Imposing Boundaries

Sometimes I think that my writing professors were too lax. For many of my creative writing classes, it felt like my assignments amounted to "you can write about anything you want." Sometimes it was "I want you to write about X, but if you want to write about Y, feel free to do that instead." These two are a little different, but not much. They are also very difficult to handle.

Coming up with ideas can be he hardest part of writing for some people. It can certainly be the thing that stops people from even trying to write. When you tell somebody to write about anything, they are overloaded with possibilities. They need to narrow their scope and focus on only a few possible paths.

I understand why my teachers were lax, though. They didn't want to stifle creativity. If they assign us to write a story that takes place on a train and we want to write one that takes place on a bus, we should be allowed to change the assignment because we will be creatively writing and be interested in our work, which is one of the main points of the class. But the catch is that this creativity generally comes from limitations. The student may never come up with the story that takes place on a bus if they weren't assigned a story that takes place on a train. If the student was told that they could write a story that takes place on a train, or anything else if they wanted, then the student may not go through the same mental processes and wouldn't think of the story that takes place on a bus.

So, these boundaries are important in helping students focus and think, but they are not so important that they should never be broken. The question, then, is when to break these boundaries. Personally, I think that the answer is when the student is personally compelled to break them. If I was a teacher and found that my student wrote a story that took place on a bus, I would not deduct points. I would ask why the student made the change to understand the reasoning (because I would hope it was for a good reason, as opposed to misreading the assignment), but in a creative writing class, the main point is to develop good creative writing, so that is what matters most.

Some students are not bold enough to break rules without permission, though. In academia, where grades matter and can affect the rest of one's life, I don't blame students for being hesitant to go against teachers. However, if a student wants to break the boundaries so much that he or she is compelled to ask for permission, that is good enough for me to grant it.

The important thing to remember, though, is that not every student is that compelled or motivated. I think all of my classmates in the Professional Writing major at one point said that they had no idea what to write for an assignment. Those people needed boundaries. They needed an imposed structure to build from. Teachers who don't give that structure to their students are doing harm to those he need the most help.

Compelled writers will always find a way. They will either create within a structure, break the boundaries, or create without any help in the first place. Those who aren't as compelled or inspired to write are the ones who need these boundaries, which is why you should impose them and why you should make them look very firm.