10 Stories We Never Need to See in Workshops Again. Several months ago, Indiana Review staffer Joe Hiland wrote a great column about many of the submissions that routinely appear in the I.R.’s slush pile.
Its timing was apropos for me, as I've recently felt like an unwitting subject in a perplexing metaphysical paradox: I keep running into the same stories in fiction workshops over and over again. I’ve been attending workshops in New York City for the better part of a decade. I took an extended break only once, and that was to get my MFA (where, as you may have guessed, I was attending workshops). During this time — and in the course of teaching my own classes after graduating — I’ve read and critiqued literally hundreds of stories. Some of them have been great — a few, fantastic — but there are times when I find myself experiencing these literary Groundhog Day moments. One of the obvious pitfalls of writing is that your story will inevitably be stacked up against every story that came before it. The workshop is where writers test ideas. Top 10 Storytelling Cliches Writers Need To Stop Using. Cliché is the enemy of good writing.
We, as writers, are trained to kill clichéd phrases in sentences. But that's not the only place they can hide—they can infect the spaces between the words, too. Clichés can infect storytelling techniques. Need to build some tension? Have a time bomb with a digital readout slowly ticking down to zero! Is your narrator a dick? Want to get all writerly in conveying the plot? These are storytelling devices that pop up again and again, crutches for the writer to lean on and help move the story along without actually having to stretch their abilities. 1. Why it's easy: Describing a character when you're writing in the third person is pretty easy when the narrative voice is omniscient. Why it's a cop out: It's lazy, it's been done to death, and anyway, no one looks in a mirror and takes stock of all their features in severe detail. 2. Why it's a cop out: This is the "little did he know" principle of storytelling.
How to Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material. While attending the Midwest Writers Workshop, I posted a summary of a talk given by Marcus Sakey and John Gilstrap.
Sakey advised that query letters, if any good, would result in a 75% “send me something” response. I had no idea what a bomb I was throwing by tweeting and blogging that principle. Thus, I asked Marcus to write a guest post further elaborating on it. Here he is! About two weeks ago I pissed a lot of you off. I was attending the Midwest Writers Workshop at the time, where along with my buddy John Gilstrap, I gave a presentation on “The Secrets of Getting Published.” My host, the delightful Jane Friedman, tweeted this, and many of you disagreed with me rather strongly. To which I respond, respectfully: you’re wrong. How to win the Writers of the Future contest. To quote one of my favorite old movies from the 80′s: CHARLES DE MAR: I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years.
I’m no dummy. I originally put this up on the Writers of the Future phpBB forum, but I wanted to repost it here for everyone who doesn’t visit that forum, but is still curious about what it takes to get called up to the WotF ‘majors’ and, ultimately, get a base hit — or a home run! These are just my opinions, of course. But seeing as how I never got a rejection — four Honorable Mention and two Finalists, one of which won — I do think I have my finger somewhat on the pulse of the contest. NOTE: Please read recent volumes of the contest anthology.
Here are some things I noticed, for myself. 1) Put your Science Fictional or Fantastical element right up front. 2) Avoid doing “downer” stories. 3) Don’t go bashing religion. 4) On that note, your character(s) ought to be going on a bona fide voyage. To recap, I am not an expert, and these are just my theories.