MFA 2

The MFA: Valuable or Harmful? Part 2

September 19, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* The MFA: Valuable or Harmful? Part 2
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” Sydney Banks (Thanks to Harold Goodman for the quote)

A Note on the Writing

I had my template for the next Blackwell Ops novel open and—

Bam! An idea popped into my head. So I wrote a short story. After a brief break, I started another short story. So I guess I’ll be on a short-story jag for awhile.

The MFA: Valuable or Harmful? Part 2

If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

Michaele continues—

Here are some commonalities. Anyone considering getting an MFA might consider these fair warning:

1. OF the MFAs in my sampling, none of them understand POV. Absolutely none.

When I wasn’t able to discern from the manuscript which character was the POV character, many clients would invariably answer something like this: “Oh, I just wanted to write the story first and then decide on the point-of-view later.”

What these newer writers—and others like them—fail to understand is that point-of-view IS the story. Consider contemporary political events: We all live through the same events, but opposing political camps experience them differently.

My favorite true anecdote (not political) involves two friends here in Tucson, both lovely ladies about five years younger than I. They are identical twins. Growing up they were extremely close, as twin girls frequently are.

About 15 years ago, the writer-sister wrote a memoir of their childhood summers spent in an idyllic-sounding summer home.

When the other-sister read the memoir, she told her writer-sister, “That’s strange. I don’t remember any of this happening that way.” I reiterate: Point-of-view is the only story, plain and simple.

2. Almost all of them seem married to the idea that “present tense makes the story more immediate.” None can explain why this is so, but it becomes a piece of religious dogma to hold as a sacred truth.

3. None of them can explain “passive construction” and argue when I identify repeated passages as such. Conversely, they identify all kinds of other (non-passive) constructions as passive.

Some will equate a character’s passive behavior (lack of agency) with passive construction.

For example, they consider passive any construction with a state-of-being verb (variations of “to be”) including simple predicates; all “-ing” constructions, regardless, and therefore any progressive tenses; any past-perfect construction; and on and on.

4. All have a strange devotion to complex permutations that their professors have defined such as “deep first person once-removed;” “third person omniscient;” “third person limited, deep POV limited (??),” “second person omni;” and “third person omni with limited POV.”

(Maybe I’m making up some of these now but the combinations always seemed ludicrously convoluted.)

And—remarkably—they allowed “deep POV” only for certain genres.

The funniest I ever heard was this: “First person, limited deep POV.” (Why would you ever limit your POV character?)

5. They pay $20,000 to $60,000 for the privilege of unlearning everything that they might have already instinctively known about storytelling and narrative structure by virtue of reading, watching movies, or simply living.

6. They almost all have an aversion to description (“Get rid of it all!”) and any in-depth use of setting.

When I’ve tried to explain (hopelessly) that the reason they don’t like it or know how to create it is because what they’ve been exposed to is done wrong. It’s hopeless.

7. Outlines are de rigeur. And their dialogue is frequently heavy and consists of telling. Putting quotations around several paragraphs does not make it good dialogue. Character bibles (or something similar) are needed.

8. Although all have heard the admonition “Show, don’t tell,” they are unable to convert a simple example of telling to a simple example of showing. (I provided exercises to show how very easy it is, to no avail.)

Other areas about which they will fight to the death: The narrator cannot be the same as the POV character, the need for certain characters to have “psychic distance” (whatever), and the need for a predetermined character arc. Sigh.

Several years back I presented a small portion of a two-day workshop. My chosen area was point of view (POV).

Among the attendees (I can’t call them students), there were three with MFAs and two others who taught at [a community college in southeast Arizona]. The others were unencumbered.

In my portion of the first day, I gave handouts with the criteria for various Points of View and ridiculously simple examples of how to identify them. Working through about twenty sentences, the only attendees who had trouble were those with MFAs in creative writing.

The other part of my session was examples of how to convert passive construction to active construction. Many would create a convoluted sentence where a very simple one would do—and it would still be passive. (Incidentally, ditto with “Show, don’t tell” exercises.)

*

Thank you, Michaele. Once again, folks, stay tuned. I’ll be back soon with Part 3 of this discourse on the value or harm of getting an MFA.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Expectations

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 890

Writing of “Big Steve Jensen”

Day 1…… 2208 words. To date…… 2208 (done)

Writing of “Mistaken Identity”

Day 1…… 2131 words. To date…… 2131

Fiction for September…………………….. 51822
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 675520
Fiction since October 1…………………… 835610
Nonfiction for September………………… 18310
Nonfiction for 2024……………………….. 293150
2024 consumable words…………………. 825703

Average Fiction WPD (September)……… 2879

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 13
2024 Novellas to Date……………………. 0
2024 Short Stories to Date………………. 12
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 95
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………. 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………. 249
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Please support TNDJ with a paid subscription. You may click the Subscribe or Update button below, or you may click Donate Here and set up a recurring donation of $5 per month OR make a one-time (annual) donation of $60 via PayPal. Thank you!