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The
WWW Modern Fiction Discussion Board Where You Post Your Stuff
Introduction
to English 201--A Virtual Version
The
Calendar: What You Need to Read, Write, and Do Day by Day
Details
on the Analytical Papers Assigned in This Class
How
to Write Excellent Analytical Papers
Some
Sample Analytical Papers Written by English 201 Students
Frequently
Asked Questions
Discussions
of ESL Problems at Dave's ESL Cafe!!
Stories
and Their Origins
Weekly
Prompts for Writing Your Short Story
Eng 201 Fiction Board
Some
On-Line Fiction Sites
Some
Sample Stories Written by 201 Students
Writers'
Gallery of Pretty Good Liknesses
Home
Page Resources
Writers'
Gallery of Pretty Good Liknesses
Home
Page Resources
A Glossary of Literary Terms and A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices
When we think of the differences between "reality," the reality of "it really happened," and the world of fiction, what do we notice? Is reality logical, predictable, knowable? But what about the world in a piece of fiction? Here we have a vision of a world that "makes an argument," presents the enigma of human experience in ways that appear to have some sort of coherence, rationale, consistency. Perhaps that is what Aristotle had in mind when he cautioned against resolving a plot by the action of a "god" descending from a "machine" to right all wrongs, punish the wrong doers. In other words a coincidence might serve to start an action, a plot, but never to resolve it. What we conventionally demand of fiction is "truth," the truth of motivated action, of responses to events that seem consistent with the actor, that present implicitly an argument.
I intend that the following exercises, our "(mostly) Monday" prompts if you like, will lead us step by step to examine the means by which we will create, construct, discover a story. The first exercise seems to violate what I've just written about the difference between "real life" and fiction, but perhaps it will help you discover the basis for a fiction by giving you something to "lie" about.
Brainstorm a list of 5 to 10 or more problematic, interesting, irritating, dangerous, life-changing, ordinary events that have occurred in your life. Then go back and write the following about each one:
Thinking about your list of personal experiences, play the "what if" game with several of them to help you move away from the prison of "it really happened." That is, change radically a person, place or thing in the event. Change the outcome, the response, the feeling, the gender of the main character. Introduce another character. Suppose the "good guy" were "the bad guy"? What happens if you do that? Does the event, thus altered, begin to suggest a life of its own? What reasons will you provide your characters for their actions? The story that you want to write should begin to grow in your imagination. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT CONFORM TO WHAT "REALLY" HAPPENED. What "really" happened doesn't matter. What happens in the crucible of your emotions and imagination is what matters. What matters is your "lie about life." Post your reflections Eng 201 Student FictionAlways keep a copy, an electronic and a paper copy of your work. Each week's work should build on last week's and be the basis for next week's.
Let's think about your main character, the man or woman at the center of your story. What makes this person tick? What motivates him or her? Money? Love? Spite? Hatred? Religion? Another person? What does this person love? Hate? What does this person want? What is blocking his or her path to attaining that goal? Is it inside or outside of the person? Think at the keyboard at some length about your character. Find a name that seems to fit. You could make a list of his or her favorite foods, music, activities, describe where is he or she from and the consequences of that sort of background. What's his family like? What's his résumé like? You get the idea--create a profile of your main character. Or, rather, include only those "facts" of your character's life that develop the theme and advance the story, compressing and eliminating the ordinary and trivial and mundane stuff of everyday life. And oh yes, did I mention a name? Keep in mind that while everything you create here must be "true" and "relevant" to the character, you will not use it all in your story or in what you post tonight. As one writer puts it: "Just because a writer labors long and skillfully to give the reader the impression that his novels or stories are simply carbon copies of a formless reality filled with the same passive meaningless characters we find in life--this does not mean that what the writer has written has no form or that its characters have not been created to fit a purposeful design." What makes your character memorable? What kind of trouble is he or she in? What difficult problem must he or she solve? IMITATE CLOSELY PARAGRAPH 20, P. 39 to present the results of all this thinking about your character.
Post your study Eng 201 Student Fiction
Conflict is the "mother's milk of fiction." So follow your character, who, you'll recall, is in some kind of serious trouble, in a situation that is serious and threatening, and he or she is trying to get out of it, but he or she runs into trouble both in terms of internal character and of the external world. Think about the conflicts of the characters you have read about about so far, internal and external. Now sketch out the problem your character faces, the efforts he or she makes to solve it, the conflicts he or she must resolve, the dangers he or she faces. What you are doing here is writing a plot sketch, a summary of the connected incidents that, when fleshed out into scenes and narration, will build your story. Post your sketch Eng 201 Student Fiction.
