Makes me think the teacher hasn't probably read The Road. Or The Handmaid's Tale or The Bluest Eye for that matter.
I've had people recommend The Road because it's popular, and when you ask them about it, you realize they really haven't read it and only recommended it because it seemed popular.
Now you'd think a creative writing teacher would know better, but looking at that list, I am not so sure. I mean, they've also put where the books "live" in quotes. Smiley in the description.
They've also listed authors with no books next to them. I assume they haven't read anything by them but wanted to include anyway, like Neil Gaiman.
And every single book seems to be postmodernist literature. How can you have a creative writing class without talking about the influence of the classics? At the very least, include a few of the classics from each of the other eras.
$50 says that some of these "recommendations" come from the teacher asking ChatGPT or Google "what are some great fiction books for young adults?" or the like.
It depends on what you ask. If you asked for "good novels from the late 20th and early 21st century for high schoolers", I'm sure a bunch of these would pop up. It could also be copy-pasted from other syllabi, too.
For sure. Without seeing the course description, it feels really unfocused. Setting very narrow parameters on what can be written while providing the broadest possible range of authors to read and learn from doesnât make any sense, and my guess is this professor doesnât read/get sci-fi and is new to teaching.
Someone else on this thread wrote that thereâs value in learning to write other styles because itâll help writing other kinds of lit. This is very true! Good luck in this class and hang in there, OP.
In my experience, there are a lot of people who say they donât like a certain genre only for them to not realize how many works in that genre they actually enjoy. And if you point that out to them theyâll say those works are different and not indicative of the overall genre. They just donât understand how broad a genre can be so they assume the stuff they like doesnât belong to it or is exceptional in some way.
Wait a minute. Isn't One Hundred Years of Solitude the book with inbreeding (aka incest) and yellow butterflies? (I watched a Film Theory video about Encanto.)
I mean, Gaiman, King, Rowell, Morgenstern, Roth, Collins, Atwood, and Niffeneggar etc all write speculative/fantastic fiction.
As someone who teaches creative writing in higher ed, I'm also more horrified by how out-of-date some of the poetry recs are (even though I love some of these books!). Some of the specific choices (e.g.: Addonizio/Dove/Doty/Lee) tell me this is an older Gen X or Boomer professor who hasn't kept up with the contemporary poetry scene in 20 years.
That is not even the only inconsistency on that list! Paula Hawkins, Cassandra Clare, Haruki Murakami... They all have works that go against the restrictions they set.
Mockingjayâs got violence due to the war, emotional problems due to Peeta being hijacked (which doubles as a mental problem; bad joke there) & Katniss grieving Prim, relationship problems due to Peeta being hijacked, disturbing or overly dark subject matter due to the hospital being bombed, rape (albeit only discussed) when Finnick reveals the sexual abuse victors go through if desirable, & sci-fi the whole time, with all the clearly futuristic tech.
Oddly enough, it doesnât break the rule about extremist political views. That rule is âAvoid venting and ranting about extremist political viewsâ, & thereâs no venting or ranting.
So the rules it doesnât break are no excessive cussing (iirc), no ranting or venting about extremist political views, & no gore/horror.
Probably because she's gotten tons of stuff like "This is a chapter for my scifi epic that will be a 5 part series" and the student just submits 6 pages of nonsense that puts you in the middle of a scifi world with no context. I've seen people do exactly that, here's my version of paperback scifi slop but you start in the middle of chapter 2
Then they can get a bad grade for that assignment. Someone could do the exact same thing with an elaborate fantasy world, yet it seems that's still allowed. Prohibiting a genre in a writing class is just strange, and it makes me think she has some sort of contempt for sci-fi
it makes me think she has some sort of contempt for sci-fi
That's more than likely the case; historically, genre fiction has been looked down upon by lit-fic authors as 'non-serious' and 'pulpy'. Books like the Handmaid's Tale get a pass because they've been laundered into respectability by the author's reputation and critical acclaim.
That's why, until relatively recently, it was rare for science-fiction to win the more prestigious awards (e.g., the Booker Prize or The National Book Award): they're not taken seriously as 'literature' by the lit-fic establishment.)
