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Creative Writing - Lecture 1: Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

This document provides an overview of creative writing techniques, focusing on short stories. It discusses how to provide constructive feedback, introduces American short story writer Raymond Carver, and defines characteristics of short stories such as typical length. The document then analyzes Carver's story "Popular Mechanics" noting its spare language, lack of details, and adherence to his editor's advice to minimize words. It emphasizes that less exposition allows more reader interpretation and that strong verbs and nouns are more effective than modifiers.

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Molly Zhang
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139 views2 pages

Creative Writing - Lecture 1: Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

This document provides an overview of creative writing techniques, focusing on short stories. It discusses how to provide constructive feedback, introduces American short story writer Raymond Carver, and defines characteristics of short stories such as typical length. The document then analyzes Carver's story "Popular Mechanics" noting its spare language, lack of details, and adherence to his editor's advice to minimize words. It emphasizes that less exposition allows more reader interpretation and that strong verbs and nouns are more effective than modifiers.

Uploaded by

Molly Zhang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Creative Writing – Lecture 1

 How to comment on creative writing (or any writing)


- Identify a strength you found in the writing; indicate why it was a strength
- Identify an area or areas that could use some improvement; indicate how this could be
improved
- You don’t need to overwhelm the writer with feedback  try for 3 sentences of insightful
commentary

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)


 American short-story writer and poet

 Known for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (short story collection,
published in 1981)

 Credited with reviving the short-story form in the US, a legacy extending from 1970s-
present

Short stories
 Conventionally thought of a piece of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting (as Edgar
Allan Poe described it in 1946)

 Ascended as a genre in the mid-19th Century

 Typically considered to be between 1000-20,000 words in length


- Anything less is categorized as “flash fiction”, and anything more is categorized as a
novella

 How are short stories different from novels, apart from length?
- Often fewer characters
- Different levels of development
- Reader engagement early on in the story is crucial
- Like novels, contain all the “elements of fiction”
- Although all successful writing is based on the principle that “every word counts”, the
short story and the poem takes this even more to heart
 Alice Munro considers shot stories as “snapshots”
- You might wonder about the person before or after the “snapshot”, it suggests more
material or more story, yet still satisfies the reader

Popular Mechanics
 How would you describe Carver’s story in terms of its language?

 You can easily tell the woman from the man, in terms of how each character is written
emotionally

 There is no abundance of detail, allowing the readers to interpret it how they want

 Very matter of fact; interesting take for describing a scene on domestic violence

 No names, nothing personal

 Spare, economical, “minimalist”  very straightforward, basic, and functional; no flowery


language or descriptions

 His editors instilled in him to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five (First Editor- Josh
Gardner) and then to use five instead of fifteen (Second Editor-Gordon Lish), when writing
a sentence; this was a way of carving everything down to the bare minimum

o “Less is more” has become a mantra of teaching creative writing


- Try to reduce your word count, so more is up for interpretation from the reader and they are
not suffocated by the detail provided by the writer
- LESS IS MORE: Saying the most with only the necessary amount of words
- Remember that this doesn’t mean that each word is “symbolic”  This means that each
words are chosen in deference to supporting the characters, mood, setting, and any other
element that builds the world of the story
- Be more specific versus writing with detail (e.g. instead of writing about a dog that is fast,
mention that the dog is a greyhound, which people will then be able to make the assumption
that it is fast)

o First goal of writing  To communicate well with your reader with simple and
straightforward writing, add description later
- Limit adjectives and adverbs, modifiers that describe nouns and verbs, respectively 
Instead, choose strong, specific nouns and verbs, those which stand on their own

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