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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: arianne on April 10, 2013, 04:56:24 PM
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i've just been randomly googling some of my favorite and some other popular authors, and all (and I do mean ALL) of them have either an English degree or some sort of English related degree.
JRR Tolkien (well, duh)
Jk Rowling-BA in French and Classics
Cassandra Clare
Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising)
Jim Butcher
Stephenie Meyer
Melissa Marr
Stephen King
Simon R Green
And that's just for starters. Am I missing something here? Is an English degree a "must" for an author? Or is it more that people who love to read/write often go on to study English?
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More the latter. I've known a lot of English majors (and English grad students, for that matter) whom I wouldn't trust to write the number 1 on a piece of paper. Education isn't limited to matriculation, y'know.
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I think it's more of a love of literature than any direct training with it. I think it's the love of literature is reflected in their dicisions to get degrees in English. But I don't think you even need to start out with that love. I think as you start writing you'll see how increadibly amazing it all is.
http://wordmindjourney.blogspot.com/2013/04/falling-in-love-with-literature.html
But I think you are going to need to have that love, or passion, for writing eventually to help pull you through all of the challenges of writing. Like Jim said about how 99% of the failures in writing are self-imposed; it get's tough enough to make most people want to quit. But once you find that passion, regardless of how many books you sell, it's all worth it.
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I wouldn't say a degree in English (or anything, for that matter) is a must--some of the most stilted, unreadable writing, after all, is in doctoral theses--but a love of literature, language, and research into a variety of topics is most likely a given. Two of my favorites, PN Elrod and Elizabeth Peters, have degrees in theatre and archaeology, respectively. And as far as we know, Shakespeare never even went to university, but managed to do pretty well in his chosen field.
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I wouldn't say a degree in English (or anything, for that matter) is a must--some of the most stilted, unreadable writing, after all, is in doctoral theses--but a love of literature, language, and research into a variety of topics is most likely a given. Two of my favorites, PN Elrod and Elizabeth Peters, have degrees in theatre and archaeology, respectively. And as far as we know, Shakespeare never even went to university, but managed to do pretty well in his chosen field.
Oh lawd, let's not start talking about academic language. I speak it fluently but it gives me heartburn and particularly effective gas.
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Oh lawd, let's not start talking about academic language. I speak it fluently but it gives me heartburn and particularly effective gas.
Could be worse. Trying working in the legal field. Makes my eyeballs bleed to see some of the pleadings or contracts that crawl or slither across my desk.
But I digress. Writing is a skill and an art. It takes knowledge and practice to cultivate both. So if you're an English major, you have a leg up on everyone else. You read. You write. A lot. All done in four (or more) years. But there are other ways to get there.
I just happened to take a dark and twisted path before I started writing my novel. :-[
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You've also got Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Dan Brown, or Jim Carroll, none of whom had English degrees, and many of whom had nothing close to what we'd consider a full education today.
I think the love of writing does attract people to study English, but it's by no means a requirement.
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Just out of curiosity, why do you ask? Is it because there's a lot of things that people say with regard to writing that's hard to understand and not having spent years of dedicated education to the subject you feel like perhaps you're behind the curve?
I can understand that.
If you're looking for more than just moral support, and want some good resource material ... I'd like that as well, to know what books or websites people found useful. I'd also like to know what terms people have not found helpful. I think for example, "show don't tell" is sometimes so over-simplified that it's not actually helpful. Learning what things to show, sounds like it's something that even the best authors struggle with. I think Jim talked about that with respect to the "sagging middle" that he said everyone has a hard time with.
But in terms of moral support, I'm sure you'll do well. Just keep at it.
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You've also got Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Dan Brown, or Jim Carroll, none of whom had English degrees
Dan Brown has degrees in English and Spanish and taught high school English for a while before becoming a writer...
Just out of curiosity, why do you ask? Is it because there's a lot of things that people say with regard to writing that's hard to understand and not having spent years of dedicated education to the subject you feel like perhaps you're behind the curve?
I think it's just that when I stand in front of the fantasy section of my local bookstore and look at the current names on the bestseller lists, I find that most if not all of them are English majors. (I focus on the fantasy section because that's the genre I personally like the most to read and write. No disrespect intended to other genres and authors).