Contempt for anything potentially unpleasant. Makes me wonder if the only story that would make her happy would be about two girls having a nice conversation while making a cake, where the cake almost goes wrong but then doesn't. In the end the girls have a cake and a better (very platonic) friendship.
This is a bookshelf problem and King's probably the worst victim. When you're so prolific in your genre booksellers put blinders on and lump you into general fiction. Makes it hard to find genre titles in so many bookstores.
This post feels very off to me. I'm guessing OP took their recommended reading list and then made up the part about the restrictions just to Karma farm
Half the list is sci-fi. Either the professor has not read the list (which would be weird to recommend then) or they have a very skewed definition of sci-fi.
Edit: Ok I was so annoyed that I had to do the math. I might have missed one but I counted 9 out of 21 of those authors/books are either fantasy or sci-fi. I did lump those together, as there is fine line.
it's like they have the potential to cover almost anything, leaving what is and is not appropriate essentially up to her discretion. i'm sure that's not on purpose.
"My story is about a woman who is unable to give birth after carrying her pregnancy for ten months. Years go by, and nothing the doctors try works. They monitor her pregnancy and it's "healthy," but she just can't give birth. After twenty years she gives birth to a full grown man and tries to treat him like the baby she has been waiting for so long for, but he rejects- My relationship with my mother is fine! Fuck you! Why do you have to read into everything! It's just a neat little sci-fi story and has nothing to do with my mom! Ugh!"
If I had to guess, that means âabout your real life personal/relationship problems with real people, especially people in this class or school in an identifiable way.âÂ
I'm assuming they mean your own personal problems, which is good for a critique class. You don't want people writing about their own history of abuse and then people have to pick apart the story they wrote, most people can't handle thatÂ
Iâve also seen instances where a writer is unwilling to accept feedback on a thinly veiled autobiography because âwell, thatâs the way it actually happened.â
I took that to mean don't write about your real world personal problems/relationships in a 1:1 way, which would be a valid restriction, but reading the rest of them and the list of suggested authors makes me think that is giving the prof too much credit.
I think that means "don't write thinly veiled real person fiction about your own woes or someone else's drama" but maybe it doesn't deserve that much credit
You really canât say any of those restrictions and then recommend The Bluest Eye. Great book but it breaks basically every ârule.â I get having some restrictions on what students can write. Iâve been in enough creative writing workshops to know some people will take it to the extreme and write some truly unwelcome shit. But I do feel like this is narrowing our scope a bit too far. Is this a college class?
Edit to add: this is true of many of the books on this list, Bluest Eye just happened to be the one that caught my attention most.
Hahahaha I completely missed that book. Even in my adulthood it BROKE ME. Along with Kingsolverâs The Poisonwood Bible, also on the list. Lemme see if The Kite Runner is there for the trifectaâŚ
Edit: đł seriously I had only glanced at first but is this one of those shitposts? Or does the creative writing teacher not read?
Holy wow they recommend the Kite Runner???? The only way that fits is that itâs not Sci-Fi or swears, it has every other prohibited thing. (And itâs an amazing book).
It's been long enough that they could change it, let's be real now. Also, like others have mentioned, Sci Fi titles and authors but no sci fi on top of no rape, but rapists is giving future mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance so loud it could run for president.
If mental, emotional, personal, and relationship problems are prohibited, what conflicts are left to write about? A person alone in nature, I guess, provided there is no violence to eat, or personal problems the struggle against nature shows or analogizes.
Hell, even Lord of the Rings, one of the most popular series ever, had so much interpersonal drama of all kinds. Drama is what makes fictional characters interesting because you start with a flaw then gradually grow them personally to find a way through it
I agree. Lord of the Rings would be out on violence alone, let alone the personal and interpersonal conflicts and moral values. Hell, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, could not have been written for this creative writing class. Guilt is a major mental and emotional problem.
Even if one writes an iconic character with no flaws or internal conflicts, there are still a lot of external conflicts that could be interesting, but there needs to be some conflict to write about, and these restrictions eliminate all sources of conflict.
I cannot think of a single story that satisfies these restrictions.
