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Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens

WorldCrafters Guild

Workshop:Assignment #1 (April-May 1999)

   

1. Assignment

2. Choose a Skill

3. Deadlines

4. Submit your Homework

5. Content

6. Why You Should Do An Original Piece For Each Homework Assignment

 

In 6 weeks, a working professional writer is expected by any editor to be able to turn out a 75,000 to 100,000 word novel.  (for which you may get perhaps $2,000 to $5,000 -- not a living wage because you can't keep up that pace indefinitely.) 

But 6 weeks should be enough time for you to write a short story.  So that's the time-frame I'm suggesting you use for this. 

1. Assignment

1. Assignment

Pick out one of the lessons on the Workshop page. Here's how to find them: 

A) click this link http://www.simegen.com/school/workshop/index.html 

B) on the left click Choose a Teacher, 

C) scroll down and click Jacqueline Lichtenberg

D) survey the writing articles listed there. You may also click on Jean Lorrah or any of the other teachers' names and pick one of their articles. 

We recommend picking one of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's articles, preferably something you've considered yourself a bit weak in.  

Study the essays under that topic, read up on the topic from other sources perhaps other books on writing, or online workshops or whatever sources you have.  Watch a lot of television with a yellow legal pad in hand and OUTLINE the TV episodes you watch, searching for how that one skill you are studying is illustrated (or how it failed to be illustrated) by any particular episode of a weekly series. 

You should do this with two or three of your favorite series -- and one or two series that leave you cold. 

Today, almost all your readers have been raised on television shows.  If your narrative prose departs too drastically from the protocols of the visual story, you will have a hard time holding your reader's attention.  (A lot of people read while watching television -- as if you didn't know . . .)  (see the workshop posts on visual story telling -- there are more such posts being prepared that will be ready in a couple of months I think)

Pour yourself into understanding and mastering that one skill you have chosen to acquire -- isolate it from all the other skills, and study how it works all by itself. 

2. Choose a Skill

When you think you've got a hold on that one skill, write a short piece (it does not have to be a "story" in the technical sense -- it can be a fragment or vignette or a single scene, or a chapter etc. but if it is not a whole story, with beginning, middle, and end, protagonist and antagonist -- then be sure to LABEL IT AS SUCH.)  -- focus on illustrating that you've mastered this one single skill -- plot, conflict, theme, whichever skill you have chosen. 

The piece you are writing need not have any other skills demonstrated.  Everything else may be done badly or not at all -- but this one skill that you are illustrating must be done well. 

We may accept pastiche for this exercize -- that hasn't been decided yet. (If you're reading this after August 1999, check the School and/or Workshop pages for our Showcase and see what we did decide.) 

We definitely will accept original backgrounds.  But we want to be as welcoming and helpful to the TV Show fanfic writers as possible, and some of them have no ambition to write anything but fanfic. 

In May, or maybe June, or possibly July '99 -- we're going to work out a way for you to SHOWCASE your homework assignments,  and you will then be able to present these workshop exercizes before the eyes of some of our volunteer professional writers.  If you attract the attention of one of them, he or she may contact you to take you on as an apprentice.

3. Deadlines

There will be hard, unforgiving deadlines for these assignments, just as in working under contract for pay.  The deadlines will be announced in the syllabus to be posted and in the WorldCrafters-L newsletter. 

4. Submit Your Homework

When your piece is finished and ready for professional evaluation, email simegen@simegen.com  BUT DO NOT ATTACH YOUR PIECE.  Just let me know you've got something to present, and how long it is, and what subject or genre it represents.  I'll make a list and estimate the space we'll require, and we will decide how best to design our SHOWCASE where professionals, writers, possibly editors, possibly agents, can browse through beginners' stories. 

No design decisions have been made yet, no mechanisms discussed.  But rest assured you will be required to indicate on your writing samples which skill you have chosen to demonstrate as well as whether it's a complete story. 

5. Content

TALENT: we are not interested in seeing you demonstrate TALENT.  We're not interested in seeing you dazzle us with your brilliant ideas or interesting concepts.  The less creative talent you demonstrate in this exercise the better.  All that should be in this exercise is the craft, the skill, mastery of one story-mechanism.  If you have a hard time with this concept, write your piece about "Jack and Jill" the guy who fell down the hill and the gal who came tumbling after.  Or Adam and Eve.  Or Samson and Delilah. 

6. Why You Should Do An Original Piece For Each Homework Assignment

The material should be something you would not be reluctant to place in the "public domain" -- this should be "throwaway material" -- not something you think of as saleable.  (though your copyright notice MUST appear on anything you send in for homework -- it must be your own work, not cribbed, not borrowed, not copied, your own)  -- "Peter Rabbit" would be a fine topic. 

The best piece of advice I was given when I was a student writer was given to me by Alma Hill, a professional who ran the N3F Writers Workshop.  "Writing is a Performing Art," she taught me.  And it is.  What I'm asking you to do for this homework assignment is to sit down at the piano (i.e. your computer) and perform one complete set of scales (i.e. write a swatch of material demonstrating a skill.)  I don't want to hear Chopin, nor an original composition.  I want SCALES -- a practice session. 

That makes it easier to spot false notes and flawed technique.  Scales -- the practice that gets you to Carnegie Hall.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg