. You may be an actor or a director, but better to learn that and go on to find what you do like then to sit in an expensive class that you don’t like. Perhaps you are indeed a writer, and the class you’re in just frankly isn’t your style. The best classes are everyone’s style.

Even so, you’re not going to get a magic bullet. You’re going to get a chair, or the stairs, or the floor, and possibly a cup of coffee or three and lots of used up ink.

The key through all of this is that you have to like what you’re doing. Not in the sense that every minute you’re in front of the keyboard is all rose petals and soft music. But your life line will be the fact that you’re getting better at your chosen artform. Take pride in it the way golfers like to look back at all the wives they’ve managed to compliment all in a day’s work.

At least you don’t have to sweat and wear sunscreen for your hobby – unless you’re a travel writer, and word to the wise, if you don’t like adventure, don’t be a writer because you’ll have nothing to write about. Go get your feet wet in the sand every once in a while. Perhaps take a shine to a multinational company or two. Babysit a beastly child for some grateful friends or take care of some elderly people. Go to the toy shop. Go to the adult toy shop. Go for a run before you have a night of it at the dive bar. Don’t drink so much you can’t remember your thought bubbles when you get home. It’s not rocket science to find material. It just takes time to find the right material that will interest you enough to write it for long enough and well enough that people will want to buy it.

Like finding inspiration, writing classes follow the same criteria. However there is sometimes money involved, and people will always set up their shingles and call themselves the “World’s Greatest Writer Ever, Ever” regardless of whether they’re actually here to help, or else they’re just here to rip you off before you realize the treadmill you’re being slathered across has little or no helpful association with finishing your project with an offer.

For this reason I’ve developed a list of criteria for finding the truly good writing courses while quickly weeding out the seedy ones.

1. The Money Issue: How much is too much?

The best writer’s groups are free. Getting into one is hard, and takes a lot of work, but if you’ve really read up on your basics and have a willingness to read the work of others who are farther along, you can probably be the fly on the wall for a few weeks at some of the larger gatherings in your area. The key here is to get in with your peer group. See how you measure up to your contemporaries not on bling and shoe size, but in terms of writing experience. Learn from theirs. Keep working on yours. Again, note the free aspect.

Groups that fein pretension are the most amateur of all and no it’s not you, it’s them. Don’t waste your time with cliques and groupies. The real movers and shakers are at home writing, or having coffee at the free groups with the other up-and-comers. Real writers don’t want you to fail or feel discouraged. Real writers wish each other success.

2. The Location Issue: To What Lengths?

Sad but true, major metropolitan locations will always have the best resources in terms of talent and tribal resources. I’m not telling you to move so you can write, but I am encouraging you to seek out experiences, even if it means a little travel is involved. We can’t all write urban existentialism, and 99% of what you can learn from a class you can learn in a book, but the useful part of being in a group meeting is that you get the normal, healthy social experience of being around people to offset the hard work you’re doing unnaturally shutting yourself off to write your project. It takes a toll, and there’s no healthy replacement for laughter and intriguing conversation. Even just wander down to go see a movie if nothing else. Work as hard as you can, but realize, sometimes, you must logoff and find your people.

3. The Instructor Issue: How Much Guff?

I make no pretenses that I’m a proponent of the McKee seminars, where The Bob is a well known force of nature who has no problem booming down to the audience about the elephants in their living rooms. Personally, I think it’s hysterical, but that’s because while he’s keeping us awake, I’m learning, and learning makes a good class fun. Part of what makes his schtick work is that deep down he really seems to care that his students learn to write good projects, and he crams his seminars with as much information as they can hold. As overwhelmed as a new writer will feel walking out of his first McKee class suddenly able to turn water into wine, older students suggest his early seminars used to pack even more information into them back when he was a professor. In that light, it becomes clear, the man is an actor, and this is his show, full of humor and sharp insight to jolt you into being a better critic to expect more from your work. You go, you learn, and he entertains with his personality through the long hours that would turn you into a writing ensign.

Blake Snider is equally frank in his books, and his bravado aside, again, it becomes clear he’s showing you the goods, not the knockoffs. When he lays down his opinion, he means for it to help the writer realize what’s wheat from yesterday’s chaff.

If an instructor doesn’t utterly wow you within the first hour, you’re in the wrong class. Maybe you’re too advanced, or maybe they’re clueless. Either way, take no abuse, especially if you don’t get anything useful out of it.

4. The Cult of Personality Issue: Are You a Writer or a Groupie?

Unless you’re already there, no writing instructor or class can make you a perfect writer overnight. Like most head work, you’re doing the lifting yourself.

