It’s the zombie rhetorical question that won’t die. What do you think? Check a box in the sidebar to your right.
[Note: Poll is closed. The final results were: 95% yes (writing can be taught), 5% no.]
Novelist Harry Crewes, a no-nonesense guy, was approached by a neurosurgeon at a party and asked the question every novelist-teacher gets: can fiction writing be taught. Crewes said, “Well, I don’t know, can brain surgery be taught?”
This is: the answer to your question should be as obvious as the answer to my question.
To me it’s a given that fiction writing can be taught. To say it can’t is to play a wicked semantic trick on many would-be writers. Here’s James Scott Bell, author of Plot and Structure, on how it affected him:
“I wasted ten years of prime writing life because of the Big Lie. In my twenties, I gave up the dream of becoming a writer because I had been told that writing could not be taught. Writers are born, people said. You either have what it takes or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’ll never get it.”
I’ve worked with hundreds of new writers who didn’t get it when we started, but a year or two later were writing well-wrought stories that moved a reader through the stages of narrative with confidence.
“Ah, but Faulkner, Kafka, Hemingway….”
This is meant to be the trumps-all response–as if invoking the gods nullifies the gains of mere mortals. In fact, some of my students have been extremely talented; others, not so much. Did I teach any of them to write like Faulker and Kafka? No. Did they all learn how to write a story that works (something many had no notion of, going in)? Yes.
I don’t often chat with brain surgeons, but I’ve played tennis all my life, and I learned the strokes, court sense, basic strategy, and gamesmanship from club pros who taught me the moves most likely to produce success.
“Ah, but Federer…”
No, I’m not Federer. I can put together a decent set or two against an opponent at my skill level, but I’m not Federer, not in a million years. But does that prove that tennis can’t be taught?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Federer can play tennis because he played tennis his life, like it’s a job. It’s the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book “Outliers”. From the wikiepdia article about the book “is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years.”
Becoming a writer is simply a matter of writing over and over until you figure out what works and what doesn’t.
It’s also the law of averages, if you keep producing something is bound to be half-decent.
My AP English teacher had a theoretical scenario that she imparted on us about being “born writers” versus working hard on it. I forget the name she used in her example so I will say Virginia Woolf.
Let’s say Virginia Woolf and I are in an English class and we have a week to write an essay. Because she is a good writer and she knows it, Virginia Woolf can wait until the night before it’s due, scribble down a first draft, turn it in and get a B+. Now I could sit around all week thinking about how it’s not fair that Virginia Woolf has it so easy, or I can study and write and rewrite all week and turn in my paper and get an A.
This helped me make the distinction in my head between talent and skill. One we are born with, the 0ther comes from hard work and dedication.
I’ll go for the ultra-corny and say that, like most things, writing can only be taught if the student is willing to learn. If you’re unwilling to take notes, then you won’t ever progress in your writing.
True. If you don’t want to take it on, the learning process won’t produce results. And ironically, you have to work like a demon to produce writing that reads as if it were merely tossed off. I think most readers, even some writers (!) don’t realize how huge a labor it is to write and finish something of value–and I seriously doubt that any novelist, Virginia Woolf included, ever tossed one off. NaNoWriMo encourages a simulated effortlessness, but they’re very clear about their bottom line–to get people writing every day, nothing more. Talent or no talent, you can’t avoid (1) desire and (2) willingness to put on the clod boots and slog through the mud like a peasant.
In my opinion interest in writing cannot be taught. Creativity cannot be taught, it seems to be hardwired or not. However, the tools in which we unleash our interests and creativity not only can be, they must be taught.