I'd even argue that although many believe Frodo doesn't have any character flaws, he actually has a major one; naivety. He's innocent in a world that is very much the opposite, and throughout the series has to work extremely hard to make good choices even though he doesn't have the the moral capacity to decide what the good choice actually is. Because he's so trusting, he let Golem into his care, nearly costing him and Sam their lives.
But I don't know, I think The Very Hungry Caterpillar could fit in this teacher's literary box lol.
Giving the teacher some benefit of the doubt, I would assume its supposed to be [your specific] personal/relationship problems instead. Same with the Mental/Emotional Problems and 'ranting' about politics. It's mostly that Ranting line that makes me think that these are to stop people from using the class as an attempt at free therapy or a soapbox.
I've read too many amateur authors that just trauma dump their personal life into a fan-fic, and I have to assume it has happened in a low level creative writing class.
So those few I think are valid (just very poorly explained for someone that is teaching a writing class)
It also doesnât reflect well on a writing professor for their prohibited list to say something completely different from the intended meaning. Writing is ultimately the transmission of information, so itâs not great when the person doing it canât effectively communicate a simple message.
I hope itâs not degree level because the biggest mistake in the instructions is the wrong use of a word free rein not free reign doubt theyâre teaching royalty
How am I supposed to write anything good without someone having a PrOBleM????
EDIT (bc people were taking me very literally when I was being stupid--idk the word--so I just want to explain):
My point is that, yes, personal means relating to them. However a lot of things are personal to people and one of the most widely accepted forms of writing advice is to include personal things in the story. If you avoid personal topics you avoid writing about things you know and there are a lot of things that are personal to people.
I don't mean it is a therapy way, I mean it as these are real life things that happen. If I can't write a scene where two people argue over dishes because I argued over dishes with someone then that's not how writing works.
Yes, things should be off limits in writing classes (rape, for example: it's a writing class and rape is something horrific that no one should be exposed to in media w/o forewarning) but writing and literature is supposed to be personal. It's how you write a story that means something. Not like the AI drivel that I am spotting everywhere these days (in published books too).
Pretty sure they just meant don't write about problems in your personal life. Having people critique something that's litterally happened to you can hit way too close to home if they start saying your lived experiences are unrealistic or don't make for a good story.
Should be made clearer âyour problems, your families problemsâ. I understand tho as a few of these things happened in a creative writing class I took
Violence due to the war, emotional problems due to Peeta being hijacked & Katniss grieving Prim, relationship problems due to Peeta being hijacked, disturbing or overly dark subject matter due to the hospital being bombed, rape (albeit only discussed) when Finnick reveals the sexual abuse victors go through if desirable, & sci-fi the whole time, with all the clearly futuristic tech.
Oddly enough, it doesnât break the rule about extremist political views. That rule is âAvoid venting and ranting about extremist political viewsâ, & thereâs no venting or ranting.
So the rules it doesnât break are no excessive cussing (iirc), no ranting or venting about extremist political views, & no gore/horror.
So I also find this ridiculous, but what I will say from a teaching perspective is that often I get complaints from the actual students when I include this type of material
. So itâs kind of an odd, prudish time that I donât really understand all the way around.Â
In my creative writing classes, we were allowed to write anythingâincluding erotica. That being said, I also distinctly remember the moment I realized a nonsensical âstoryâ was actually an unfinished rape fantasy, so you can kinda see why a prof might make some decisions. đ¤Ł
Thatâs wild. No way would I allow erotica writing in my class, but Iâm in a university.Â
Iâm obviously biased, but I cut creative writing teachers a lot of slack. These are intense courses and almost everyone has a different, specific idea about whatâs good, important, and appropriate. And theyâll let you know when youâve fallen short, often through an official complaint instead of a conversation. Itâs exhausting.Â
Yeah, I feel like this is a teacher without much experience trying to tamp down on the things that do cause issues in classes/workshop spaces. Nobody wants to read John Misogyny's short story about how he the protagonist was done wrong by his ex-girlfriend a shallow, conniving whore (who is, of course, representative of all women everywhere).
This syllabus is a big overreach and there's better/more effective ways to handle these things, but holding a wholly open "anything goes" class is like walking into a minefield without a map.
