Hi:

[beres-ford.livejournal.com]

I'm Beres (aka Lucy), I just thought I'd introduce myself before I posted any of my fiction lol. I'm still getting everything sorted out. I'm an aspiring writing, and have done countless fanfictions. But I'm not doing that any longer, and doing a lot of prose in the genres of Romance, Drama, Science Fiction and Fantasy mainly.

But it just hit me as I found this community, that I wasn't sure what to put in a port folio. I'm currently on my summer holiday, and I'll be applying for university next year (to do a creative writing/professional writing course) but I have no idea whether you put everything you've written in there, or just the best bits of your writing?

Does anyone know?

If you do then it'd be great if you could comment. :)

Hope it's okay to post something like this! I did read the guidelines and I don't think there's anything against it! :P

But if someone does know it'd be great to know what to do.

Thanks,

Beres.

Comments

[amethystrse.livejournal.com]

I’ve never done a portfolio so I could be wrong. But I think that it’s probably the sort of thing where you put samples of your best work. You don’t want to put everything because the person reading it won’t read everything.

I hope this helps! Maybe look around online to see if thee are any guides to setting up a writing portfolio.

[beres-ford.livejournal.com]

Yes it does! :D I'll have a route around online as well, I was having a quick look before I posted this but didn't find anything useful. But I do wonder if I was looking in the wrong places.
Thanks for the reply!

[curedolly.livejournal.com]

Well, I've never done a writing portfolio but I've worked with art ones and I'm sure the same rules should apply :)
I think you should put the best bits, you want to show yourself from your very best side, don't you :) Sometimes I've sorted a bit too much away (because I'm very self-critical) and the end result have felt a bit thin, which made me have to go back and put some more stuff in it.
Maybe the university you want to apply to have guidelines for this on their homepage? Otherwise, maybe you could send them an e-mail and ask how much they want..?

[beres-ford.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling, I'm like that haha! :P And that's a good point, I'll make sure I check the universities! :) Thanks for the reply!

[magickeyboard.livejournal.com]

I would have to agree with the two comments above, definitely try to showcase your best work. Maybe also decide if you want it to be genre/type specific; for example only shorts or poems or longer stories depending on what you write. Or if you want to show that you can write in a variety of forms on a variety of topics include lots of different pieces but still your best in each category. Hope that makes sense :-)

[beres-ford.livejournal.com]

Yes it does. :)
Thanks for the reply! I'll definetly make sure I do that.