Sounds odd to say that a place of higher learning will not teach you how to write. But it’s the truth. The reasons why include the structure of college and the fact that college teachers are not doing the most important thing with their students.
A typical college semester is 14 weeks, three classes per week. A college hour is only 50 minutes. To sit through these classes, be given assignments, write the assignments, turn them in and get a grade isn’t going to teach anybody how to write.
The best case is provided by William Goldman. Goldman wrote screenplays for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Bridge Too Far, All the President’s Men, Misery, and novels and screenplays for The Princess Bride and Marathon Man. Goldman’s writing resulted in two Academy Awards.
William Goldman didn’t see a motion picture screenplay until he was 34 years of age. When he was coming up, there were no screenwriting classes in college. Now, almost every school has a screenwriting program. It’s a money maker for the schools.
Goldman graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio. When he reached a level of success, he was contacted by his alma mater and asked to speak to the cash flow positive screenwriting class. As Goldman shares the story in his book, Which Lie Did I Tell? (you have to read the book to understand the title), he gave his speech to the class. When it came time for questions, a young woman asked Goldman if it was imperative that the “ally character” is introduced by page 17 of a screenplay. Goldman wrote that he didn’t know what to tell her because he didn’t know what she was talking about.
Goldman didn’t know what she was talking about and chances are that the teacher who had to come with up 42 different lesson plans didn’t know either.
What the teacher—any teacher of writing—must do is to instruct their students how to “train their brain” to think the way a writer must think. A person who writes has gotten rid of their opinions and developed a state of objectivity. A person who writes is using their subconscious to think about and work on writing projects while they are at their job, driving down the street or grocery shopping. A person who writes knows the importance of carving out two 3- to 4-hour periods per week which becomes their “creative time”. This is the time for reading, working on outlines, doing research and, finally, when there is something to write—to write.
A person who writes is a person who reads. Many wannabe writers don’t read. There is a little-known sleeper movie titled A Little White Lie (2023). Nice premise. Kate Hudson plays Simone Cleary, a literary fan trying to keep literary weekend alive at her college. There is a mysterious J.D. Salinger-like character out there named Shriver. Shriver published a great novel twenty years ago and disappeared. Simone finds Shriver (played perfectly by Michael Shannon), now working as a handyman at a run-down apartment building and brings him to the conference. There is a scene where a creative writing teacher is walking with Shriver to her classroom. She wants Shriver to talk to the class about writing. Right before they enter the class, the teacher says, “They all want to be great writers. But they hate to read.” A sentence that could be said in colleges across the country.
There are numerous ancillary and cathartic benefits to writing. Writing programs should be in every corporation and offered by any group dealing with veterans, people bouncing back from substance abuse and MH issues, and groups trying to find employment of the “difficult to employ”.
There are two takeaways from this essay: Number One: read William Goldman’s classic book Adventures in the Screen Trade. Number Two: watch the movie A Little White Lie. It didn’t get the attention it deserves.
ADDENDUM—A Note about Aspiring Writers
The term “aspiring writer” is nonsense. There is no such thing. A person is either “training their brain” to write, using their “carved out” time to read, research and outline or sitting in the local pub telling the person next to them that “Some day I’m going to write a book/screenplay/novel.” As I tell those people in the pub, Someday Never Comes (also a great song by John Fogerty).
