Random quote: "The most important part of a story...is the ending. It's all that really matters in a story." -Johnny Depp, "Secret Window"
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Member
Posts: 47
| Gooblink - 2009-11-06 6:37 PM Fleurdelis - 2009-11-06 3:13 PM "There is no way I or anybody else will ever publish this turd. Please continue sending me your work." *grin* That's cute. Have you?
Naw. I stopped writing for, you know, personal reasons. | |
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Veteran
Posts: 167
Location: Arkansas | Out of curiousity James, what do the two people do that were forced to take a writing class and disgusted the others with their natural talent? Was there anything you noted in their upbringing that might explain their masterful storytelling ability? | |
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Member
Posts: 43
| I firmly think anyone can learn anything, given enough time. But the latter is exactly the main issue, we do not have infinite time to practice. I suck at dancing, very hard so. To my estimation, I would need at least 300 years of practice to become a good dancer. Which is why, despite I still think learned craft and innate talent are perfect substitutes in a theoretical way, they are not in real life. If you don't have at least a minimum of talent, you will never reach "good writer" status anywhere in this life. I think that's why it's generally a good idea to hone skills we already have some rudimentary talent in and not to apply brute force trying to be good at something we're absolutely untalented for. I don't even try to be a dancer. Not even casually. I am hopeless. So I practice other things. If I had the feeling I would be an absolutely untalented fiction writer, I would abandon it right now, too. But my non-fiction got published and I am getting favorable comments on my stories even from people not in my family. Will it be enough to publish a novel one day? Time will tell. The only people who _know_ they are good writers are the ones who are published. The rest can only guess.
Now, the good thing about "writing" is, is that it again can be broken down into several sub-sets of skills that make up being a writer. The writing itself, the storytelling, the ability to characterize come to mind. You don't have to be talented in all of those to be a published writer. I don't think anyone would say that R.A. Salvatore is great at stringing words. Or Dan Brown. They are adequate, but that's it. But both are great storytellers, which is why people are storming bookstores when they publish a new novel. Some others are great at phrasing beautiful lines, but their plot is less engaging. I do think you need to be talented in at least one of the three areas and you will still be fine. The greatest writers of them all are the ones who are highly talented in all the sub-skills (e.g. Tolkien). Gladly those uber-writers are a rare breed, so there is hope for the rest of us, to get published, too. 
I think the reason why we see so many people with no writing talent worth mentioning flooding agents with really bad manuscripts, as James pointed out, is that writing is a great profession to have. You can be creative, you can craft your own worlds, you don't have to commute, you don't have a boss telling you what, where, when and how to do something and a few writers even end up being famous. I do think that's why many people are losing touch with their own abilities, dreaming of being able to be a published writer someday, despite given their (to other people even obvious) lack of talent in ALL skills related to writing, they'd need to take several lifetimes worth of creative writing classes to be able to produce anything publishable.
Edited by Sascha 2009-11-09 5:52 AM
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Member
Posts: 31
| s.c. denton - 2009-11-09 1:51 AM
Out of curiousity James, what do the two people do that were forced to take a writing class and disgusted the others with their natural talent? Was there anything you noted in their upbringing that might explain their masterful storytelling ability?
That's a very interesting question... It certainly makes you curious. | |
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Expert
Posts: 2086
| Writing and the ability to write is a very strange thing. I'm not sure if one ever gets over the feeling that you were able to write the last story--but maybe it will never work again, whatever it is that let's you do it. | |
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Member
Posts: 24
| I am of the belief that you can't TEACH writing (or any other art), you can LEARN it. | |
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Expert
Posts: 2114
Location: Tinian...a tiny isle in the middle of the farthest | or, even more accurately, imo, in re any of the arts, 'you can just DO it exceptionally well, or you can LEARN to do it passably'... | |
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Can writing be learned?