That being said, there is a huge epidemic of writing instructors out there who want the fame and respect that other well-known instructors have, but these newcomer instructors haven’t yet crafted the classes to match the mantle. I’ve unfortunately sat through a few too many of these with dismay as the instructor drags on about how every other writing instructor on the market is wrong, and this class in particular has the new McGuffin that “all the writers” want. Writing theory is iterative, and it has a big family. Rest assured if a writing instructor hangs their credentials on one key piece of information, and then wants to drag out that information into multiple classes like a dealer building up a client base, you’re already in the wrong class. Don’t get in on the ground floor, get out now.

A good writing instructor tells you the outline up front, then gets into the details like a course outline. McKee and Snider have written books to get the word out. They don’t have it hidden in some ark out back. If your instructor is more mood stones and dream interpretation (theirs, not yours) then feel free not to stick around. It’s not a matter of getting feelings hurt if they’re trying to take your money.

To prove these sorts of change your life classes are a sham, I’ve been the beefeater for several events where it’s been pretty easy to guess the “grand theory” we’re supposed to be paying our next tuition to hear about (usually a lightly repackaged homage to Campbell with some sort of “new” chart method – usually one of the same methods most of us naturally figure out on our own.) Instead of being met with appreciation that a student “gets it,” typically this sort of curtain pulling is met with a thinly masked fury at possibly taking any limelight away form the altar, which if you think about it is who these sorts of people really are (imitation, would-be deities) and that’s exactly why you should stay well away from them. A real writing instructor can’t want to eat their followers. It just never works out. Extract the fangs as quickly as possible and move on to the next show in town.

5: The Sharing Issue: Should You Stick It In The Mashed Potatoes to Survive Initiation?

No. That’s the simple answer. If you find yourself in a class that’s supposed to be about writing, yet you’re getting asked to share all these personal moments as discussion for finding good material, what you’re doing is providing a free focus group for some other writer, and probably getting dangerously close to a hive of multi-level-marketers in the process.

I find these people downright bizarre and no good writing class should leave you less sure if you want to even associate with your kind of people. They’re not your kind of people.

I’m not a full time networker, but I do it pretty successfully when called to. I’m just the sort who likes to share with people who are interested in the same things. That’s sometimes all the advantage you need when you’re trying to get in through the side door. The real secret? The front door is always open, you’ve just got to help the right person carry their own dreams through it. Sometimes this means hard work and good friendship. Other times it’s just simple arithmetic of preparation meets opportunity. But it’s never done through a five page questionnaire.

Yes, you can share insights about the writing craft and help new friends without ever signing a pledge card or giving away your phone number.

Forget the five minute videos. Real breaks cannot be pre-arranged by the group.

If you find the right friends, they’ll be friends first and networking associates last. Friends help each other to find opportunities that naturally fit one another. Distant network associates always expect some sort of payment in return, or will smile and nod and then throw out your manuscript. Expecting to buy your way in, or worse, amounts to jumping into bed with opportunity dealt out as an impersonal service. It’s universally more trouble than it’s worth and it never works out as advertised.

6. The Rights Issue: Should You Sign a Waver?

No! Let me say it again. No! If you sign up for a writing class, or any class really, and you enter the sanctity of a classroom session with an instructor who has any sort of ulterior financial motive in mind, be it commercial resale of the DVD, or a strange focus group case, under no circumstances should you sign the waiver. You can take their silly sheet of paper, and you can smile, but don’t return it and for heaven’s sake don’t sign it. You have no etiquette or contractual obligation to do so, and moreover, this is becoming a common imposition by greedy evangelist types who want to resell the bobble-headed faces of their few disciples with the hopes of convincing even more poor aspiring writers to bring them free money.

I’ve been in one seminar where the guy in charge of filming was well-meaning and it was new and interesting being on film, and so I drank the koolaid and smiled and looked into the light. (Don’t look into the light – I couldn’t help it, but no one warned me.) Looking back it was more like a thrill ride trying to figure out how not to wince when the lights glared down and the poor gophers tried not to have emotional melt downs at one another as the guy with the extra tapes went missing on a smoke break and the camera guy gets tired at the end of the day and starts to lean on your bag. It’s not exciting. You try to say something useful at the end of a class as a courtesy, but eventually it just gets to the point where you’re being vulture-circled by documentarians who like dirty laundry, and any sign of life or interest you show is an outright liability.