So it makes me wonder, maybe I'm missing something here. Like maybe I didn't get the writer memo where it says, "Thou shalt be an English major to be a fantasy writer".
I don't think I have trouble understanding concepts laid out in writing books (I do sometimes ignore writing advice that I don't think applies to my own writing or my personal style, but not because I don't understand it), so that's really not the issue here. I will admit to sometimes rolling my eyes at teachers who Cliffsnote every good bit of fiction into symbols and metaphors and whatnot (good thing I didn't become an English major then, I guess) but at the same time I do wonder if maybe there is some sort of "Rules of Fiction" thing (like a more general and more complicated version of Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces) that should be applied to fiction to make it good.
I think I could do with some moral support about now....
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I didn't know that about Dan Brown, I thought it was Art History he'd studied.
In any event, seriously, don't sweat it. There are only two things to worry about when it comes to writing for commercial publication: What you love to write, and how to make that accessible to a reader.
Sure, there are rules and guidelines, but you don't need any kind of a degree to understand them and choose to apply or ignore them as you see fit. The only things you absolutely need that you could learn from studying English are the ability to spell and knowledge of correct grammar. Beyond that, the single best way to learn to be a better writer is to keep writing.
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There are only two things to worry about when it comes to writing for commercial publication: What you love to write, and how to make that accessible to a reader.
I like that. It's well stated, concise, and much more helpful than, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." :)
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I know Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen) has a degree in anthropology and archaeologist. He developed his series from a roleplaying world with Ian Cameron Esslemont, who is also an archaeologist but is getting a Ph.D in Lit.
I think all you really need is training period, it doesn't really matter ultimately if you're driven enough. I'm sure it's a better asset than others, but many degree paths focus on writing at some point, even the sciences.
I have a bachelors in physics and you have to be able to write technical papers. While the subject matter is different, you can use that knowledge in other ways to help your writing.
I personally decided I wanted a physics degree because I wanted to write a science fiction or science fantasy book with magic that follows natural laws and not have space fighters making instantaneous turns without accounting for conservation of momentum and moment of inertia or a wizard being able to use as much power as they want and it not really effecting them personally (why I like that Jim has Harry do stuff like when he's sucking the energy from Lake Michigan, uses fire at an enemy and the lake freezes, which is consistent with the real world) and what I'd classify easiest as Harry Porter magic.
Unfortunately, I haven't made much headway on my project (other needs get in the way and still a bit uncertain where I want to go with it) but it's something that's always churning in my mind these days. In the mean time I just research some interesting things that I think I want to use (thanks io9!).
I've thought about taking some creative writing classes but it's not something I've felt was absolutely necessary for me. Just means I'll have to be more self-taught about it.
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I think all you really need is training period, it doesn't really matter ultimately if you're driven enough.
I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say here, but I think it's the other way around. If you are driven enough (if you have enough passion, desire, love for writing) you'll learn what you need along the way (you'll train yourself or get the training you need from those around you.) I think ultimately it's having the drive that matters most. That's what makes you find the time, create the opportunities, overcome whatever obstacles might block your path.
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I'm not entirely sure what you were trying to say here
I just meant that it doesn't matter where your training comes from, as long as you eventually develop a system that works for you. And that the greater drive you have the more likely you can overcome what you initially lacked.
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I'm about as far from an english degree as you can get. And doing just fine on amazon. I wouldn't worry about it. A degree like that its just another tool.
What did Jim Butcher say, you need to write between 3-5 books before you're up to snuff...? if you're going to get there at any rate.
The Deposed King
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I would definitely agree that if you look long and hard enough, you will find one or two, maybe even several, fantasy authors who have no English major/creative writing course/Classics education etc of any sort. But are these people the exception rather than the rule? Maybe these are the one in a million extra extra good at writing people...?
On the flip side, I would also agree that there are people who are English majors who couldn't write a novel to save their lives. And there's nothing wrong with that, if they weren't interested in writing a novel in the first place. (Because not everyone is as obsessed with writing as writers are ;D)
I think on a deep level I am worried of not putting in enough symbolism or hidden meaning or whatever it is they put in the Cliffsnotes these days.
