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Fiction WritingEWRT 40 • Fiction Writing • Randy Splitter
Key techniques and ideas, sample readings, creative exercises, collaborative feedback.
Contact instructor: SplitterRandolph@deanza.edu
Office: F61e (near turtle sculpture at "top" of L quad)
Office hours: Tues 11:30-12:20, Thurs 2:45-3:35 pm
Class file server: http://homepage.mac.com/rsplitter (click on Public Folder->EWRT40; download stories, save on your computer, print out or read on screen; bring to class, at least one page with esp. interesting or strange passage)
Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine: http://www.deanza.edu/redwheelbarrow/ (connected assignments; author interview)
Pass/No Pass
Max. number of absences allowed: none during the first three weeks, 3 thereafter, except for special circumstances.
- Student reports on phony memoir controversy, lit magazines, literary events, Poets &Writers magazine, resources, etc.
fiction writing: some key ideas
- Shitty first drafts: cyclical model of imagination/creation and consolidation/revision
- Image/metaphor/symbol (concrete vs. abstract)
- Setting (realistic, symbolic, ironic)
- Multiple ways of developing character (direct vs. indirect; may ironically contradict each other)
- Form/structure: creative freedom in constraint
- Narrative POV—character-narrator (usually 1st person) vs. authorial narrator (usually 3rd person); filter-character (limited omniscient)
- 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. 6, 8): Intro; Truth, Fiction, (Sur)Realism
Tuesday
Overview of class.
Two truths and a lie.
"Inner critic" and writer's block: shitty first drafts (Anne Lamott)
Writing process: cyclical model of imagination/creation and consolidation/revision
Free play, carnival, comedy in tragedy (indulge your playful, creative side and see what happens)
Defamiliarization (making the familiar strange, so that we can really see it)
Memoir, reality TV, various kinds of surrealism
Thursday
- student report on phony memoir controversies (James Frey and at least one other) (Matt, Lauren)
If you have time, listen to Elna Baker, "Babies Buying Babies" (click here, play audio of this story).
Read Anne Lamott, "Shitty First Drafts"; Chad Simpson, "The Real and True Story"
Exercise: Write a brief story (one paragraph to one page) based on something that really
happened to you (or based on a family photograph or the first home you
lived in); fictionalize at least one major event or detail (change from
what actually happened).
Week 2 (Jan. 13, 15): 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:
- How old is 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 Mary Robison, "Yours"; Isabel Allende, "Wicked Girl" (if you have trouble downloading the whole story, download parts 1 and 2 separately instead).
Thursday
Exercise: Imagine a character or think of a person you know. Answer the nine character questions about this person.
Week 3 (Jan. 20, 22): Scene vs. summary; showing vs. telling
(drama vs. narrative; duration; verb tenses: choices, consistency)
(dialogue: condensed, character-specific, tags; punctuation; direct and indirect discourse; free indirect discourse, interior monologue)
- 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 Chaucer, "The Physician's Tale"; Ernest Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (click here for Hem. story)
Thursday
Assignment: Write a one- or two-page story that takes place in exactly one scene
(with dialogue but without summary, time gaps, etc.; all showing, no telling; start in middle of events and stop when "point" has been
made). (Suggestions: two former lovers meet at a café or a bar; a child sees something he/she doesn't understand; an argument gets out of hand; someone turns out to be nicer than someone else thought; friends or family gather at a wedding, funeral, birthday, or holiday; someone reveals something about him/herself; an American and a local have an encounter in a country you have visited; your parents meet for the first or second or third time; the weather or the setting has a significant effect on events or characters.)
Week 4 (Jan. 27, 29): Narrative/dramatic structure
(order; three-act structure; conflict, crisis, resolution; turning points; flashbacks; circular, frame, collage structures)
Act 1: exposition (background, context); inciting incident (trigger of conflict)
Act 2: rising action, leading to crisis/climax
Act 3: falling action, leading to (partial) resolution (dénouement)
Tues
Read Anton Chekhov, "Misery"; Ernest Hemingway, "Indian Camp" Thursday
Exercise: Write a brief outline for a short story consisting of your plan for the four narrative elements listed above in bold (one or two sentences for each). Indicate (your plan for) the position of each element and the relative length of each "act." (Or outline your story from last week, locating the four elements.)
Workshop: class stories from last week.
Week 5 (Feb. 3, 5): Beginnings & Endings
(beginnings: minimal exposition, in medias res; endings: social embrace vs. lone individual)
Tues
Read Kate Chopin, "Story of an Hour"; Hisaye Yamamoto, "Seventeen Syllables" (single file or two files, whichever works better)
Workshop: more class stories.
Thurs
- student report on literary magazines (choose three)
Exercise: Rewrite the ending of one of the stories we've read (one paragraph to one page).
Workshop (update): Please read the stories by Jon Clark, Lauren Driver, Sujin Park, and Rasagna Reddy.