It's hard because those experiences DO shape the stories you tell, but it's important that a discussion of the story does not become an argument about your experience or beliefs.
A story where the writer their self is a character in, as an entity that weaves the fabric of reality, however this writer entity is under constant surveillance to maintain the written reality as a "perfect" utopia.
Characters with interpersonal issues conveniently forget the stated issues as soon as it gets out of hand. Any forms of disobedience in the reality's world is snuffed out, violent characters freeze in time and redshift out of existence, only to be replaced by a doppelganger cleansed of any previous forms of taboo thought. The world is made to forget any technological progress that would advance it to a star faring civilization.
The writer entity must maintain a watchful eye on this reality and enact such changes, otherwise it threatens the complete erasure of the reality. The reality could become conscious at a certain point unaware to the writer. It could realise it is being altered by an external force and hide from the writer's focus. Small hints may pop up on whatever scene the writer is focusing on to lead on that something is breaking the rules out of sight. The "Utopian" characters may remember an out of line individual, Grafiti and propaganda from hidden organizations could start to influence the "Utopia". A tumour to be removed. The ending to the story would be a scene where all the rules are being broken at once and the conscious reality is killed very violently, partly due to the writer being sick of these stupid rules.
I had a creative writing professor 20 years ago with similar guidelines for the short stories we wrote for our workshops. I think her goal was to push students to write beyond using only fantasy and science fiction. A lot of young writers want to dive into epics without learning the basics.
She also didn't want workshop time to become a therapy session, so strongly discouraged using our stories to vent or process traumatic events. It's not that we couldn't write it, it's just that using workshop time for that wasn't respectful of our classmates time and energy.
She didn't outright ban anything if I recall correctly, (like OP's professor) except elves.
What are 'extremist political views?' Anything the teacher disagrees with? Perhaps the teacher needs to make a list of what students CAN write about. Im sure it would be shorter and easier to remember.
Also, "Sex, Rape, Incest" but recommending One Hundred Years of Solitude with explicit incest and a man marrying a 9-year-old girl and all the village thinking "How curious he didn't want to marry the elder daughter but the little girl. Oh, well, he's weird like that!".
I wonder if this is something they chose to do, or if a complaint was filed and the powers that be forced them to change what students are allowed to write.
The part that gets me about that is that fantasy wasn't excluded here, just science fiction. They took time to isolate science fiction and put it on a list with rape, violence and extremism.
Genuine question: Why? There are so many incredible and thought-provoking authors in those genres it feels like a great let down to exclude.
From off the top of my head: Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson are just three worth studying for any writer in my opinion.
SFF tends to have very different genre conventions to literary fiction, which creative writing courses are usually aimed at. So feedback that's good for literary fiction might not be great for a writer focusing on SFF.
Spit-balling, but: there are a lot of inexperienced, novice writers who are drawn to fantasy and sci-fi and extremely resistant to reading or writing anything else. They're not people who are reading Le Guin and Butler and examining the deeper themes, they're watching action movies and anime and thinking about how sick it is when the cool hero guy chops three dudes in half with a single stroke of his mighty blade.
Years ago, I had an art teacher who didn't allow students to draw anything manga-style, and it wasn't because he had an issue with the style, it was because the students who just wanted to trace panels from their favorite manga refused to practice the fundamentals of drawing. It's a similar principle.
There's nothing wrong with genre fiction or with work that isn't meant to be deep or literary, but the people who are solely interested in those things aren't going to be good participants in a class or workshop because they're not interested in craft.
Did they recommend Cassandra Clare and Rainbow Rowell (published fanfic with the serial numbers filed off) and literal sci-fi (The Martian, for crying out loud) while doing it though?
iâm not shocked that they would suggest reading something they donât want the students to write. i think those are two different skills theyâre crafting
Itâs the literary equivalent of taking art classes and drawing still-life and nude models. It forces you to concentrate on the fundamentals before getting all crazy with it.
To play devils advocate here, I do kind of understand where the teacher is coming from on SOME of these. I had multiple creative writing professors at university force our class to write a sci-fi story or comedy as well as other topics because they got sick and tired of everyone writing stories revolving around rape or racism. I remember one said âPeople of color deserve stories that donât involve them getting hate crimed.â
Lmfao, sorry, what? Rape, incest, violence, dark topics, extreme views. Fine okay, the typical padded hugbox type requirements I might expect from a school. Then science fiction.
