Tutors give the best advice
We asked the 2023 cohort what was the best advice they’d received from tutors during the MA.
Here are some of the answers.
Julia Dielmann
It’s got to be CJ Skuse telling me to “write what you love”. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But I think we can get so caught up in trying to chase trends that we force ourselves to follow a certain genre or formula because that’s what’s selling right now. But that not only makes the story feel forced, it also doesn’t make you excited about what you’re writing. You’re going to be spending a lot of time working on this thing. So it might as well be something you genuinely want to write and that you believe in and want to share with others.
Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash
Workshop tutor Finbar Hawkins was great at delivering catch phrases which have stuck in my head ever since. “Get thee behind me, beautiful piece of well-turned prose!” was one of them (avoid over-writing). And, “CHEEEEEEEEEESE!” (Well, Finbar works for Aardman Animations). That was his term for the enticing little nuggets of foreshadowing, of intrigue, of questions raised - the tantalising tidbits we should drop into the early pages of our manuscripts to keep the reader happily snuffling along the path we’re creating for them to follow. Great image, isn’t it?
Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash
An off-the-cuff piece of feedback from tutor Tracy Darnton got right to the heart of one of my struggles as a writer. It was (I might be paraphrasing slightly): ‘You love the first flush of a relationship, but you need to get to the “putting out the bins” stage.’ So true. I’m a sucker for a new idea. The lure of a fresh, shiny story, with its exciting new characters to meet, new settings to explore, new conflicts to relish. All those possibilities! All that potential! Well, that’s all very well, but if you want to write a book, as I’ve learned, it’s not good enough simply to start it. You also have to finish it. (Yes, I know it’s obvious.) Committing to a story and learning to put the bins out with my characters has been a real lesson. (But I’ve still got my notebook of new ideas, don’t worry.)
This is easy. Alexia Cassale once told us to “write the story that only you can write.” By this, she was telling us to be true to our own experiences. It doesn’t have to be an own-voice story, and that’s not to say you can’t research something outside of your experiences. But you must have a deeply rooted fascination with your subject matter. Every story I’ve written explores a subject I’m passionate about, or a character flaw I’m curious to unpick and develop. If I tried to be the next Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling or Roald Dahl, I’d set myself up to fail. But by being authentic to my own experiences and interests I’m discovering stories I didn’t know I needed to tell and hopefully others will be excited to read.
Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash