Creative writing degrees can be misleading if you don’t know what creative writing is. Some might think it’s just writing novels and short stories, which would make the degree more of a storytelling instead of writing-focused degree, but the writing part is what’s most important. These degrees usually encompass professional, creative and technical writing to name a few, and have classes teaching editing and other related topics like graphic design. While the degree itself is more technical, there are of course specialized electives that help the student tailor the degree to their liking, and if a student wants to use their creative writing degree to tell stories, they should take a graphic novel class in particular.
You might think a graphic novel class is pointless for a creative writing degree because graphic novels can use visuals to do the work of giving descriptions, which take up a lot of space in short stories and novels, but that’s exactly why they should be mandatory when trying to get a creative writing degree. Much like when taking a professional writing class when you’re trying to be a novelist, there are aspects of graphic novel-storytelling that when learned can only enrich your established creative writing talent. Learning how to tell a story using only plot points, knowing what details can be included in a written description versus in dialogue and context and how to make sure the message you’re trying to convey isn’t lost in those other important aspects like descriptions and characters are valuable lessons to learn from having to plan and organize a graphic novel.
Making good art is part creating and part ingesting art from others to broaden your horizons. The same can be said for writing as a means of storytelling. All writing professors will tell you you need to read as much as you write if not more and that includes published works like graphic novels and comics particularly because they are so different from traditional novel and short story writing. There is still loads of information and technique to be learned from graphic novels that college students trying to get that degree should be exposed to.
