FICTION

Week 5 — March 10^th

Writing Exercises: In-Class 5-minute Stories

1. Characters: a carpenter and a salesman who remain unnamed as do their professions; Setting: A busy street; 3 specific words; Song title (Repeat it as a phrase 3 times in the story); Something bad has just happened to one of them before this scene. Write it.
2. Write a list of a) red things, b) things more embarrassing than nudity, c) things you could never imagine yourself doing, d) the most striking smells you can think of. Choose several from each list and use them in a story about a character in a post office.
3. Characters: Someone menacing from your past. Setting: Where shouldn’t this person be? Other: Who else is here? Write a 5-minute story from this person’s perspective as a 10-year-old. Write a second story about this character at age 65.
4. Write a story about something going terribly wrong at a meal. Don’t mention what that something is.
5. Write the paragraph that would appear in a piece of fiction just before the discovery of a body.

Readings

1. Openings to various short stories (handout)
2. Microfictions (handout)
3. Judy Budnitz “Dog Days”

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Tuesday, 3/31

Readings: from Week 5 & 6, including:

• Handout for 3/10 (microfictions)
• Judy Budnitz: Dog Days
• Flannery O’Connor: Good Country People
• Kate Braverman: Tall Tales From the Mekong Delta

Writing DUE: STORY — email AND post to blog under “STORIES” by 3/31

Blog—Posts by Maia, David, Lily

Optional Writing Exercises:

• Accident Exercise: Write the accounts of an accident from the perspectives of 5 people who are witness to it, all 1st POV. Use as many varied characters as possible. 
• Event 5 Ways: Take a simple event and describe it using the same characters and elements of setting in 5 radically different ways (change style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance, POV, form, etc.).
• Describe a 1) landscape (from the perspective of an old woman whose detestable old husband has died); 2) barn (from the perspective of someone who’s found out he/she is expecting a baby; 3) sea (from the perspective of someone who’s lost a loved one); 4) tree (from the perspective of someone who’s recently fallen in love; 5) lake (from the perspective of someone who’s just committed murder); 6) landscape (from the perspective of a bird; do not mention the bird); city street (from the perspective of someone who’s blind). Rules: 3rd person POV, only use visual descriptions, no pronouns, no direct statements, no tired metaphors or clichés; use fresh language.
• Write a dialogue in which each of the two characters has a secret. Do not reveal the secret but make the reader intuit it.
• Write a 1-page scene with dialogue. / Rewrite the same scene without dialogue.

*WORKSHOP

• Small-group workshops w/peer letters by Tuesday 4/7 via Zoom
• Full-group peer letters by Tuesday 4/7
• Optional conference w/me via Zoom by Tuesday 4/14

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Tuesday, 4/7

Readings: from Week 7 & 8

• Jamaica Kincaid: Girl
• Raymond Carver: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
• Amy Hempel: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried
• Ann Beattie: The Burning House
• Junot Diaz: The Cheater’s Guide to Love—text, audio)
• Lydia Davis: Five Stories
• Susan Minot: Lust
• Donald Bartheleme: The School (w/George Saunders: The Perfect Gerbil)
• Tim O’Brien: Speaking of Courage + NOTES (w/1st draft)

Blog—Posts by Lucia, Bella, Arthur

Optional Writing Exercises:

• Interview: Write a list of 100 short fragments about 1 character you are working on in your story; the sentences don’t need to connect or follow in a logical way; the idea is for you to outrun your own ideas of this character; don’t be monotonous; ask everything you can of this character, everything you must know…not just physical attributes, but also what they typically eat for breakfast, what they dream about, what they keep in their pockets or under their bed, who they love or have loved, the rituals, habits, and nuances of their personality and lifestyle, the events that have shaped their lives so far, the futures they imagine, etc. Remember, these 100 characteristics will not all make it into your story, but you as the author need to know what they are in order to write the character as realistically and consistently as possible.
• Following Hemingway’s 6-word story, convert the major story you wrote for this unit into a 6-word story. Then explain why you need all those pages to tell your story.
• Write a 1-sentence story (in. 250 words). See Machado’s “Mary When You Follow Her”
• Write a brief passage on some stock subject (a journey, landscape, sexual encounter) in the rhythm of a long novel, then in the rhythm of a tight short story.
• Write a 10-minute story told backwards from the end to the beginning.

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FICTION PORTFOLIO due Tuesday 4/14

1. Revision STORY  
2. 1^st draft STORY
3. Reflection of your journey through fiction – discuss your progress, process, questions you have of your own writing, goals that have arisen out of this experience, discoveries about what you prefer as a reader of fiction, stories you’ve written that reveal growth or that were important for you, strengths, weaknesses, sources for stories, etc.

