EWRT 50EWRT 50 • Creative Writing Workshop • Randy Splitter
A non-graded, multi-genre writing workshop for experienced writers in which we give each other feedback on our writing. Also reviews key techniques and ideas, offers sample readings, and prompts you with creative exercises.
Advisory: EWRT 30, EWRT 40, or EWRT 41.
Contact instructor: SplitterRandolph@deanza.edu
Office: F61e (near turtle sculpture at "top" of L quad)
Office hours: Mon 4:30-5:30 pm, Tues 5-6 pm, and usually Thurs 5-6 pm
Class file server: http://homepage.mac.com/rsplitter (click on Public Folder and Workshop) (I'll let you know if I post anything to this site)
Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine: http://www.deanza.edu/redwheelbarrow/
Text: Diane Thiel, Crossroads: Creative Writing Exercises in Four Genres
Student reports on James Frey memoir controversy, lit magazines, literary events, agents/publishers?,
Poets &Writers magazine, websites/resources, local resources: what
else would you like?
Red W interview
creative writing: some key ideas
- Shitty first drafts: cyclical model of imagination/creation and consolidation/revision
- Compression (poetry)
- Image (concrete vs. abstract)
- Metaphor: surprise vs. appropriateness
- Setting (may be symbolic; may ironically be at odds with character and plot)
- Multiple ways of developing character (direct vs. indirect; may ironically contradict each other)
- Poetic form/structure: creative freedom in constraint
- Narrative POV—filter-character (limited omniscient)—“middle way” bet. omniscient & first-person
- Narrative structure: conflict/crisis/resolution (three-act structure)
- Show, don’t tell; avoid big chunks of exposition
- Gaps, ambiguities, space for reader (closure, completion)
- Avoid stereotypes, clichés, melodrama
- Two methods of development (top-down/outline and bottom-up/quilting)
- Genre/formula: plot-driven vs. character-driven
Week 1 (Jan. 21): Intro; Image and metaphor
Tuesday
Overview of class
Getting to know each other: two truths and a lie (Thiel, p. 10, #1).
"Inner critic" and writer's block: shitty first drafts (Anne Lamott)
Writing process: cyclical model of imagination/creation and consolidation/revision (gathering, planning, drafting, incubating, revising, editing)
Free play, carnival, comedy in tragedy
Kill your darlings
Thursday
Before class, read Thiel, pp. 23-29, 117-118 (note Ezra Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro" on p. 26)
Richard Wilbur, "The Writer" (316-317)
beginning of Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (pp. 262-263)
(Mort Marcus, "M & Ms")
Bring short piece/excerpt (prose or poetry) containing vivid images or metaphors or which you want to make more vivid and more concrete. Or do suggestion p. 23#1, 25#2, 25#3, or 29#2. (You can do this in class on Thursday if you don't have time before then.)
The Nation as a Family
by The Rockridge Institute
As a rule, humans understand abstract or complex ideas in terms of more concrete or accessible concepts. Usually this process involves the use of a metaphor. For example, Americans—like many other cultures—understand a complex, hard-to-conceptualize social group, our nation, in terms of something closer to home, our family. Models of idealized family structure lie metaphorically at the heart of our politics. The very notion of the founding fathers uses a metaphor that construes the nation as a family, with familial roles, such as parents and children. We think metaphorically without realizing it—the Nation as a Family, with citizens as family members, is such a natural metaphor that we don't even notice it is there.
But it is there. And it drives how we think about political and social issues.
In American culture there are two opposed and idealized models of the family, the Nurturant Parent model and the Strict Father model. The metaphor of the Nation as a Family maps the values and relationships from those family models onto our politics, creating "liberal" and "conservative" political positions that we understand through our models of family structure.
The progressive worldview represents, metaphorically, the Nurturant Parent family model, and the conservative worldview represents the Strict Father model. The two models come with distinct moral systems that are founded on different assumptions about the world, interpret shared values such as responsibility or fairness differently, and center around different moral priorities.