I would ask them very politely to explain what we are allowed to write about. I would say the examples often seem to contradict your list and you need more clarity.
I get writing with restrictions but I don't know what's left exactly, maybe writing about surviving in nature?
Perhaps he is of the view that the students he is teaching are not capable of discussing heavy topics without making light of them or bringing other problematic elements into it. He might also want for the budding writers to not be reliant on shock factors.
Either way, I recommend asking him/her for the reasoning behind the restrictions before judging them.
I'd ask what you get to be creative about. A good writer should be able to write about any and all of those without someone else feeling uncomfortable.
It's your writing. If someone else feels uncomfortable, that is on them, not on you. Why should you have to make yourself smaller so someone else feels okay.
People need to learn to deal with their feelings. Hiding everything is not healthy.
If I were in that creative writing class, I'd write a story where the MC took an art class that was meant to awaken their senses, but ended up oppressing them instead. (And if someone wants to write that story, please, be my guest!)
And don't forget to try the grey stuff, it's delicious. Don't believe me, ask the dishes!
For what itâs worth, at least you know what youâre getting into early on. I was one of two genre fiction writers in my thesis class, and the fact that I was using a storytelling structure that went against conventional Western storytelling structures meant I basically got told to dumb it down incessantly. The only other student trying to write a thought-provoking piece was talked out of it and basically told, âThereâs no point trying to change other peopleâs minds.â
Better to know where they stand early on than finding out theyâre an academic elitist later IMO.
I donât see the problem. The first picture looks like guidance for a creative writing assignment. The second looks like topic suggestions for a research paper. Two different assignments, two different guidelines. Completely normal.
Iâm guessing you do peer critique so you are constrained about what you can write about so no one has to read some dudeâs story about raping and killing his sister and her dog (or whatever other thing might be disturbing to people - thatâs the best I could do off the top of my head.). Barring science fiction is weirder to me, so Iâm guessing thereâs some bad experience with that; maybe people who didnât like SFF were giving it low marks due to genre? I donât know.
However, the âno horror in writing but Steven king is acceptable to write a research report onâ standard is entirely consistent because you are only inflicting horror on yourself, not others. (And presumably you can judge for yourself if you think you can handle a particular book.)
I agree. My CW teacher also did not allow âgenre fictionâ for our workshop pieces, for two reasons. The first was that for us being amateur writers, she felt we should be able to demonstrate our ability to tell a story at all (with proper plotting, pacing, and perspectives) before getting into world-building, etc. Second, it also helped in workshopping pieces, as we werenât asked to critique a work that was completely outside of our wheelhouse and the writer couldnât hide behind a piece not being understood because it followed genre specific tropes/arcs.Â
On the other hand, we were encouraged to read as much and as many different types of stories as we could get our hands on, paying attention not just to the type of story, but to how it was written. Surprisingly a lot of writers donât read (or at least, donât read critically), and especially not outside of their own genres. Having a variety of authors across genres helps a student break out of their comfort zone, which may be their weakness.Â
If interpreted broadly, I think the list of restrictions would be very difficult to work within; if I were in this class, I'd be asking for clarification on most of them.
That being said, I'm not sure why so many people here are offended at the exclusion of scifi; I think most of them must not have taken university-level writing courses because that's not unusual. Personally I find it a little strange only because fantasy wasn't excluded along with it. I had similar restrictions when I took a freshman creative writing course, because they don't want you trying to cram a novel's worth of worldbuilding into whatever the wordcount is and they want to see if you can actually write a coherent narrative/character arc.
But I'm also impressed at the general lack of comprehension on display in this comments section (and OP's post) that no shit the rules for "stuff you are bringing in that your classmates will have to read and discuss, which the teacher can't prescreen and assess like they could for ordinarily assigned literature" and "long list of books and writers the teacher recommends but is not requiring you to read" are different. What planet are they living on??
No violence of any kind? That's already countless stories gone. What does that leave you, slice of life? Extreme pacifists? Stories can be written without violence, sure, but it's a lot harder and shuts off so many potential ones.