Week 6 (Feb. 10, 12): Point of View, Character-filter, Voice
(unreliable and ironic narrators; 1st, 2nd, 3rd person; omniscient, limited-omniscient, camera eye; character-narrator vs. authorial narrator)
Tuesday
Read Ha Jin, "The Bridegroom" (part 1; part 2 is optional); Joyce Carol Oates, "Tick"
Workshop: Please read the stories by Danny Smith and Gina Sotelo.
Exercise: Describe/narrate the same event from at least two different
perspectives (not necessarily first-person) OR retell one of the
stories we've read (or part of a story) from a different POV.
Thursday
Assignment: Revise/expand one of the exercises you've written (not the story you wrote for the first assignment) and turn it into a 3-5-page (or longer) story. (Or write a completely new story.)
Workshop: Please read the stories by Richard Wang, Vaughn Wright, and Jon White.
Week 7 (Feb. 17, 19): Gaps, ambiguity, subtext, multiple levels, less is more, show (don't tell), completing texts (reader's work)
(story vs. discourse; Labov on "embedded evaluation"; "on the nose" dialogue; Hemingway: iceberg)
advice from
the radio show "This American Life" (Note: this applies to stories of
actual experiences. To what extent should it apply to fiction?)
"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)."
closure: completing the text, story, or image
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: click here and here.
Tues (office hour today 2:30-3:30, not earlier)
Read Raymond Carver, "Popular Mechanics"; Haruki Murakami, "The Second Bakery Attack"
Workshop: please read stories by Lisa Barry and Simon Choy in folder Public->EWRT 40->Story 2 on the file server.
Exercise (postponed from last week): Describe/narrate the same event from at least two different
perspectives (not necessarily first-person) OR retell one of the
stories we've read (or part of a story) from a different POV.
Thursday
Exercise: Write a scene in which two people have a conversation in which the real subject is implied but never stated.
Workshop: please read stories by Gillian Croen, Gianna Dibala, and Brandon Maleski.
Week 8 (Feb. 24, 26): Genre fiction (plot- vs. character-driven)
(externally motivated vs. inner-driven chars.)
Tuesday
Read Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (chap. 15); Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary (chap. 1)
(In class: on the basis of these stories, identify at least three key elements of science fiction or romance genre. Or do this for another genre.)
Workshop: please read stories by Anita Bennett and Mark Ongsiaco.
Thursday
Workshop: please read stories by Rashmi Singhal and Vaughn Wright.
Exercise: write a brief outline (inciting incident; events leading to climax; resolution) for a genre story in which at least one key element differs from the standard genre formula.
Week 9 (Mar. 3, 5): Image, Metaphor, Symbol
(concrete vs. abstract; plausible but surprising connections)
Tues
Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (part 1; the rest is optional); Franz Kafka, "A Hunger Artist"
Exercise: Write a one-page story with a key image, metaphor, or symbol (which fits naturally into the story).
Thurs
Assignment: Write a genre
story of at least three pages (science fiction, romance, horror, mystery, etc.) in which at least one key element differs from the standard genre formula.
(Go beyond boy meets girl, monster runs amok, or
whatever. Avoid stereotypical characters and other clichés of the
genre.) Or, if you've been writing genre stories, you may write a more realistic, character-driven, non-genre story.
Week 10 (Mar. 10, 12): Revision/portfolio
(Kill your darlings)
Tuesday
Read first half of Raymond Carver, "Beginners"/"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (click here)
Thursday
Exercise: Bring a story you want to revise as your final project. Without looking at it, rewrite a key part of it. (Use that later to help you revise the original.) Or take one skimpy section of your story and develop it further, adding character details, dialogue, setting details, actions large or small, or whatever you want.
class stories: read stories by Lisa Barry, Dominick O'Donnell, and Rashmi Singhal (http://homepage.mac.com/rsplitter->;Public Folder->EWRT40->Story 3)
Week 11 (Mar. 17, 19): Revision/portfolio
Tuesday
Finish Carver, "Beginners"/"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" (evaluate big cuts near end)
bring revised story to class
In revising your story, try to tighten or expand as needed, use the setting to heighten the plot or to reflect character, individualize characters and situations so as to avoid clichés and
stereotypes, tell less and show more, clarify the story's central
conflict, balance the story's structure so as to minimize exposition
and funnel the "rising action" toward the conflict's dramatic climax,
and so on.
peer review: collect at least two “peer review” responses from your classmates on your revised story, with written answers to some or all of the following questions:
- is the story sufficiently concrete (showing rather than telling)?
- are the characters well-developed and three-dimensional?
- does the story 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?)
Thursday
share revised stories
Week 12 (Mar. 23-)
11:30 a.m., Thursday, March 26 (final exam time): Submit one revised story along with a one-page "reflection" on what you're trying to accomplish in the story, what major revisions you made, what problems you encountered, your response to peer review suggestions, what you learned or didn't learn in this course, and anything else you want to add about the development of your writing. For your revised story, please highlight the major changes in a different color. Also, please email me a copy if possible. Thanks!
Suggested Readings
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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