In other words, our beliefs about what a family should be exert a powerful influence over our beliefs about what kind of society we should build. For instance, those with a strong Strict Father model are likely to support a more punitive welfare or foreign policy than someone with a strong Nurturant Parent model, who are likely to favor more cooperative approaches. Those with a strong Nurturant Parent model are more likely to favor social policies that ensure the well-being of people such as health care and education, whereas someone with a strong Strict Father model would object to social programs in favor of promoting self-reliance.
(Cf. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor; parables)
Week 2 (Jan. 14): Truth/Fiction/Reality
Tuesday
Read Thiel, pp. 7-10, 87-89, 94-95, 97-98, (110-111, 160-161)
Bruce Chatwin, from In Patagonia (170-172)
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Three Pokes of a Thistle" (183-187)
Craig Raine, "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home" (308-309) (defamiliarization)
optional: Williams, "The Curator" 317-319 (another take on defamiliarization: seeing through blind people's eyes)
Brief student report on James Frey phony memoir controversy (Rachel, Kisa).
Exercise (do one): p. 8#1 (top), 9#1, 9#2, 87#1, 88#2, 88#3, 88#4, 95#1; or write in response to a family photo or a photo of yourself; or write a brief science fiction piece in which only one key element is different from ordinary reality.
Morton Marcus: "Realistic art is the norm these days. We're instructed in creative writing classes to reproduce reality, copy nature. And that's what the general literate public wants--it seems, all it can accept. But each scientific breakthrough tells us that what we experience through our senses is not reality, is not what's really going on. We're not solid matter. We're empty spaces composed of clusters of atoms spinning around each other and held in place by gravitational force fields, and we're regularly pierced by bits of blue light called neutrinos that fly through us to the ends of the universe. In reality, our bodies are like swiss cheese, but composed more of swiss than cheese. So what is reality, what not? What is truth, what lies? I create worlds in my parables, funhouse mirrors whose warped reflections seek to show the essences of things, project solid images of such weightless abstractions as "the human condition." We've gone astray in our art. Art is not the literal copying of nature, it is the imaginative creation of possibilities, the creation of any number of realities that will quicken our sense of life, keep our inner being open to new ways of seeing, enrich our emotional and intellectual existence, and heighten our consciousness. Does it matter if the girl/woman in my poem, "The Girl Who Became My Grandmother," is really my grandmother? Does it matter that the kitchen in which she ran away became a coach any more than that in another piece of literature the dish ran away with the spoon? Or is my probing of the past what's important, the sense of magic still alive there that leads to me, that leads to us all?"
(Cf. memoir, reality TV, surrealism, magical realism, and dreamlike semi-realism of Haruki Murakami and Orhan Pamuk; Italo Calvino. Also cf. fake, stereotyped, media-shaped, "postmodern" simulacrum/image of reality in many movies, TV shows, and novels.)
Thursday
workshop on student writing: bring a 1-2-page expansion of the exercise from Tuesday (or another, similar piece that begins in autobiography or defamiliarizes reality).
Week 3 (Jan. 21): Character
goals: what does character want?
obstacles, conflicts: internal, external
core characteristics: e.g., extroversion/introversion, intuition/sensation, thinking/feeling, judgment, perception
minor characters (flat?): messenger, mediator, muddler; foil, alter ego
five ways of revealing character (which might conflict with each other):
- appearance
- dialogue
- action
- thought
- commentary by narrator or another character ("telling")
Character Questions:
- What is the exact age of your character?
- The character's house is on fire. What does s/he grab before escaping? Why?
- Look inside the character's wallet or purse. What do you find?
- What does s/he like to eat?
- Describe the socioeconomic background of the character's parents.
- What does s/he think is funny?
- What does s/he like to do? In private?
- List two or three things s/he remembers.
- What other significant piece of information do you know about your character?
Tuesday
Read Thiel pp. 60, 65-67, 108-109, 163
Kincaid, "Girl" (237-238)
Vallejo, "To My Brother, Miguel (315)
Robison, "Yours" (click here)
Exercise (do one): p. 61#1, 66#1, 66#2, 67#1-2, or 109#2
Thursday
for workshop (do this or next week's workshop assignment): Write a 2-5-page story that focuses on one key moment in a character's life to illuminate the person's whole life.
(workshop: click on titles)
Clint Gaver, Needles
Kisa Konrad, Better Half (read for next week)
Fran (read for next week)
Week 4 (Jan. 28): Scene vs. summary
(dialogue: condensed, appropriate to character; showing vs. telling; drama vs. narrative; narrative structure: order, duration)
summary: compresses duration of events (real time > narrative time)
scene: in real time (real time = narrative time)
gap: time passes, but events are not narrated (white space)
stretch: slows down and draws out duration of events (like slow motion in film; real time < narrative time)
pause: interrupts narrative to go somewhere else but returns to original point
Tuesday
Read Thiel 106-107, 155-157, 159-160, 162, 164-165
O'Brien, "The Things They Carried" (262-275)
Alexie, from Smoke Signals (322-338)
Exercise (do one): p. 108#1, 108#2, 158#1 (shorter scene), 160#4, 163#2, or 163#3; or convert (part of) an existing story into a dramatic scene or vice-versa
Thursday
for workshop (or do last week's): expand the exercise for this week into a
brief scene (in drama or screenplay form) (start in middle of events and stop when point has been
made) (2-5 pages)
(workshop: click on titles)
Alli de Hoog, The Harmonica
Week 5 (Feb. 4): Formal & musical aspects of poetry
(rhyme, rhythm, meter)
(natural rhythms, jazz, line breaks, long lines / breath, left/right brain, off rhymes, ballad/corrido/blues, performance poetry)
Tuesday
Read Thiel 54-59, 118-151 (skim, choose)
Kim Addonizio, What Do Women Want? (click on title)
Whitlow 315-316
Whitman 316
Shakespeare 311
Kim Addonizio, Sonnenizio on a Line from Drayton (click on title)
Exercise (do one): p. 58#2, 120#2, 127#1, 138#2, 140#1, or 141#2; or write a structured or musical poem as described below; or (with a partner or by yourself) prepare to read/dramatize a poem out loud in class
Thursday
student report on Short Story Writer's/Poet's Market (Alli)
for workshop: write haiku, sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, or some other structured poem OR write a musical poem relying on rhyme and rhythm
(click on titles)
Gaver, Real Estate
Amin, A Tribute to Edna St. Vincent Millay
Week 6 (Feb. 11): Narrative/dramatic structure
(order, duration; three-act structure; conflict, crisis, resolution; turning points; flashbacks; circular, frame, collage structures; endings: embrace vs. lone individual)
elements of story-telling (from linguist William Labov):
- abstract (brief summary/explanation)
- orientation (exposition, background, context)
- complicating action (inciting incident, plot, crisis/climax)
- evaluation (explanation, justification, reflection) (see wk 8)
- result (resolution)
- coda (dénouement, closure)
Tues
(Feb. 12: writers Azin Arefi and Nazanin Shenasa reading in WRC, ATC 309, 12:30-1:30)
student report on Poets and Writers (print magazine and online site) (and more) (Dan)
Read Thiel 47-53, 101-102, 158
Chekhov, "Misery" (211-215)
Munro, "How I Met My Husband" (248-261)
Exercise (do one): p. 48#1, 49#3, 53#1, 53#2, 101#2, 102#2, or 159#1
Thursday
Feb. 14: poet Kim Addonizio reading in WRC, ATC 309, 12:30-1:30
(for
more Addonizio poems, go to http://homepage.mac.com/rsplitter and click
on Public Folder ->Red Wheelbarrow->Addonizio)
for workshop: write a short short story or poem (about one page) with a complete narrative arc (conflict, crisis, resolution) OR a "step" (scene by scene) outline for a long story (with complete narrative arc) with about 8-12 scenes
Week 7 (Feb. 18): Point of View, Character-filter, Voice
Tuesday
Read Thiel pp. 11-22, 61-63, 104-105, 110-11
Gilman, "Yellow Wall-Paper" (217-230)
Kim Addonizio, What Do Women Want? (click on title)
Ha Jin, The Bridegroom (part 1) & The Bridegroom (part 2) (click on titles)
Exercise (do one): Describe/narrate the same event from 2 or 3 different perspectives, one paragraph for each. First or third person POV.