The moral of the story is – for those of us who are mere mortals with imperfect bouts of low blood sugar, sleep depravation, bad knees, stress, or internal phases of the mood preventing us from just waiting with bated breath for the camera to grace us with a cameo – honestly sometimes it’s best to play dead. Let them pass none the wiser.

The upswing of course for those poor people who have already signed one of these dreadful waver things is that you do eventually learn how not to deer-in-headlights a the call of action – of course it also helps if you get a good crew of people who know how to chill out.

The bad news is that wavers are forever, and if someone recuts something innocuous you say out of context, you’re that make believe, poster boy, straw man, jerk who said (insert thing you didn’t really say here.) Yes, really. Forever.

I’ve been in two separate classes where the advertised event was a live workshop, and instead of training on writing, I found myself the glorified paying studio audience of a no-name instructor.

Two things happen when the camera goes on. The instructor stops talking to the class, and the tape in the camera and the crew behind it becomes more valuable than the people who’ve actually paid money to be there. Cramming as many seats into a small space as can be managed, and then droning on about topics obviously of no interest to the live audience is totally unacceptable. Having expectations from the camera crew kills the whole purpose of the workshop and the legitimacy of the instructor.

In a sane world instructors would be paying you to put up with a recording crew stumbling around your course.

7. The Special Knowledge Issue: How Many Classes Should It Take?

The short answer is as many as are helpful to you. If you are advanced enough that you can skim the intro course, ask the instructor if he or she offer advanced classes, newsletters, or specialty workshops from other instructors on the specific subject you’re interested in. Be aware if you can’t come up with the specifics of what you want to learn, you’re probably not as advanced as you think, and the course boring you presently is probably just not particularly well taught. Probably better not to say it, but why stick around?

Another good milestone of a successful writing course is in the organization of the course outline as compared to what was actually taught. The two should match closely, as you’re paying good money based on what you were told.

If the course advertisement is for a complete course (true story) and the instructor baits and switches with an offer for another class to cover the information originally advertised, this is a bad sign. This is more than a little misleading when the topics paraded in the brochure are unceremoniously dropped to slow the class in time to hook students for a second round the following week.

8. The Off Topic Issue: Should it Matter If Your Course Wanders Off Topic?

Staying on topic (rather than wasting class time speculating on the writer’s personality) is another good indication of the quality of a writing class. A good instructor stays focussed without invoking the presence of Emperor Palpatine with chronic Pink Eye.

It’s become very vogue to while away hours about why the writer thinks and acts and squats in the forest with no one there to warn about the ivy. Typically the monologue leads the audience to believe we’re all on a cube ship somewhere in outer space with tight clothing and alluring prosthetic cosmetic treatments to highlight our eyelashes. I say just read Betsy Lerner’s “Forrest for the Trees” and be done with it. It’s excellent and chances are the person you’re paying a lot of money to see for a third-person interpretation has read this book as the meat of their powerpoint. Save your dimes.

Teaching writers and creative professionals to respect their work is certainly a good thing. It swells the absolute fresh off the boat writer to dizzying heights. A big advantage when there are still miles and pages to go. But I’m saying there is inspiration, and then there are horse pies littering the field of writing classes.

After once sitting through a mind numbing two and a half hours of the same positive thinking mantra told eight different ways in one class, with each of us checking our watches desperate to discover when the actual course materials would kick in, we were then told at the end of the day that more relevant topics would of course be covered at the next session. But there was a problem. This would require us to pay more money, having still not received the instruction we had already paid for. That’s where this sort of smooth talking turns to fertilizer in someone else’s air conditioned dog house.

Be very clear on this. If an instructor is actively stalling to stretch out the length of the class, either for the DVD being taped or the need of an extra pay check at rent time, or he or she simply won’t answer your question until you sign up for another class, then your instructor isn’t there to teach, he’s there because he can’t sell his next project, and unless you’re into charity donations, you should be at home writing.

Also, there’s a soup kitchen that needs you.

It’s one thing to ask a question and be told it’s covered in the syllabus or the book or be asked to hold questions to the appropriate time. It’s another to be locked into a set number of expensive beginner courses to make the information you want cost you as much as possible. This isn’t normal workshop procedure for any venerable writing course and you shouldn’t pay for the extra song and dance filler.

9. The Audience Participation Issue: Are you at Church or Cocktail Hour?

Having a conversation is how functional and successful people in the business have been doing it for years.