Show, don't tell! The scene's the thing. To feel how a scene works, how it moves, how it develops its action from the characters and both builds out of the conflict and deepens the conflict, go back to "Fleur." Look at the scene that begins p. 41 after the four-space skip transition with the words "August, the month that bears fruit...." and ends on top of p. 42 with the words on line 7, "...one big hog that was waiting in the stock pen to be killed." First of all, carefully at your word processor, copy that scene, word for word, so that you feel it. Do NOT post the copying but be sure to do it. Now, also at your word processor, imitate as closely as you can the cadence and movement of this scene only put your characters and their actions in the scene. This exercise may take you several attempts but when you are finished you will (a) know a lot more about that scene in "Fleur" than you did when you began and (b) you will have taken a giant step forward in building your own story, discovering as you watch your characters move in the actions you have created for them, many more of their secrets. Post your scene imitation Eng 201 Student Fiction.
Dialogue in fiction is different from talk in real life. Every word, every silence must move the story forward to its inevitable resolution. Look at the stories we've been reading and discussing. Think about how dialogue works in these stories. And work it does (and must). For example, examine closely the part of the kitchen scene in "My Man Bovanne" that begins with the sixth line on p. 91 and runs to line 19--just that section. At your word processor, copy this passage exactly so that you feel and hear the speech rhythms and patterns that are heightened and rendered to reveal character and move the story forward. Find several other short but significant patches of dialogue and copy them to get their feel. Then at your word processor imitate this dialogue with your characters. How do your characters sound? Remember: You want the "talk" to sound much more significant and functional than "real" talk generally does yet give the illusion that it is real talk that is consistent with your characterization. Play with this and copy and paste your most successful and useful dialogue patch Eng 201 Student Fiction
Narration and description are necessary to set the scene of the action, but do you want great swatches of either one? Not at all. Again review the stories that we've been working with. Look, for example, at the first three paragraphs of "Swaddling Clothes" on p. 143 and the first full paragraph on p. 145. In both selections, the description of locale is deftly woven in so that the action is sufficiently situated while the focus is kept on Toshiko's characterization and on moving the story to its resolution in the park. Or examine that remarkable sentence in Mansfield's "Garden Party" on p. 177, ll. 15-17 that moves Laura away from the workmen and back into her world in the house. Again, at your word processor, carefully copy several such deft combinations of narration and description with characterization. Then imitate the movement and shape of each one but with your character, conflict, and situation. Post your creationsEng 201 Student Fiction
To flashback or not to flashback--that is the question! Sometimes you think that you need to stop the story and go back to some previous action to explain the present action. What's the best way to do that? Full-on flashback? Probably not. Your reader might not return to the present with you. So you are faced with two viable alternatives. (1) Begin the story back there, telling that scene crisply, and then skipping to the present. (2) Feed the necessary material in as you go. Again, study the stories we've been working with. Look, for example, on p. 265 of "Handling Charges" at the last paragraph.. Here Orth narrates Tova's and Jeff's getting on the bus after the treatment. Then, in sentence 3, she feeds in some background in the form of a previous bus ride during which Jeff threw up because of the treatment, information that functions in a number of important ways. Examine other stories and note how necessary background information is fed in without noticeably disturbing the forward movement of the story. At the word processor, copy, then imitate several of these flashback sections to get the feel of how they work. Then post your studies Eng 201 Student Fiction
I don't know what would be best here. Perhaps this: if you are uncertain about point of view for your story, review the stories and copy, then imitate brief passages that embody different technical narrative points of view, e.g., first person, story within a story (e.g., Huddle's "Little Sawtooth"), assigned (everything told from the lead character's point of view--a good choice for most stories), multiple viewpoint. Take a scene from your story, write it first in first person, then in assigned, and perhaps in the story within a story pov.
At this point you should be drafting and re-drafting, writing and rewriting, pulling together all you have learned about your characters, their pains and problems, conflicts and dreams, working toward a crisply written "postable" draft OF YOUR SHORT STORY that honors the necessary conventions of written English (including grammar and spelling). (The possibility exists that some of these stories may be selected for publication Storyteller, Sigma Tau Delta's fiction journal.)
Congratulations on completing a challenging body of work. If you've made it this far, you deserve serious applause.