Thursday
for workshop: take an existing story (or poem) and change the POV to that of another character (either char-filter or first-person) (2-5 pages)
Week 8 (Feb. 25): Gaps, ambiguity, subtext, multiple levels, less is more, show (don't tell), completing texts (reader's work)
(story vs. discourse; Labov on "evaluation"; "on the nose" dialogue; Hemingway: iceberg)
closure (completing the text): observing the parts but perceiving the whole
six forms of closure in comics (McCloud, Understanding Comics, 1994):
- Moment to moment (in time, very little closure).
- Action to action (progression).
- Subject to subject (within a scene).
- Scene to scene (across significant distances of time and space).
- Aspect to aspect (different aspects of a place, idea or mood).
- Non sequitur (no logical relation whatsoever)
advice from the radio show "This American Life":
The show looks for stories with two main elements: the narrative action, or plot (in which one thing happens to the characters, and then another, and then another), and moments of reflection
(where someone says something surprising about what the story might
mean, about how this story represents a universal experience lots of
people have).
sample story from "This American Life": Nubbins (click on title to listen)
Tuesday
Read Thiel 66, 102-103
Lim, "Pantoum for Chinese Women" (303-304) (ambiguity)
Hemingway, "Cat in the Rain" (click here) (gaps)
Satrapi, "The Veil" (click here; click "next" to see rest of excerpt) (closure)
Exercise (do one): take a page from something you've written and make it less obvious, less direct.
Thursday
for workshop: write a dialogue (in narrative or dramatic form) in which the real subject is implied but never stated
Trevor Hooper, The Accident (click on title)
Week 9 (Mar. 3): Genre fiction (plot- vs. character-driven)
(externally motivated vs. inner-driven chars.)
Tuesday
Read Le Guin, "The Wife's Story" (238-241)
Jack Finney, Invasion of Body Snatchers (chap. 15) (click on title)
If possible, bring a sample of your favorite genre (mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, etc.).
exercise: list three key elements of your chosen genre and summarize a story idea that utilizes those three elements
Thursday
We will meet in L46 but move to Forum 1 to hear Richard Walter, screenwriting expert from UCLA.
for your portfolio (if you want): using the idea from this week's exercise, write a brief science fiction, fantasy, mystery/thriller, horror, or romance story (or a story of another genre)
Week 10 (Mar. 10): Revision/portfolio
student reports on Poets and Writers magazine (click on title), South Bay Writers (click), literary magazines, MFA programs, anything else?
Tuesday
Read Thiel pp. 75-83, 98-99, 111-112, 152-154, 165-166
exercise: revise one page of something you've written, making one major change (make it less direct, condense the dialogue, end it sooner, start it later, develop character further, etc.)
Thursday
for workshop: bring major revision of earlier piece (a collection of poems or 5 or more pages for prose)
Week 11 (Mar. 17): Revision/portfolio
Tuesday
bring one-page explanation of major revisions for entire portfolio (use list of key ideas at top to guide you)
Thursday
more discussion of major revisions; collect at least two signed “peer review” responses from your classmates on one of your pieces, with written answers to some or all of the following questions:
- is the work sufficiently concrete (showing rather than telling)?
- if it contains characters, are they well-developed and three-dimensional?
- if it's a story, does it have a conflict that builds to a dramatic climax?
- does it leave room for the reader to "complete" the text (ambiguity, subtext)?
- does it provide an appropriate sense of resolution and closure?
- does it need any other major revision? (what?)
Week 12 (Mar. 24)
by Tuesday evening or before, submit portfolio of three revised pieces (any genre) along with one-page explanation of major revisions and two signed "peer review" responses (submit in class or slip under my office door, F61e; everything except signed peer reviews may be submitted by email)
suggested readings
Addonizio, Kim, and Dorianne Laux. The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. New York: Norton, 1997.Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.Horton, Andrew. Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay. Updated and expanded edition. Berkeley: UC Press, 2000.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Doubleday, 1995.Flaherty, Alice. The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life. New York: Bantam, 1990.McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.Novakovich, Josip. Writing Fiction Step by Step. Cincinnati, OH: Story Press, 1998.
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