Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Art of Writing

The Art of Writing

Yesterday I worked, for the most part on fixing the RC model plane I crashed earlier in the week. It was a serious setback but not catastrophic. The right side of the front of the fuselage crumpled and the engine was buried in the muck. The metering valve used to lean the mixture and get max performance out of the engine broke off and there was internal breakage to fix.

Sometimes when I read a chapter as I edit a novel I can see a real analogy to my RC flying experience. Sometimes after laying a work aside for several weeks or months and then going back reveals that I crashed and burned. That fixing the chapter is going to require some extensive work.

In my course, the Exploratory Writing Workshop, I don’t try and teach student the art of writing. My focus is on the science. Not the science in a grammar and spelling sense although this is extremely important. I focus on demonstrating components such as characters, dramatic premise, themes, repetition, foreshadowing, and back story to mention a few. Then there is writing a blend of exposition and dialog that shows and tells the reader at the same time. Of course there are the rising action, crisis development and a host of other considerations that culminate in an outline that captures the thread of the story and also insures the writer includes the components mentioned above.

However I tend to avoid getting into the Art part because the students are overwhelmed with getting the fundamentals the workshop offers. It is possible though to help students with the art part just like my watercolor teacher helped me many years ago. Things like over use of modifiers, including too many thoughts in a single sentence, using words that imperfectly convey meaning are a whole different and critical dimension of writing.
Fortunately there are other classes that New Horizons Academy teaches that help the student with many of the areas I don’t get into. Still it can be troubling to see the scientific understanding in a student coming along and see at the same time that the art part is not keeping pace.

When I first came to WDC I tried a review technique whereby I would rewrite portions of a writer’s work to illustrate in very specific terms the parts of their work that in my view could be improved. Rather than speak in abstractions and beat around the bush I made my points and illustrated specific improvements that in my view enhanced the work. This technique met with a firestorm of indignation which I still don’t fully understand. To my thinking if someone rewrote a paragraph of my work to show what they were getting at in their commentary this would be the highest and most valuable form of review. Oh well, this is the difficulty part of helping someone in the art part of writing.