On a not so deep level I sometimes just feel inadequate for no reason at all. (Don't we all?)
In a way, it's kind of like music. I listen to a lot of pop music, so let's go with that as a metaphor. I haven't seen many pop artists out there who didn't have some sort of musical education, whether it was at a high-class private school, a music major at college, or, at the very least, most of them have taken piano/guitar/bass lessons.
Are there pop musicians out there who don't know how to play instruments? I'm sure there are. Are there pop musicians out there who don't know how to read music but can write their own songs? Yes there are. Are they good musicians? Some of them are, depending on who you ask. Are there many of these musicians? No.
So I guess the big question I'm trying to ask is, what makes me think that I can be one of these musicians? Am I in fact just another wannabe on American Idol?
I'll just go off and wallow now....
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It may sound odd coming from me (I was not far from becoming a permanent student), but degrees mean nothing in and of themselves. What matters is innate ability + study (be it guided or otherwise, as long as it's done intelligently and fully) + practice. Yes, those often occur among those who choose advanced study in the field, but it's not a MUST-have.
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Heh, trust me, don't worry about symbolism and just focus on writing an entertaining story. People who want to find symbolism will find it even if you didn't put it there, and people who don't won't notice if you put hours of work into including it.
And remember this piece of advice (http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/2130786/the/).
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I think on a deep level I am worried of not putting in enough symbolism or hidden meaning or whatever it is they put in the Cliffsnotes these days.
To paraphrase Stephen King in On Writing: Just concentrate on plot and character, and theme will take care of itself. Otherwise, he warns, you could end up with something like Atlas Shrugged on your hands. ;)
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More the latter. I've known a lot of English majors (and English grad students, for that matter) whom I wouldn't trust to write the number 1 on a piece of paper. Education isn't limited to matriculation, y'know.
I know what you mean. I have a friend who has a Masters in English, and one time she emailed me about how she was being a pre-madonna about some upcoming event. Wrote her back saying I always thought of her more as a post-madonna.
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I know what you mean. I have a friend who has a Masters in English, and one time she emailed me about how she was being a pre-madonna about some upcoming event. Wrote her back saying I always thought of her more as a post-madonna.
Deity-of-your-choice save us from "prefix" or "price fix" menus, too.
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I suspect that there's a scale at which any degree can be useful to an aspiring writer in that a degree is a project on roughly the same order of magnitude as a novel, and being able to manage yourself to complete a degree is bound to teach you useful things in terms of managing yourself to complete novels.
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"Can be useful", certainly. But it's not a must by any stretch of the imagination. Might as well get a degree in math for the discipline/management skills.
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"Can be useful", certainly. But it's not a must by any stretch of the imagination. Might as well get a degree in math for the discipline/management skills.
I think we're all forgetting something here. We all (or 99.9%) of us have an english degree. Its just not an advanced degree, its not at masteral or bachelorate level but it is there. Its called going to school both elementary and highschool. There we are taught english each and every day. Then for those of us who are 'self taught' we read voraciously in sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, etc.
American Idol, as was mentioned before, doesn't really compare because how many of us are taught to use a musical instrument for one class each and every grade from kinder to high-school? Meanwhile we are all taught 'english' every year.
A different perspective is all.
Follow the dream, never give up and always remember you can get more out of one or two classes you really apply yourself to, than years of studying but not really caring what you're learning about.
The Deposed King
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I think we're all forgetting something here. We all (or 99.9%) of us have an english degree. Its just not an advanced degree, its not at masteral or bachelorate level but it is there. Its called going to school both elementary and highschool. There we are taught english each and every day. Then for those of us who are 'self taught' we read voraciously in sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, etc.
American Idol, as was mentioned before, doesn't really compare because how many of us are taught to use a musical instrument for one class each and every grade from kinder to high-school? Meanwhile we are all taught 'english' every year.
A different perspective is all.
Follow the dream, never give up and always remember you can get more out of one or two classes you really apply yourself to, than years of studying but not really caring what you're learning about.
