[originaltext]M: I’m Avi Arditti, and this week on Wordmaster: we have a specia

M: I’m Avi Arditti, and this week on Wordmaster: we have a special guest to discuss creative writing.
W: My name is Chitra Divakaruni, and I am a writer and also a professor of creative writing at the University of Houston.
M: Creative writing is something you can teach?
W: Only if you already know how to write. We can help you get better and we can help writers see what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses. And this is something that many writers, and myself included, sometimes have a hard time with, because we are so close to our own writing that it’s hard to be critical about it.
M: And you have to think about, I suppose in some cases, commercial considerations, if you want to actually make money from your writing. I mean, what’s the market demanding right now?
W: What we are dealing with in creative writing programs is really literary fiction. So over there the market is very open and looking for new talent, people who can tell a story in a different way, people who create characters that are unique. That’s what publishers are looking for, people who have a voice that is different from other voices.
M: You talk about strengths and weaknesses. When you look at a story, what would be some of those strengths and weaknesses?
W: Well, one of the things that I would look for in my students’ stories is, how well are the characters depicted? Are these characters coming alive? Are they believable? Do they have a unique voice when they speak in their dialogue? That would be one of the first things. Does the reader feel sympathy or empathy or at least some kind of strong reaction to these characters?
M: Wouldn’t that be highly subjective?
W: Creative writing, as you continue to work in the field, you see that it is often subjective in the ways in which people express things. But certain things are universal about good literature, and one of them is that good literature makes the reader think about a lot of issues and makes the reader feel about a lot of issues that are central in the novel. And if that connection is not created right away, then your book has failed on some level.
M: You say "right away". What do you mean right away, in the first chapter, in the first paragraph?
W: If it’s a story, yes, the first paragraph. If it’s a novel, then you have a few more pages to work with, but within two or three pages, the reader must want to continue reading. The reader must say "wow, this is really exciting and worth my time."
1. According to Chitra, how can creative writing be taught?
2. What kind of writers are publishers looking for?
3. How does Chitra judge her students’ stories?
4. What kind of characters are considered well depicted?
5. What is the universal feature of good literature?