I’m currently taking English 3330: Intro to Creative Writing- Fiction. The class is set up so that we each write a story and submit it to the review of our peers. The next week, we discuss the three stories from the previous week, and hand in our comments and corrections. So far, the stories I’ve read have been mostly good. One last week wasn’t structured very well, but it had the beginnings of a very good story. But, just now, I read and marked up a story that it an insult to writers everywhere.
It took me at least 30 minutes to wade through 6 1/2 double spaced pages of one of the most poorly written, poorly punctuated, poorly organized, poorly conceived stories I have ever had the displeasure of reading, and that’s counting all the stories our 6th grade English teacher forced us to write and evaluate. I mean, come on! How can you be a sophomore in college and not know how to punctuate a quote, how to use a comma, how to use an apostrophe, or that you have to start a new paragraph when you start quoting someone new? How can you not know that possesives and contractions require an apostrophe? How can you not know that a compound sentence requires a comma? ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE A BLOODY ENGLISH MAJOR, which most of the people in this class are. I hope to God this guy isn’t. These aren’t just random errors I’m describing; he made these mistakes with regularity throughout the paper, as if it were the accepted form! Most posts on the SDMB are written and punctuated better than this! Most trollish posts on the SDMB are, too, for that matter!
AND PROOFREAD, GOD DAMMIT! Even if he is completely ignorant as to proper grammar and punctuation, at least he could have caught the many instances of awkward wording! Hell, it doesn’t even look like he read it as he went along. It looks like he just randomly splattered a really bad idea all over his word processor.
How can you think a list of dry facts constitutes a description? How can you think that randomly describing something in the setting (such as a painting that bears no significance to the situation) constitutes good description? How can you think that a plot consists of clichéd characters getting their clichéd just desserts? How can you write like this and expect to be taken seriously in a college-level creative writing course?
In short, either try harder or drop this fragging class so we don’t have to deal with you!
I am so dreading Wednesday, when we’ll actually have to discuss this guy’s paper in class…
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!