Expressive Writing I
April 2nd, 2008I neglected writing because I was in a limbo: I wasn’t sure if I wanted to devote my time on game development or graphics/manga or writing. I ended up spending little bit of time on each, never really mastering any one of them.
Well, thanks to Michelle, I have given up on graphics dream, my first dream actually. But it was my conscious decision so I have no regrets. Well, I do regret for wasting past 10 years of my life in terms of writing. Has it been really more than a decade since I graduated high school? Time flies.
So last night with five stories, bare minimum required to pass, I finished my Expressive Writing course at George Brown. Considering the fact that I didn’t take any writing course beyond occasional how-to books and Learning Annex, this course was very helpful. Not only because of the instructor’s competence–Randy was a good teacher–but because I was serious about it.
In fact, I could say a lot of things I learned–or will learn once I practice couple more times–I probably learned in high school; I was simply not ready to understand even though I thought I knew. Perhaps I will say the same in years to go but that’s what learning is, I hear.
When I began the course, I breezed through each short story. I was in the zone. To finish the last one, even the first draft, I had to hack my way through it. As Mr. William said in my OAC English, I had to think each line as I wrote the story; I was conscious of what I was writing. And I think it’s a good thing. At least it had much better flow that Randy spent less time fixing the grammar. Hopefully once I master the craft to a certain degree, I can breeze through without writing pure crap.
I still write crap but I also learned couple things from this course:
- Think what you write, each line, each paragraph
- Don’t over-use thesaurus; expand the vocabulary when you are not writing
- One idea for a sentence: one idea for a paragraph
- Explain ideas fully but never info-dump; or at least balance it out
- Know the ending before you begin so you know what paths to take; even when you deviate, it will flow better if you knew the original path
- Do three or four revision before you submit…anywhere; you will always catch more errors
- Try reading first sentence of each paragraph and see if the story flows (I like this)
- Try reading backward (supposed to help with grammar errors)
- Think of each word/phrase usage; they may have more than one meaning
- Story requires story; slice of life is good but put emphasis on the main point; no point = no story
I might add more when I remember but that’s not a bad beginning for list of things to watch out for.
#1, as I said, got rid of a lot of errors. #2 was my greatest sin going into the class that I somehow deluded myself to accept as something all writers do. It seems they don’t. #3 was particularly bad for me. Sometimes I tried to plant several images with a single sentence. Other times, I tried to throw in a hook at the end of a paragraph, thus successfully confusing the reader. #4 and #5 should be fixed once #3 is in motion. #6 goes hand in hand with #1 as I will not make same mistake of thinking my writing is perfect first time through since I was in the zone. #10, I still have issues with. I think some of my stories don’t have that impact…resulting with reader thinking, ‘meh, so what?’
Following my new year resolution–to come up with new year resolutions through out the year as not to invalidate my goals and self–I have come up with a new resolution: publish a short prose.
Once that done, my next goal will be to obtain the SFWA membership [sfwa.org]… One can dream.
Anyway, off to a grammar course at UT next week. Hopefully I get rid of my non-colloquial English usage and hard-drill some grammatical sense into my thick skull.