The Deposed King
Pretty sure the OP was specifically referring to a bachelor's degree in English, since it does seem to be fairly common among published authors, but I take your point. Honestly, I learned correct English by reading good writing; discerning patterns can be even more useful than direct instruction, but they both do come down to willingness and desire to get something out of what's in front of us. The linguistics work I did, for the most part, merely confirmed what I already knew and added some more whys and wherefores. Which is utterly fascinating to me and which is why I like language in the first place. :)
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Yes, I was referring to BA English and/or creative writing courses, not just high school English or even college freshmen English courses. I mean a degree or a course that focuses entirely on the writing of a creative work (and not just the grammar or the SAT words of a language).
Language itself carries so much more than just the things we get tested on in high school--it contains elements of culture and modes of thinking and whatnot. (For example, a joke that works in English may fall flat or even be offensive in Spanish). Knowing a language, speaking it fluently, and having a lot of vocab doesn't necessarily make a good writer.
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Off the top of my head, Elizabeth Moon has degrees in history and biology. None in English.
I think you see so many authors with English degrees because somebody in love with literature and a creative bent isn't likely to go after a science degree. Moon excepted. ;)
Going one step farther, you get better at writing by writing, not doing lab report math.
It may sound odd coming from me (I was not far from becoming a permanent student), but degrees mean nothing in and of themselves. What matters is innate ability + study (be it guided or otherwise, as long as it's done intelligently and fully) + practice. Yes, those often occur among those who choose advanced study in the field, but it's not a MUST-have.
Yeah, music degrees aren't hard, just work. Gotta put the time in practicing, that is all. IF you've got the talent to start with. Very very very few people fail their recital(fail the recital, no degree-no matter what your grades are). You pretty much figure out if you can hack it well before then. I'd imagine the other arts are the same.
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I think you see so many authors with English degrees because somebody in love with literature and a creative bent isn't likely to go after a science degree.
And then again, you see genre writers like Gregory Benford and Alison Sinclair who are working academic scientists, and I am a working scientist with strong love for writing and aspirations to write professionally myself.
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I think you see so many authors with English degrees because somebody in love with literature and a creative bent isn't likely to go after a science degree. Moon excepted. ;)
You've obviously never played DnD ;)
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You've obviously never played DnD ;)
Going where Dragon's fear to tread, eh Quantus? Neuro delights in taking such statements and tearing them apart!
The Deposed King
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And then again, you see genre writers like Gregory Benford and Alison Sinclair who are working academic scientists, and I am a working scientist with strong love for writing and aspirations to write professionally myself.
Fair point, especially with classic sci fi authors. Coming back to this thread with a different mood&energy level, I do think I'm being over-general to the point of being incorrect with my first point. For instance, most ex-music majors go into the sciences. Allegedly, the most common double major attached to music is math. There is most definitely NOT a clear demarcation or caste system segregating scientists from being artists of any medium. Besides, different stages of life, etc. Hell, Borodin was a chemist first, composer second.
I'm willing to entertain the idea that I might not be using the most commonly accepted definitions though. For instance, I consider most performers interpretative craftspeople-not creators(though actors are closer to creators than musicians, in my opinion). The creators are the authors/composers.
I will stand behind my second point though. Writing is a skill. It has to be practiced. Practicing violin for 3 hours a day doesn't make you a better writer, it makes you a better violinist. Manipulating spreadsheets doesn't make you a better writer, it makes you better at manipulating spreadsheets. Creating something on a canvas doesn't make you a better writer, it makes you better at expressing yourself on a canvas. So if you want to become a better writer-write. And what degrees are most likely to encourage, enable and require that you do so?
You've obviously never played DnD ;)
Most of the people I've geeked out with have been terrible writers, and interested in manipulating the rules, not creation. I think there's a difference there. It can be a creative outlet though, definitely. The more avid, creative players I know don't geek about science. Especially on the DM side. But personal anecdotes are not representative of society as a whole, etc.
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Most of the people I've geeked out with have been terrible writers, and interested in manipulating the rules, not creation. I think there's a difference there. It can be a creative outlet though, definitely. The more avid, creative players I know don't geek about science. Especially on the DM side. But personal anecdotes are not representative of society as a whole, etc.
Fair enough, and I whole-heartedly agree that manipulating the rules is not the same as creation. That just hasnt been my experience with scientists who love to geek out, or with DnD fans that were superb (and in several instances, published) writers. Many of my crowd were both. Granted, now that I think about it, many of those scientists were getting degree's as computer scientists, which is arguably one of the closest "sciences" to writing this side of Physical Cosmology.
