Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

E Courses, Continued from Yesterday

E-Courses.... A continuation from yesterday

The reason I’m not a big fan of prerequisites is because there are some people who learn how to swim by jumping off the end of the pier.

Sometimes they drown but not always. In the thrashing about, bobbing up and down and gasping for air some aspiring swimmers actually learn how to dog paddle. Thus in students of this ilk, who am I to deny them the opportunity to learn in this manner, even though it is not pleasant to watch any more than it is enjoyable for the drowning student. Still it’s a learning process and amid all the pain, anguish and gasping for air some writers launch their careers.

Personally I don’t recommend this approach but far be it for me to tell those who aspire to learn in this manner that it is not a valid approach. I would estimate that this approach is adopted by the student about forty (40) percent of the time. So when a student opts for this approach, how does an instructor go about dealing with it? Keep in mind that amid all the thrashing and splashing some learning is taking place independent of anything the teacher adds to or detracts from the process.

For my part I have a short list of writing axioms and I keep hammering away on these to start with. One is to use an outline. The outline frames the story and provides a structure to hang the dramatic ingredients. These include a central character (CC) on the verge of a life changing moment, driven by a want need or desire, who decides to get off their ass and do something to better their life. As they gird their resolve they begin to encounter a series of crisis, each building on the last and leading to the last and final that is called the climax. In the process the audience gets to see the CC in a beginning middle and ending snapshot and has the opportunity to watch the change taking place. After the climax the audience is brought to closure and the lights come back on.

Why do you keep repeating the same old stuff Percy….Mercy Mercy! I keep repeating it because nobody seems to be listening. I read lots of stuff on WDC that sounds a whole lot like stream of conscious, which makes me yawn, stretch my arms and think about the old afternoon nap… Because my Dad used to tell me that if you want people to listen, you have to tell them something three times or more.

So I try an front end load the paragraph above into the minds of my aspiring playwrights, however, this is no guarantee that they will pay it any heed. As a matter of fact I have yet to have a single student who started out using the model…. Who didn’t require me to beat them over the head with it over and over. I can still hear them muttering under their breath, questioning my qualifications and threatening to give up. Then and only then, to escape the unrelenting brow beating, do they finally go back and do what I asked them to begin with. And you know what? That was always a huge turning point. It is a corner turning event and their stage play goes suddenly from nowhere to somewhere, it transitions from “ho hum” to “oh my goodness gracious.” I know you all think I’m a total self centered opinionated butt hole but I swear to you I am not whistling Dixie This is the way the class goes. Then once the light comes on, even with the unskilled writers, a story emerges that will raise an eyebrow even though it continues to suffer from word choice, grammar, and spelling. It’s almost as if a thread of the writer’s spirit enters therein and the audience or reader makes some sort of weird psychic connection… that transcends words and like a helix of pure thought. A spark jumps that animates two minds at the same instant. Where am I… Oh yeah. The student that jumps off the pier.

With these gals/guys, the first hurdle is to get them to apply the model to the play. Once this earth shaking leap is accomplished I have to apply the how bad is bad template and rank order the worst parts of it. Never mind the grammar, spelling and word choice. There is plenty worse with their play than any of these aforementioned three. So you figure out, applying the template, what they need to fix first. Usually three observations, maybe four using the “Have you considered this boilerplate.“ Usually this is too subtle an approach and it is necessary to revert to …. “Change this, this and this…Or even, “This is my course, dang nab it….this is a workshop… we are not writing a Broadway play… we are experimenting with some techniques you might consider learning….Then I have to dial it back. Any more tough love is to risk fracturing that tender tendril of creativity. I do not say this facetiously. I don’t want to stifle the flame, to rain on that bud of creativity. So I simply say in one form or another, fix these three things and when you do get back with me so I can see what we need to fix next… and so it goes, back and forth for as long as the floundering student can keep thrashing or until I finally can no longer endure the pain. Then I pull them back up onto the shore.

The point is I don’t like prerequisites because I see going for it as a choice of the student. My job is to help them become all they can be.