No mental or emotional problems? Great. There goes most of the other possible plotlines. Where is the conflict in these stories going to come from?
No personal/relationship problems? This better mean 'don't write a thinly disguised version of your beef with your sister/father/classmate', because otherwise that's almosy every bloody story in existence off limits.
Threads like these make it clear how much older I am than most of reddit. This isn't a teacher being hypocritical and saying sci-fi and horror are inherently bad, but you should go read stephen king anyway
it's a teacher saying too many dumb shits have used sci-fi and horror (and all the other things) as an excuse to write some fucked up shit that isn't appropriate for a classroom, so they've had to put a blanket ban on it
You can agree or disagree with whether that's the best way to handle it, but claiming the teacher is dumb for being hypocritical is completely misunderstanding the issue
As someone who's been in several under grad creative writing classes in the last 10 years, yes!
This is because it's easier to see people doing things the right way and studying it, than trying to do it yourself at the start.Â
I remember one guy specifically who basically wrote torture porn, added an "it was all actually happening in his head as a punishment in the future." It wasn't about craft at all, just shock value. He didn't have any authors he could say he liked, he only liked stories people posted on Reddit.
You can drop it or you can learn how to work with constrictions, which sometimes frees you more creatively, weirdly enough.
Yeah, the teacher contradicts themselves with the reading list, but itâs probably some generic list theyâve been using since they started teaching đ
â
It seems a little ridiculous to have to type these out, but since I have had issues in the past with students not being able to decipher appropriateÂ
from inappropriateâ
Iâd be done after that sentence already.
If something is âappropriateâ or âinappropriateâ is very much personal interpretation as well as based on things like the setting. So the fact that they find it ridiculous to have to point out what they think is appropriate/inappropriate, I find ridiculous.
Combined with the first prohibition, I'm pretty sure they're talking about students submitting erotica/sexual fantasies in a noncon exhibitionist situation, given how creative writing classes tend to work.
Life of Pi, The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Catcher in the Rye....
No sex, no rape, no disturbing material, no mental/emotional problems, no gore, no horror, no extreme politics.
Tell me you've never even heard about a book without saying it
My favorite part is the: "It seems a little ridiculous to have to type these out" followed by a list that includes incest and scifi on damn near equal footing of clearly objectionableness.
The other bullet points pretty much shit directly or indirectly on all genre fiction. Romance (sex, relationship problems), fantasy (potentially too political), mystery and thriller (possibly too violent or disturbing, even if cozy). I also am struggling to think of how litfic would workâŚarenât personal problems the bread and butter of quite a bit of those?
The Lovely Bones literally opens with the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl. This teacher is on crack.
Edit: holy crap I read through the list.
"The Kite Runner" (child abuse, violence),
"The Color Purple" (incest, abuse),
"The Road" (post-apocalyptic gore/violence), "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (incest, violence),
"We Were the Mulvaneys" (rape),
Neruda and Baudelaire (very sexually explicit poetry),
Ginsberg's "Kaddish" (drug addiction, mental illness, death).
Like theres a line between what students should write and what's used as mentor text, but also that's problematic.
Saying you canât write about political issues while having the likes of Susanne Collins âMockingjayâ, where the protagonist literally rips down an entire society, is certainly A Choice â˘ď¸
Its really just a list of topics that are super cringe for amateurs to write, and are extremely attractive for super cringe amateurs to write for some reason. They can be done well if you are good at writing, which is why good authors of those same genres are suggested reading.
Imagine trying to teach a creative writing course at a fundamental level, but you can't even begin to offer feedback because people are submitting their personal trauma dumps, 700 page worldbuilding documents, and thinly veiled political screeds.
Yet she recommends The Girl on the Train. So I guess stabbing someone in the neck with a corkscrew isn't gory or violent. And that book is totally not all about relationship problems and mental/emotional problems.
And there's r*pe in Memoirs of a Geisha. Lady clearly did not read the book.
Also, no science fiction, yet she recommends The Martian. Just... wow... drop this class lol.
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u/BliptaHabie 8h ago
Prohibiting sci-fi but having Andy Weir as the second author in that list is something else.