Optional Revision Exercises—pleasedo attempt some of these exercises as they can yield breakthroughs or deepened understanding of your stories

• Rewrite opening page from the perspective of a minor character. Reflect on why you should or should not adopt this perspective.
  • Write the opening of your story in a dramatically different way, try changing voice/pov, diction, sentence length, adjectives; play with language and structure
  • Rewrite the opening paragraph of your story three times – in 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd POV
  • Copy a passage you admire from your story in longhand, then discuss why.
  • Reduce your story by half without compromising meaning or impact.
  • Use a highlighter to mark every moment that shows tension in your story. What do you notice? Does tension come from language, structure, setting, character, voice? Then, use different colored highlighters to mark parts that: 1. tell something about character, 2. tell something about plot, 3. tell something about setting: Consider how often the colors overlap; for each sentence that performs only 1 function, ask if this is a sentence that tells the reader something – try to make it show instead of tell. (Do this with a published story as a reading exercise.)
  • Write the story backwards, considering how structure is useful to material
  • Draw your story’s shape
  • Change the story or essay or poem into a letter being written to someone.
  • Intensify and magnify the tension, the trouble, the issue to shrillness, even to the point of absurdity. Be extreme, and then think about what this exercise tells you about your story (have you resorted to cliché?)
  • Identify the crucial moment of the story; what is in your character’s pockets at this moment? Who just walked in unexpectedly? What is going on in the background? In the weather? Step outside the story and write the five-minute story of this moment.
  • Add a character to the story. Take one out.
  • Change the time: if the story occurs in the past, write it in the present or vice versa. Should you keep the change?
  • Change the form.
  • Use scissors to cut the story into paragraphs and parts, reordering them, then taping them into a new version, What happens when you play with structure? Lay them out on the table/floor and ask: Does each scene accomplish something essential for the story?; Can some scenes be joined or cut?; Are there missing scenes, unexplored territory?; What happens when you rearrange the sequence of events?; What happens when you begin the story with the final scene?; Have you used the right narrator or should someone else be tell this story?; What do your characters want?; Is the distance between reader-narrator-story achieved in the best way?; Is your dialogue action rather than empty talk?  OR  Fracture the story plane into several fragments, put them out of order and rewrite the story. Cut off the first page. Cut off the final paragraph.
  • Story Test: Provide 1 sentence or more for each of these questions:
    • Your character is a plant. What type and why?
    • Your character’s future is a sound. What is it and why?
    • The plot is a type of weather condition. What is it and why?
    • The story is a smell. What is it and why?
    • The ending of your story is a color. What is it and why?
    • Choose 6 words at random and ask: How do they relate to your character?
    • If you can only tell 1 story about your central character, why have you chosen this one?
  • Find the 5 most common (interesting) words you’ve used during this unit; use these words as “hidden” titles for 5 paragraphs of flash prose; let the words instigate writing w/o being a known presence, eliminating them altogether; you will hopefully uncover trends and unexpected subject matter

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WORKSHOP GROUPS

FICTION Peer Response Fiction

• Full-group workshop: 6-Maia, 7-Estelle, 8-Haeun, 9-Ryan, 10-Makenna
• Small-group workshop:  
  • 11-David, 12-Lily, 6-Maia, 15-Owen
  • 13-Lucia, 1-Bella, 7-Estelle, 4-Izzy
  • 14-Will, 2-Agastya, 5-Flo, 10-Makenna
  • 16-Aria, 3-Arthur, 9-Ryan, 8-Haeun

POETRY  Peer Response Poetry

• Full-group workshop: 11-David, 12-Lily, 13-Lucia, 14-Will, 15-Owen, 16-Aria
• Small-group workshop:
  • 11-David, 7-Estelle, 5-Flo, 3-Arthur
  • 12-Lily, 10-Makenna, 8-Haeun, 4-Izzy
  • 13-Lucia, 16-Aria, 6-Maia, 2-Agastya
  • 14-Will, 15-Owen, 9-Ryan, 1-Bella

Peer review forms/letters for FICTION:

Carefully read the writer’s story. Then reread it. On your second reading, highlight or underline anything that could be improved in clarity and style. Write marginal notes to the writer regarding problematic or troubling spots. Next, draft a letter to the writer in which you articulate, in your own words: 1. what the story is doing—main ideas; 2. the strengths of the story; 3. two or more elements on which the writer should focus in revisions, along with specific examples—specific spots in the draft—that help to explain why these elements need attention. 4. Any other comments or suggestions you think might assist the writer. Be honest with your criticisms. Remember, the recipient of the letter can only benefit from honest criticism. But, at the same time, try to be encouraging. Your purpose is to help the writer of the story, who may, at some point in the semester, also be in a position to help you. Please refresh your memory of questions on the peer review form (linked below and on website); you do not need to fill this out (although you may do so to provide additional helpful detail for the writer), but you should address as many of those elements in your thorough, close-reading of your peer’s story. This is also an exercise in letter-writing, a beautiful, lost form that can collapse distances, especially now.

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POETRY UNIT TBA…