Should beginning writers have other persons critique their works?

The question comes up again and again at our meetings of the Murray Writers Support Group: that  of whether and how fledgling writers should get some else, presumably another writer, to critique their poetry or prose. Having someone critique one’s work can be helpful, but hazardous. Hazardous because there are too many egocentric persons who love to make themselves look impressive by slashing another’s writing. Such persons are dangerous when the beginning writer assumes that they are indeed qualified and honest in their assessments.  I know of one woman who had her story read by members of a writers’ group. One or more persons so bitterly verbally shredded her work that she did not return to a meeting and did not attempt to publish fiction for 10 years. Now she has written many novels and runs her own publishing company. Hence, getting someone to critique your work is not easy. I believe a good course is for two beginning writers who know and trust each other to work together. That way neither can assume the role of master craftsman; both should see themselves as beginning writers, attempting to help one another’s work.  Then, too, as one guest speaker emphasized at a meeting, she does mind a person’s pointing out errors and flaws, just so long as the reader does not correct the words, thereby presenting him or herself as an expert.  This lady asked for readers to point out errors and weak spots, but to let her herself make the corrections, if they are needed.  I think a better method is the one I used: making myself my own critic.  So many people cannot be counted on to give an honest assessment.

Serious Fiction, Part Two

administrator sells his soul to the devil to be a college president, hardly has a realistic character in it. Rather they all are type characters like Ben Jonson’s humors characters, who highlight or exaggerate foibles and foolish traits of humanity. In other words, a lot of the fun of fiction is encountering realistic or quasi-realistic characters, whom one may analyze, as one enjoys their adventures and even afterward. But I do not try to push any specific dogma. But here I am approaching a topic for another time.

Serious Fiction?

WHAT I MEAN BY “SERIOUS FICTION”

WHAT I MEAN BY “SERIOUS FICTION”

I promised I would post this material yesterday but found myself tied up. Then, too, I found that I wanted to think a bit about the matter at hand. I suppose an effective route to explaining what I mean by “serious fiction” is to talk about its opposite: pure action fiction, if indeed anything can be pure.  When a teenager, I used to read the sci-fi pulps and digests avidly.  Most of the plots had duplicate skeletons.  Aliens invade; the hero fights them, often with the aid of an elderly scientist, who has a beautiful daughter (Most sci-fi movies and mags of the 1950s included scientists who invariably had beautiful daughters.)  The hero, the heroine, and others join forces and defeat the aliens. Then, during the last few pages, although the hero and heroine have hardly pitched a word of woo, they suddenly find themselves in love and ready for the altar.  I don’t mean to trash this fare.  Much of it was written for teenage boys, young men, and even men in their seventies who still have a number of teenage brain cells in their craniums. Occasionally I still get out one of my old pulps and enjoy an action sci-fi tale by such writers as Edmund Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, or Don Wilcox. (Of course, even at that time more cerebral sci-fi was being written by Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon and others.)  But the bare skeletons of most stories closely resembled one another.  Action surmounted all other goals. But often the characters were interchangeable, lacked in-depth personalities, and had few, if any, if any personal problems. The same is true for much genre fiction. I have been told that many women’s romances follow basic formulas. Publishers require that the heroine meet the man of her dreams on the second page and thereafter feel unworthy of him. Again I do not intend of downgrade such fiction and mock it. Most of us occasionally enjoy escape reading.  True, too, genre fiction can take on attributes of more serious fiction. Owen Whister’s The Virginian is a western, but some readers would consider it literature.

The type of fiction I generally write focuses attention largely upon that most intriguing species of created beings: humanity.  Whether I write genre fiction or another type, I direct my interest on the personalities of the characters, their quirks, fears, vices, and manias. Even when I am writing my Kentucky Colonel novels, primarily humorous adventure stories, one eye us on spoofs, cockeyed kidding around, and at times satire of humanity,  My fantasy HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, in which a college administrator sells his soul to the devil to be a college president, hardly has a realistic character in it. Rather they all are type characters like Ben Jonson’s humors characters, who highlight or exaggerate foibles and foolish traits of (Continued)whom one may analyze, as one enjoys their adventures and even afterward. But I do not try to push any specific dogma. But here I am approaching a topic for another time.

Are You Trying to Write a Book in Each Genre?

I’ve heard this question more than once when potential buyers approach my display tables at book fairs and see books ranging from one on Shakespeare to novels about mass killers.  My answer is no: I simply have an unruly muse.  Different kinds of stories attract me and demand to be told.  Thus far my books fall into such categories as southern Gothic as such as Faulkner’s and Robert Penn Warren’s novels do, comic fantasy, such as my Kentucky Colonel series, HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, and MURSKIN DURKIN, although final one has more comic sci-fi in it than fantasy. The Colonel novels are more light-hearted, but I have come to think of HELL IS as a comical satire in the spirit of Ben Jonson’s plays. MADONNA is a horror novel with a religious subtext; PLAYER GODS is a sense is an attempt to create a book-long nightmare that, I suppose, defies genre.  I have probably omitted a form or two I’ve written in, but sticking to one type is not how my mind functions.  The standard advice to beginning writers is to stick to one genre and attempt to build up a group of readers centered upon one character.  (I’m not so sure this advice is still valid). A friend of mine consulted an agent and said that she was interested in writing both science fiction and Christian women’s fiction. The agent told her to choose one. She chose Christian women’s fiction, but I have noticed that she is venturing into sci-fi. Despite my wide range of novels, I do believe them united by seeing myself as what I call a serious writer.  I’ll explain about that idea tomorrow.