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Writing is a skill. It has to be practiced....So if you want to become a better writer-write. And what degrees are most likely to encourage, enable and require that you do so?
To follow on from that, if you didn't go to college and get an English degree, what other ways are open to you to learn and hone your craft? It's the practice that's necessary. The degree really just provides an excuse to see how other people put that practice to use.
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In other words if you want to be a writer you have to write.
The Deposed King
(half a million words and counting)
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Yep :D
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Yeah, I'd agree if you want to be a writer...just write. Learn how not to suck. And write more.
I don't think you need a degree in English to be a good writer. Many authors out there don't have one. For every famous author with an English degree, you can find an equally famous author without it. Writing is simple to teach one's self, and to me it seems a bit silly to waste money going to college for it. (It's simple to teach yourself how to write, but requires time and effort like any other craft, and some sort of logic and deductive skills so you can pull a book off a shelf and figure out yourself what's great, mediocre, or bad about it and why.) I used to sit in the bookstore with Terry Goodkind books and Anne McCaffrey books and just open them and try to figure out why they wrote the lines they did at certain points and why. And I enjoyed it a lot more because nobody was forcing novels I didn't enjoy on me, expecting me to figure out why a novel I hated was loved by others. Instead, I learned from examples I loved myself. (Side note...the Sword of Truth series started going downhill after Temple of the Winds in my opinion. I was a tween when Wizard's First Rule was published, though, and that was a fantastic book, so that's what I taught myself from. I disavow any fondness for the latest books in that series!)
However, I DO think if you do go for an English degree of some type, you also need to have an interest in some other topics other than writing to balance it. You need to fill your life with knowledge and interests and events you can write about, things that you can use to fuel your writing. Writing about writing (about writing?) is probably not going to get you anywhere. I get a bit nervous (realistically or not) that going the English Major route will turn out a critic, or maybe if lucky a journalist, but not someone who has written their million words of crap and has become a creator and storyteller of fiction. It seems safer to put the college money into a major that will help you get a job to provide basic necessities for you you while you gather up life experience to feed into your writing mill. Then again, this is just all my opinion, heavily influenced by my own life.
I could throw out the vocabulary and slap down the dashes and dialogue right when I was out of high school (and before I even graduated high school, honestly), and I could bullshit papers on symbolism in my sleep, but it has taken another decade to build up life experience and knowledge so that I don't disgust myself with the shallowness and gaps in my own writing. I write things I actually enjoy these days, even six months or a year after I've written them, and that didn't use to be the case. I've improved that much, and gained that much more depth than I had before, and a lot of it came from just living life and being able to talk about certain subjects drawing on my personal experience. I already knew how to place the commas...but I didn't know what to put between that punctuation. So I think you need to do the million words of crap, and an English major isn't necessarily going to help you with that. I've done at least 422,153 words of fanfic in the past 6 years (thanks to AO3 for providing me with that statistic!), and probably twice that in my original stories and notes. And it all taught me something about writing.
Of course, I can't say I'm published or pro yet. But I do know an English major hasn't been required to get where I'm at now.
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Yep. However you can't emphasize this part enough. You will start writing out crap, I did, everyone did. Give yourself the permission to write the stink bomb and then come back and fix it up later. If you don't give yourself permission to write something you yourself recognize as terrible stuff initially, you'll never get there.
The Deposed King
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You really, seriously can't repeat that enough.
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And, even though you know it to be bad, don’t be afraid to show your work around to people you feel you can trust to give you a true accounting of it. A third party can see the good and bad in a work that the creator of said work can’t.
Also, don’t hesitate to see and take pride in the small successes in your work. I know the stuff I’m writing now is poo, but it is the best I’ve ever written and I’m excited about that. It is inspiring me to continue on and work harder to improve.
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Give yourself the permission to write the stink bomb and then come back and fix it up later.
Or, you know, just bury it in the backyard and never look at it or smell it again. :)
Side note...I've also noticed I produce more interesting worlds/universes as I'm older and more experienced with million words of crap, and I'm less likely to go back to old ones that have "structural problems".