ENGL 2270 Reflection

From taking this course I have learned an immense amount of useful info on craft and

story mechanics. In retrospect, before taking this creative writing class, I wasn’t entirely sure

how to write prose and turn it into a decent bit of fiction. But through reading a few short stories

together in class, written by some well known authors, I could clearly see what good story looks

like. Before this class, I had never attempted to read anything smaller than a novel. It was

through those short stories we read and dissected in class that gave me the guidance I needed

to craft my own short fiction.

In class after studying a few short stories from the pros, we all attempted our own little

stories. It was quite the experience reading everyone's work. It was also interesting to see the

variation of skill and technique—or the lack of—present in the class. Of course our stories read

nothing like the published pros, but it was still rewarding to read dry rough drafts of writers still in

the stages of their infancy.

From this class I was able to produce two new short stories, both of which only exist

today because of this class. If I hadn’t taken ENGL 2270, short fiction would still be a mystery to

me. Through writing fiction in class I have learned a few things. Things like meeting a deadline,

that writing 2,000 words isn’t that difficult, but rewriting it is. I’ve learned to stay away from

repetition, to trust the reader and let them use their imagination, and picked up a few more rules

I didn’t know about grammar. I thought I knew how to write before I took this class. What a

terrible assumption that was. If anything I’ve learned I have quite the ways to go.

The short story I chose to revise was the second one I wrote in class. I feel like that one

was written better than my first, which to me meant it would require less changes. After revising

it multiple times I feel like that assumption was correct. But still, it was a lot of work.
 Things I changed in my story: Repetition. There were two scenes that talked about Dave

being held at gunpoint by a security system I decided to eliminate one of the scenes to make

the diner scene shorter and less repetitive. I also changed one of the characters names. Dave

use to be called Henry, but I changed it so that it would be faster and easier to pronounce, plus

his name nods to a character in 2001 a space odyssey. I threw in a lot more easter eggs the

third fourth and tenth time around. For some reason I had all of my said sentences flipped in my

first draft. They all read ‘said Pronoun’ so I turned them all to ‘Pronoun said’. I also eliminated

dialogue tags that had ‘asked’, and changed them all to ‘said’. I also added quite a few lines of

dialogue to make Jim and Dave sound more distinct. I made Dave sound like he was

technologically incompetent, and I made Jim sound like he was technopathic.

From this class I feel like I’ve amplified my writing skills by a factor of ten. The reading

material that was suggested in this class was of the utmost help. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

by Browne and King was a bigger boon than I had hoped for, probably the best book on writing

I’ve ever read. That and actually writing stuff in this class and receiving useful feedback from my

classmates was an eye opener—for good and for bad. I can now see where I write well and

where I still need to improve. Before this class I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

This workshop experience has taught me that revising and rewriting is super important.

And that I really need another good set of eyes to make any story better. From this class I was

able to network, and now I have two good friends who will take a look at my work in the future,

and of course vice versa. This class has also given me valuable experience on how to critique

other peoples work in the future, and how to do the same to my own.