In grad-level English, I spent an entire semester reading the worst stories ever written. Really. We had an entire class (actually 2 entire classes) where people had to submit their short stories and I had the excrutiating hour of telling them how great it was and complement them on how many details they used and unique choice of titles and names. 20 kids in hipster scarves and plastic black rims espousing the virtues of their afternoon with grandma. Or their respective emo girlfriend and their traumatic breakup over indie songs and weeping cappucinos.

So I’m thinking about what makes a good story. What makes Hemingway, Palahniuk, Augusten Burroughs, Heller, Poe, Salinger, Oates…great writers and us, the pool of advanced students, terrible…

In short,

1. Experience. As Palahniuk puts it, we have no great depression, no great war, our great depression is our lives. And its true. What makes a lot of these writers brilliant is maturity and depth, which us, at 22, don’t necessarily have. And quite frankly, reliving the experience of being 22 while at 22 is different from looking back on it at 50. Yes, we all have stories and great adventures that we, individually think, are unique and special but we have nothing to compare it to. And reading about it over and over again about the same night I had before is relatively dull. 

2. At the same time, Bret Easton Ellis wrote Less Than Zero out of college. American Psycho a few years later. Well, he was a pretty good writer. I think one of the main flaws in creative writing classes in school is that we’re not taught creative writing. We’re only taught how to write a beginning, middle and an end with some details in between.

What makes a piece of work worth reading is creativity. I spent 4 months begging for someone to wow me with a story worth reading. Give me a piece of something new. Graphic. Stylistic detail. Write one word on every page. Omit A’s. Best example of this is Book of Leaves, which creeped the hell out of me one night with its random drawings and random story. 

3. Crappy detail.

I don’t understand why people make a big deal out of detail. We had to do an entire assignment on incorporating detail. All I see from this was length. Irrelevant facts about irrelevant characters that made my assignment twice as long. My favorite experience was a completely serious, 30 page period piece about a seaman in a southern town which had every single stereotype you can possibly imagine, complete with his own sea shanty about a jumping frog (Mark Twain much?)

Favorite piece of irrelevant detail: chicory coffee.

First of all, I barely remember what chicory is, aside from Martha Stewart mentioning it on Family guy and something I consider out of character for a barely-educated sea captain. Second of all, this was one of many details used to build up atmosphere, including a description of every single shingle on the roof of his building.

Third of all, this was a 30 page story where nothing happened until page 29.

Hemingway would do this in 5.

What a waste of time.

So, I encourage all my lovely classmates and wannabes to think twice before putting something out there to really create something with potential.  

I want to read your stories; I really do. But win me over damnit.

PS Did I mention, I was fired from the Writing Center for being too blunt?