quote:

---

I wish you wouldn’t do that.
Genn smiled. “What, Wendell, open the door for you?”
Yes.
Frankly, she was delighted that he was actually upset that she was opening doors for him, instead of the other way around. Chivalry wasn’t quite dead. But it was silly to expect him to open doors for her--he didn‘t really exist, after all. When she said as much, though, he wasn’t impressed.
That’s not the point. You could pretend, like you do with everything else. It’s a gentleman’s job to open the door for a lady, Genn, he answered.
She started to shrug, then remembered and merely said, “Welcome to the twentieth century, Your Highness.”

---

It's really rough, and I know it could use a lot of work. I'd like help with this, but I'd also like people to read the whole thing. Anyone willing to read on?
 

Heresy
 

They don't like fantasy? Just fantasy or all spec fiction?

Glad you came here.
 

It's not only fantasy, or even only spec fiction--anything that can be considered a "genre" is taboo. Romance, western, scifi, fantasy, whatever. Of course, I consider "serious modern fiction" to be a genre, and one of my least favorite genres at that, but whatever.

I can deal, at least until the end of the semester. We'll be doing "modern" poetry soon enough anyway, and I can BS that with the best of them.
 

I agree "serious modern fiction" is a genre, and has it's own subgenres:

Noble suicide stories
Coming of age stories
Romantic scandal stories
Dealing with sexuality stories
Dealing with child abuse stories
Dealing with alcoholic parents stories
Dealing with life in a blended family stories
Dealing with death stories

Need I go on. Again. Yuck!
 

I think writing outside the genre you're used to writing in is a really good exercise. But I think any writing class that prohibits particular genres is kinda crackheaded. oh, well.
 

It is good for me to write something other than speculative fiction. I just don't appreciate being forbidden to write it.
 

However, I don't think the purpose is all that sinister. It seems that the tabooed "genre fiction" is not a condemnation of fantasy or scifi, but rather a request to avoid writing that is a little less...I don't know...skilled? than the type of writing that they're trying to teach.

Now before people jump on me, let me assure you that I don't believe that fantasy and scifi constitute unskilled writing. However, the focus of the genres is not usually on the technical aspects of writing. It's creative world-building, in my opinion, that sets genre fiction apart from other types of writing. "Creative writing" classes seem to encourage more "literary" writing because in those situations, there is little other than the writing itself to focus on.

I've found it to be a great opportunity to look at the structure of my writing instead of (as well as?) the content.

That said, it's possible that my professor is a little more enlightened than most. He's of the opinion that fantasy and scifi are all right, as long as they trend to a more literary attitude. I submitted Ouroboros in Three for my first assignment, which was definitely fantastical, and I plan on submitting Speaking in Flowers for my second assignment, which is unavoidably science fiction.

I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions/experiences...should this move over to Open Discussions?

Wow, that sound's hypocritical. I mean what does SF&F do, BUT broaden horizons?
 

If they asked you to specifically focus on certain elements within your writing, well that is one thing, but just to say, "No, I'm not accepting this genre stuff," is like sticking your head in the ground. The ostriches would be proud.
 

Write whatever the hell you want.

Turn it in.

When the teacher says, "I told you not to write this genre," just say, "It's not. I wrote a ____ story set in a fantasy world."

Or just go to a higher power and tell them your teacher is censoring you
 

Send it over and I'll take a look if you like.

R
 

Anyway, thanks for all the offers--I'll send it along here shortly. That should be all the readers I need, though. I don't have more than two weeks before the final is due, and if I've got too many changes to make it's not going to happen.

Thanks again to all of you--it's so cool to see that I sparked an interesting discussion!

--Jaya
 

Either the prof is misguidedly trying to help by focusing students on something different, or else it's a sign of intellectual snobbery.

I only ran into problems in my lit classes, but I found a few workarounds--it was OK to read Ray Bradbury because he was in the curriculum, and OK to read "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" because it was "allegorical" (sure, if you count math problems as allegory) and written by a vaguely controversial author. Basically, all I learned was how to make things up that I didn't believe in at all and how to cheat the system. Not good lessons at all.

Hurray for academia.

Edit: I like the story fragment. Actually, I think this could be really good. Well, sometimes limitations can be the wellspring of art.

Or something like that. (I must have read that from someone else. I'm not good at "profound.")

[This message has been edited by ScottMiller (edited March 03, 2005).]
 

If you get one that, say, prohibts a genre, the class can suck and blow at the same time.

My creative writing teacher was great. She always started class off with all of us writing journals, but not the kind you would expect. We would have prompts that we could choose to write about, and she only wrote the first one. The rest of the semester she had one of us make a prompt. And these weren't always written. She would let songs be prompts.

Really the only limits she put on our writing were those of format. We would do one kind of poem for a week or so, then move on to another, etc. Then we'd do prose, etc. Even scripts. She would sometimes give us a requirement for our assignment, and basically encourage us to find workarounds to it. For example, once we were told to write about the time we were stuck inside a phone booth with a python. So naturally I wrote about getting stuck inside a phone booth with Eric Idle.

She knew what the class should be and encouraged what was supposed to be encouraged: Creativity. It was one of the best classes I took that year.

Hmmm... I'm probably making it worse for you Jaina, aren't I?

Btw, did you get that name from WC3?
 

Ah... which name, Jaina, Wendell or Genn? Actually, it doesn't matter, really. I got Jaina from Star Wars (she's Han Solo's daughter), Wendell from that miniseries "The 10th Kingdom," and Genn from a fanfiction that I read a while back and really loved.

The sad thing is, I took a creative writing class as an independent study in high school, and since it was with the newspaper adviser, and I was on the newspaper staff, he made me do newspaper more often than he made me do creative writing. And when I did write something, it was usually poetry. I got so sick of writing poetry, I wrote an anti-poetry poem about how I can't write poetry well (in perfect blank verse ). I was really hoping this class would be better. Maybe I'll just stick to Hatrack in the future, eh?

But it's not big deal. I was toying with this story idea before I got into the class, anyway, but I was putting off writing it because I wasn't sure how to do it. This class kind of forced me to make it work (well, sort of, anyway. The ending is going to have to be totally redone).
It's good for me. I just don't think I'll be taking the next level of Creative Writing class!