Fiction has been a hobby for me for a long time, but this year I decided to dive in and learn about the craft - and finish something! Edits, readers, classes, books - there is so much to learn.
But I'm also learning more about writing in general. I just finished a great Memoir class (something VERY out of my comfort zone). We had a cozy group and our teacher gave us writing suggestions, then we would return each week and read a piece (if we wanted). Lots of comments were about the content of the work, because it was so interesting, but some were on the way the story worked.
What I learned is that specific details are not boring, and a reader can handle a lot of them. The generalizations (I felt sad, it was a tough time), left you craving for more. I still see images of some of the details my group wrote. It is a good lesson for fiction writers and expands on that "tell/show" thing. A laundry list of details is hard to absorb, but when specific details are woven into the story, the effect is powerful.
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