Even though most fictional writing programs provide young writers with the skills to recognize “the strengths and weaknesses of their own fiction”, I think the newest generation of aspiring authors is becoming too predictable. This is due in no small part, because the students avoid thinking outside-of-the-box, and the teacher’s “applied system of rules”, and today’s pop culture creates a safe cushion to fall back on. The Article ‘Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young’ by David Foster Wallace, discusses the ever-blurring relationship between professor and student as well as it’s effects on todays’ writing trends. Wallace even goes as far to say that “we might [as] well end up with a McStory chain,” in response to the unhealthy structure of most writing programs. With that said, he adds on, that while this is a problem, he believes that there are still many talented artists out there still waiting to make their mark. …show more content…
There is a fine line between writer and teacher in this workshop, and many of the teachers, who are also largely authors, would rather be writing their own books, not teaching others how to write theirs. Either way, it’s not doing the teachers, or their students any justice. But, how do you overcome this kind of resentment? Wallace says, “In order to remain both helpful and sane, the professional writer/teacher has got to develop, consciously or not, an aesthetic doctrine, a static set of principles about how a “good” story works” (Wallace, 11). In other words, each and every students’ work has to resemble one another’s in order to make it easier for the teacher to assess them. In a long run, this system of rules isn’t very befitting, and doesn’t allow the students to develop