Any literature students here?

I'm just wondering.

Journalism.
So not quite.

But I took purely lit courses in highschool.

What can you do with a degree in literature anyway?

Most people tend to go either into journalism or into advertising agencies... and so on. There's also of course more "natural" stuff like lector or working in publishing business.

Personally I'd like to do journalism. I'm not american and here they even prefer language and literature students over journalism students, if it comes together with some other subjects. For me that's political science.

Apart from that it's generally as unspecific in what you do with it as is a degree in philosophy. I'd love to do philosophy too, just for the sake of it. Philosophy students tend to be very good at argumentation, rhetoric and logic. All stuff I really enjoy.

I was a lit major.  But then I came to my senses and have decided it to change it to film or screenwriting.  Outlook still isnt great for me but its a lot better than it was, what with there being an actual industry to apply a film degree in.

>>5

I guess that's the actual difference in this case. There is no film / screenwriting study on itself. It's just one part of literature here.

I'm an English major at my local university. My concentration is in Creative Writing.

I graduate in the Spring. Planning on going for my MFA and teaching or something.

I'm a lit major, 4th year.  About to do grad school in lit.

>>7
How was Creative Writing?

I'm going to college next year and I'm thinking of doing the exact same thing you are. Except going into Screenwriting afterwards.

It's good. All of my professors are blowhards that are more concerned with their own work than giving you help with yours. I've been turned down by out undergrad lit mag three times in a row, and I'm guessing this year will make it 0 for 4. And also, the one creative writing class they are offering in the spring, that I haven't taken yet, is full. There were three seats. It's with our uni's writer in residence. Guess who didn't get one of those three seats. This guy.

My peer group is pretty cleaved in half. About half of us undergrad creative writers are cool. We like to write, want to be writers, work on our craft (because that IS what writing is all about) and generally put out very good work. The other half is a bunch of totally tragic poets, hipsters, and a couple of hippies that take themselves way too seriously and put out shit. Guess who always get's published in our lit mag? That's right, the other half. They kiss the grad students' asses to get their shit published. Even though it is supposed to be anonymous submissions, it really isn't.

But them's the breaks. It really is about what you put into the program, wherever you go. Like I said, I have a decent group of peers, and we're always reading and critiquing each others' work.

And prepare yourself for screenwriting. I took one of those classes. Again, the class was very split. Half were cool people that were putting out good, quality work. The other half thought they were the next fucking (insert hipster filmmaker here [I don't watch many movies]) and just wrote a bunch of contrived shit. But I must say, out of all of my professors, I liked my screenwriting professor the most. He helped out a lot. I learned a lot of good info on story structure that I was able to translate into my fiction. It was a good class.

Out of curiousity, if you don't mind anwsering, where do you attend college?

>>9
I took Creative Writing at my CC.  It was pretty lame, the teacher gave no real input and pretty much everyone in the class sucked (except me haha)

My Creative Writing teacher is really good, and he always asks the student if they'll be offended before saying harsh shit about their work.  It's clear that he likes *some* stuff and he's not just saying it to be mean and superior though.  Kind of crazy, but overall I like the advice he gives.

1) Write lies.  Don't put yourself in the story, because when you're criticized, it usually hits too close to home for you to learn.
2) It's never personal.  When critiquing another's work and having your own work critiqued, never target the person.  We're trying to improve the work, not tear each other down.  That said, don't sugarcoat and dance around the point; if it sucks, it needs making better.
3) A story can only be "deep" if it has a surface; if you don't know what's literally happening, the story will probably confuse and enrage your reader.
4) There are always exceptions, but you probably aren't one of them yet.  Learn the rules so you know when to break them.

I don't like a lot of the stuff I'm reading, but the people writing them are all generally cool; you can tell the quality of work is getting higher because everybody seems to be listening.  My writing is definitely improving.  It helps that the guy's hilarious and makes fun of himself a lot too; sugar, medicine, etc.

I also have one of the best literature teachers that I've ever had, simply because she asked this question about a novel:  "This is a complicated detail.  What does this change about the work?  Does the contradiction have meaning, or is it simply a mistake?"

Any teacher who doesn't assume that the classics are utterly flawless and must be given the benefit of the doubt 100 percent of the time is cool with me.