One telling sign about the quality of a writing class will be in how the instructor deals with on-topic related questions and class participation. Notice I said on topic. But then, most adult classes fill with people who know what that means, including you. Only psychiatric patients get that knitted into a jam if an extra five minutes is going to spontaneous conversation about the specific example in hand, rather than militant extremist slathering worship of the good instructor in all his oh hums and brain skips. Having a good student-instructor rapport is how a class becomes superior to just reading the book and is also why you as a writer are paying to be there.

So don’t let anyone plump their feathers and intimidate you into the notion that writing students should be seen and never heard. What on earth sort of writer does that make?

You can’t write in mime. That’s called art school and even there, they talk a lot.

10. The Criticism Issue: Should Freeform Critiques be Allowed?

One worrying sign in new instructor led writing classes tends to be the unfounded fear against students ever analyzing each other’s work. It’s true that suggestions for improvement should be offered in a positive light, and academic discussions can get lively and personal biases tender, but critiques are the heart and soul of the workshop, be it acting, writing, or basket weaving.

I’ve actually been in a class with a well-known, intelligent, knowledgeable writer who suddenly reeled in horror the minute someone made a comment for improvement of a sticking dialogue in the student submission we were supposedly critiquing. “We” being the instructor only, apparently, and he wasn’t saying much. Both the writer and her partner gave exasperated noises to get the instructor to back down from his “I know you’re new, but we don’t say those sorts of helpful hints to one another in this class, because now you will have taken credit for her figuring out how to do that instead of her finding the joy in discovering the fix herself.”

Um, when? Whenever the magic muse kites overhead to drop off a little fairy message onto the sleeping writer’s pillow? In that case, why aren’t we all praying to the Oracles instead of pitching money towards the instructor?

I suppose this idea started as a legitimate attempt not to let the pretension and dysfunction of the higher literary piraña pits unduly poison the tender new writing student. That being said, being sent out into the arena with wrinkly shower skin won’t make the experience when it happens any less painful. It’s wrong to shut down classroom discussion as if collaboration is some type of sinful stain on a work that a writer has obviously brought to a workshop to share.

In the end there was enough pressure to continue from all the seasoned students that we did end up in classroom discussion on the dialogue in the scene, and everyone seemed desperately thrilled that the curse had finally been broken to allow them to speak and become a community of artists.

Nobody wants to be in a class where they’re kept like a seven thousand year old mummy in danger of crumbling to dust should anyone question why they chose to write a scene in a self-limiting way. When an instructor puts the Vader strangle on any would-be group discussion, he or she is only admitting an unsubstantiated insecurity about being the true leader of the workshop. That’s a personal issue, and generally people pay for the couch, not the other way around.

Coming from someone with direct experience teaching workshops of another profession, if you find yourself asking legitimate, contributory questions on character arcing techniques, cast polarization, the psychological profile traits of the villain as shadow-image of the hero’s psyche, or any number of stock intro questions that unexpectedly throw your shiny new writing instructor right off his or her horse, you shouldn’t limp home questioning the validity of your interest in the subject matter and willingness for class participation. Again, it’s not you. Instructors like me pray for people like you every night.

While there are occasionally one or two students who may show up sauced and attack like rabid lurking porcupines just to see if they can draw blood (usually for whatever their mother did to them when they were three) you learn very quickly how not to make it a personal stand off even if that’s exactly what a student is doing.

Short of downright belligerent behavior, it’s a pretty safe bet that if you as a lowly beginning writer can make your instructor nervous or snippy by asking relevant questions, then your instructor is most likely using you as the practice girl next door until he can move on to bigger and better things. All I’m suggesting is that you don’t be the practice girl. Be the alimony.

Finally: The Organizational Issue: Can Your Instructor Make It out of The Brown Paper Bag?

I put this last because while organization is good, it’s not the main thing. Brilliant people throughout history have rarely matched their socks or found their way around a city block.

But a prepared instructor will usually have notes and handouts as well as enough knowledge about the content to take on impromptu conversations in the course of the class. They will also have coffee, breaks, time set aside at breaks or informally integrated into the class for your questions, and their answers will be honest and truthful. That doesn’t mean you get what you want to hear, but you’ll know at the end by the texture of the pit of your stomach if this is someone who’s being truthful to make you a better writer, or unduly harsh to sink your confidence and make you think they have some insight you’ll have to pay for to find out about.

There are lots of bad instructors who make their living injuring writers who keep crawling back after having been mistreated. Some of them teach acting classes as well, and there are infamous stories of what actors have to crawl through before their tattered fealty is accepted. But again, most people have to pay for the therapist’s couch. Instructors who’ve managed to manipulate whole rooms of participants into playing along with a bad scene aren’t the sort to do anyone a favor in the end.

