WRITING CLASS

                          By Robert Sheckley

                "Never use cliches in describing alien
             life-forms," Professor Carner admonished his
             class. But Eddie persisted--with good reason!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                             December 1952
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Eddie McDermott paused at the door, then caught his breath and tiptoed
into the classroom and to his seat. Mort Eddison, his best friend,
looked at him reprovingly; the class had been in session for almost
fifteen minutes, and one just didn't come late to Professor Carner's
lecture. Especially on the first day.

Eddie breathed easier as he saw that Professor Carner's back was to the
class as he completed a diagram on the blackboard.

"Now then," Carner said. "Suppose you were writing about the--ah--the
Venusian Threngener, which, as you know, has three legs. How would you
describe it?"

One of the students raised his hand. "I'd call it a three-legged
monstrosity, spawned in the deepest hells of--"

"No," Carner said quietly. "That kind of writing might have been all
right in the earliest days of our subject. But remember: You are no
longer dealing with a simple, credulous audience. To achieve the proper
effects nowadays, you must _underplay_! Understand? Underplay! Now,
someone else?"

Mort raised his hand, threw a glance at Eddie, and said: "How about,
'this tri-pedal blob of orange protoplasm, octopus like in its
gropings--'"

"That's better," Carner said. "Tri-pedal is very nice, very exact. But
must you compare it to an octopus?"

"Why not?" Mort asked.

"An octopus," the professor said, "is a well-known form of Earth
life. It inspires no terror, no wonder. You might better compare the
Threngener to _another_ strange monster; a Callistan Eddel-splayer, for
example." He smiled winningly at the class.

Eddie frowned and scratched his blonde crewcut. He had liked it better
the first way. But Carner should know, of course. He was one of the
best-known writers in the entire field, and he had done the college a
favor by agreeing to teach the course. Eddie remembered reading some
of Carner's stuff. It had scared the living daylights out of him when
he was younger. That description of Saturnian brains immobilizing
Earth-confederation ships, for example. That had been a great yarn.

       *       *       *       *       *

The trouble is, Eddie thought, I'm just not interested. He had had
serious doubts about this course. Actually, he had signed up only
because Mort had insisted.

"Any questions at this point?" Carner asked. One of the students--a
serious-looking fellow wearing black horn-rimmed glasses--raised his
hand.

"Suppose," he asked, "suppose you were writing a story speculating on
an interstellar combine formed with the purpose of taking over Earth?
Would it be permissible, for greater contrast, to make Earth's enemies
black-hearted villains?"

A political thinker, Eddie thought with a sneer. He glanced hopefully
at the clock.

"It wouldn't be advisable." Carner sat casually on the corner of his
desk. "Make them human also; show the reader that these aliens--whether
they have one head or five--have emotions understandable to them. Let
them feel joy and pain. Show them as being misguided. Pure evil in your
characters has gone out of fashion."

"But could I make their leader pure evil?" the young man asked, busily
jotting down everything Carner had said.

"I suppose so," Carner said thoughtfully. "But give him motivations
also. By the way, in dealing with that sort of story--the panoramic
kind--remember not to oversimplify the aliens' problems. If they amass
an army of twenty million, all have to be fed. If the rulers of fifty
scattered star systems meet in conclave, remember that different star
systems have different languages, and different races have different
nervous systems. Bear in mind also, that there would be little logical
reason for attacking earth; the galaxy is filled with so many stars and
planets, what is the necessity of fighting for one?"

The horn-rimmed fellow nodded dubiously, writing his notes with
tremendous speed. Eddie stifled a yawn. He preferred to think of his
villains as pure unadulterated evil; it made characterization so much
easier. And he was getting tremendously bored.

Carner answered questions for the next half hour. He told them not to
describe Venus as a 'jungle-choked green hell,' never, never to call
the moon 'pock-marked,' 'small-pox pitted,' or 'scarred from centuries
of meteoric bombardment.'

"All this has been said," he explained. "Millions of times. _Do not_
use cliches."

He went on to explain that the red spot of Jupiter need not be called a
malevolent red eye, that Saturn's rings don't necessarily resemble a
halo, and that the inhabitants of Venus are not Venetians.

"All common errors," he said. "I want a thousand words from each of you
next time. I suggest that you choose a planet and write a fresh study
of it, avoiding with care all the cliches I mentioned. Class dismissed."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, whadja think?" Mort asked Eddie in the hall. "Isn't he great? I
mean, he really _knows_!"

"I'm dropping out of the class," Eddie said, making up his mind.

"What! Why?"

"Well," Eddie said, "There's no reason why I shouldn't call the red
spot on Jupiter a malevolent red eye. I put that in a story last month,
and it sounded good. And that Venetian Threngener--I think it's a
_monstrosity_, and I'm going to write about it that way."

He paused, and his face hardened with conviction.

"But the real reason--well, I'm just not interested in journalism. I'm
dropping Carner's course in fact feature-article writing, because I
want to write fiction!"