Feb 20: No class
March 4: bring 1-2 stories (typed and printed) to share/workshop
Read fiction by Oates and Baxter (PDFs) and come prepared to discuss; in class writing
March 6: Due: Turn in 1-2 pages of fiction (typed and printed to turn in)
Read fiction by Oates and Munro (PDF) and come prepared to discuss; in class writing
Blog: on fiction stories from PDF
March 11: Bring 1-2 stories to share/worshop
Read fiction by Willett and come prepared to discuss
Fiction
Exercises: Choose one, freewrite everything you can in response to the prompt,
then turn the writing into a story with character(s), situation (plot, what
happens), setting.
Postcards:
Choose three postcards (real postcards or google “postcard
images” and see what you get). Choose the postcards at random. Spend 15 minutes
writing everything you can about the postcards, anything that occurs to you
when you look at them, anything you think of, any way that you can describe the
images, etc. Start writing and don’t stop until 15 minutes are finished.
Next, turn the material into a story with character(s),
situation (plot), setting (space, place). Try and use the material from all of
the postcards in the story; you can edit and revise further later.
* Write
about a boring situation. Convince your reader that the situation is boring and
that your characters are bored or boring or both, however, you must fascinate the reader with your description of this
boring situation: use concrete and sensory details to make the description come
alive; use humor or other strategies. Do not use generalizations or judgments.
Be specific and concrete.
*Use a page
from the dictionary, pull out a few words, use these to begin writing a story.
*Write a
200-word description of a place. You can use any and all sensory descriptions
but sight: you can describe what it feels like, sounds like, smells like and
even tastes like. Try to write the description in such a way that people will
not miss the visual details. Put a character in that place and have her/him do
something.