Writing instructors see thousands of faces over their careers and aren’t going to care personally if you don’t come back. If you’re not getting good insight from a class, leaving is certainly ok. But if you get conned into a truly sub-standard writing class, don’t get the impression they’re all that way. There are MANY fantastic writer groups and workshops out there, and the insights you learn from your peers can’t be stated enough.

As for the true dragons of the workshop puppy mill industry, just know one day they’ll have me in the front row, because I try them all eventually.

Like all true good things, karma prevails. It isn’t man made. And neither are writers. Writers grow into themselves. Sometimes they just need a few laughs and a little help along the way.

Any writer who says they didn’t get help is practicing selective memory – or else it truly was that good of a time to get where they were headed. You should ask them about the last place they remember…

Grendel the Criminal Cat

“Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.”
– Rod Serling

“Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.”
– Paul Auster

While I’m busy being industrious I thought I’d mention that Writer’s Digest is apparently giving away free writer resource CDs with its online workshop programs. I had the pleasure of meeting the head of their workshops program the other day, and am very near dashing into the Writing a Query Letter program now that I’m looking at the light at the end of the tunnel for my current project.

Call me unfaithful, but I’m doubly giddy about getting to the shine and polish stage on this project not just to be done, but to bask in the new opportunity it brings to finally step up to other projects that have been waiting on me. Having to say “no” is always a downer. Loving the story you’ve got in your hands makes up for it, but getting to do both is always the best of both worlds.

As for Kristen Johnson Ingram, anyone with an eighteen pound cat named Grendel is definitely on my list of writers to meet.

Many people apparently shy away from meeting their favorite authors for fear of losing the mystique associated with fame. Neil Gaiman has this to say on the matter:

“Actually, you should never meet your heroes if you want to keep them as heroes. They may wind up as friends or as disappointments or as pleasant surprises, but once you know them they immediately stop being heroes. (I’ve turned down several opportunities to meet Stephen Sondheim socially, because he’s practically all I’ve got left. Even David Bowie, who I’ve never even met, has managed to transmute in my head most of the way from DAVID BOWIE ZOMG!!1!* to my friend Duncan’s dad.)”

I find this funny in some ways because it has always been my intent to understand what about heroes makes them truly unique anyway. I don’t really have any expectations of other authors, except the hope that they’re insightful in helping to understand the craft of story-telling from a didactic perspective. It’s a nice aside to know little tidbits about them, but I find it far more comforting to know they have the same hopes and fears as all of us, and that those human sensitivities they’ve managed to hold on to make them more understanding of other people, who inevitably end up characters in their books.

I’ve never met Neil, though he’s quite polite and fairly approachable, and has been within a few feet of me on several occasions now. Not unless you count the time I showed up to watch him ad-lib for the first time on stage about the time he got left in a train station by his parents. His sudden “thank you!” as I laughed out loud in an otherwise cold room told me unequivocally that there is a decent person with a beating heart under the classic “don’t bother me” black leather jacket.

I wasn’t doing one of those horrible fake-laugh supports (please don’t ever do that, you’re a writer, and you have an obligation to make yourself aware of bad writing.) It was actually funny, it was just clear that he was looking for a friend at the time. Someone who knew who the hell Paddington Bear was this side of Brooklyn.

Therefore it’s ok to plug him and his prolific blog without worry that he’s secretly some git who will take the tender souls of the budding writers I’ve amassed and smash them to oblivion with canned, uninspired advice.

Uninspired advice is so much worse than no advice at all.

My heroes are safe. Most of them were long dead before I was ever born. The few who flickered out within inches of my meeting them leave me with some sadness, but more because there was no “thank you” where there should have been.

Bob Richardson is a good example. He grew quite mellow in his older years, by the time I was around to find him. His photo blogging style of auto-biographical photojournalism really reaches people, not because it is flashy or self-aggrandizing, but because it is true. Sadly his site “Beyond Cool” has finally been taken down at his death, but a quick search for it let me to this article detailing how much of his shots were reflections of himself in a way, and it was none other than Anjelica Huston who was back there behind the camera, propping him up emotionally while he was secretly so messed up on those little pills from the notorious Dr. Feelgood that he was starting to listen to the talking ashtrays. Now there’s someone who should write a book, or at least a screenplay.

By the way, the AAA Screenwriting contest will be extending it’s deadline through the weekend for anyone with a sudden bout of inspiration. Final deadline is Midnight, July 7th.

A word of advice. Close your browser. Turn off your phone. Pick up a pen. Be brave.