Prompt #18

...Re-write a well-known fable or fairy tale. (Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, Goldilocks and the Three Bears all come to mind, but of course there are others.) Make it contemporary, of our time. Try to also update the moral of the story so that it speaks to current concerns. What if, for instance, Cinderella rejects the notion that, in order to achieve self-actualization, she needs to find a prince at all? Or what if the Boy Who Cried Wolf can't be heard in an attention-deficient world that is overloaded with media messages?

...Start a story thusly: "This is a story about love."

...Write a story with a happy ending.

Look for opportunities to use Balance and Series in your sentences. Also, feel free to use the sparks from yesterday and/or Monday.

Prompt #17

...Try to mimic Hemingway's style in "Big Two-Hearted River." Use simple sentences and repetition. Pay close attention to minute sensory details. Take it slow. Not much needs to happen, but it needs to feel "profound."

...Write a 250-word sentence that tells a story. Try to make it work as one sentence, as opposed to several sentences separated by commas or dashes or semi-colons.

...Write a story consisting entirely of sentence fragments.

Whatever you write, try to incorporate the concepts of Series and Balance in your sentence structures.

Story Sparks: Tijuana, Mexico. Seals. A street vendor named Fortenbras Izzo. Vulcan. Sunflowers. The Strait of Juan de Fuca Highway. August 3, 2005 in Alabama.

Sentencing: Balance & Series

Balance.*

A pair of phrases or clauses of roughly equal length joined by a comma, semicolon, or conjunction. Another name for balance is "isocolon," a Greek word meaning, roughly, "equal phrases." Choose any of the models below and write a similar sentence of your own.

• The air cools; the puppy's skin is hot. -- Annie Dillard
• We will not rest; we cannot think of anything else. -- Marion Winik
• Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power. -- Gloria Naylor

Series.

A string of grammatically identical elements, such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives. Choose any of the models below and write a similar sentence of your own.

• That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world. -- Amy Tan
• The preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell. -- Langston Hughes
• I don't want yours, I half-screamed at her, and went crazy, tearing up the house, crawling under the couch, yanking out drawers that hadn't been opened in years. -- Marion Winik

_____
*I'm taking this text and these exercises from a book called Moves Writers Make by James C. Raymond.

Subject Headings Are Fun!

A bit of housekeeping: when you submit work via e-mail, please clearly label what it is in the subject heading.

Weekly Pages -- for, well, Weekly Pages.

Conference Draft -- for (you guessed it!) Conference Drafts.

Thank you.

--The Management

Weekly Warm-Up: From Stream-of-Consciousness to Straightjacket

This one's in two parts:

Part-the-First. Tell a story, start-to-finish. The only requirement is that you write unfettered, without really even stopping to think. Use one (or more) of the story sparks below if you want. You'll have fifteen minutes. You can't stop typing. I repeat: don't think. Take the story wherever your stream-of-consciousness goes.

Part-the-Second. Tell the same basic story, start to finish, but this time I want you to do it in a ten-line poem. Each line must have ten words -- no more, no less. Oh: and there's a rhyme scheme -- ab ab cd cd ee. You can revise the story however you see fit. This time you'll have thirty minutes.

Some story sparks: The Grand Canyon. An accountant named Pauline. Traffic. Des Moines, Iowa. A sitar. A teenager shaving his face for the first time. The 1998 NBA Finals. Boutwell Auditorium. Winter in Alabama. Winter in Las Vegas. Hippos.

Prompt #16: BMoA Visit

...Use your notes/freewrites from the two exhibits as a spark for a story. Remember to consider any (or all) of the following possibilities:

• Think about the art itself as a jumping off point; borrow one of the images and/or subjects in the art you saw and write a story about it.
• Write something set in one of the exhibiting rooms. Think about how to convey that pervasive red in the Renaissance room, for instance. What might happen in such a room? Could be something mysterious, like an art heist, or it could be something mundane, like a security guard making her umpteenth pass through there and finally, as if for the first time, seeing something new in one of the paintings.
• Or you can write something that imagines the life of the artist her/himself. For example, the people in the contemporary art exhibit who dunked their heads in the water. Write a story about those actual people. Who are they? What are they thinking when they're dunking their heads? Are they related? Are they married? What did they do after they dunked their heads? Go for coffee? Make more art? What do they do for Thanksgiving?

Prompt #15

...Write a story from a real-life experience you had this weekend. Start it there, anyway. Just recount something that actually happened in full and compelling sensory detail. Then here's the trick: look for an opportunity to jump off from what actually happened and, when that opportunity presents itself, POUNCE! Introduce a new character, a new setting, whatever. The idea is to start from the "truth" and to then bend it (like Beckham) into the "truth of fiction."

...Write a story that has a small blue stone in it.

...Pore over your cache of prompts and expand on one.

Reading Dates Added

Check the righthand column for a list of upcoming departmental reading dates. All of you will be reading at some point in April. You're also expected to be at all the other readings, especially Senior Readings. If you have a conflict, please see me in advance.

Prompt #14

Write a scene about three friends. Two of them know something the other one doesn't. There's a good chance this story takes place on an unseasonably warm winter day in Alabama in February. Perhaps James Spann appears in the periphery. Write the scene from the Point of View (POV) of one of the two friends who share the knowledge.

Now write the same scene from the POV of the friend who's out of the loop.

Pick one of the versions as the starting point for a story.

Prompt #13

Put this woman in a story. She's an important character but she's not the main character.

[FYI: From here on out, I will mostly be giving you prompts as a back-up plan. You are not required to do them. During our writing time, you can always work on your upcoming conference draft. Or work on whatever other creative writing project you want to work on. Or you can blarg. The only requirement is that you are steadfastly putting words on the page for the full allotment of writing time.]

A Word About Conference Drafts

Here's what I want when you submit a first draft for conference:

1. The goal is for the story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you don't get all the way to the end of the story, it makes it more difficult to have a productive conference.

2. Don't worry too much about length, but less than 1000 words is probably too short and more than 5000 words is definitely too long. Aim for between five and ten double-spaced pages. Please use 12-point Times New Roman. It's easier on my eyes.

3. Don't forget to use scenes.

4. Two words: Nouns. Verbs.

5. There's no wrong answer. Make a good faith effort and you'll be fine.

To-Do List

Intro Paragraphs. For Friday, I want you to write the first paragraph for two different stories. Each paragraph should be between 100 - 200 words long. Remember Image + Action + Open-Ended Question.

Cadence Bios. Due today. Post to the Cadence 2009 folder on your desktop. If you have issues, we'll get a senior to help you with them.

Reading Practice. Imani, Carmen, Lauren, and Ceri-Lune. Ha. Just kidding. The real list is: Olivia, Natalie, Lita, Jessica, and Laura. The reading will start at 1:00 p.m. on Friday.

While we're in the Lecture Hall practicing, the rest of you should be working on the above or you can read your book. You should be close to finished with your first book and moving on to your second in the next week or so.

Prompt #12

Write two different opening paragraphs for the same story. Go back through the prompts you've written so far if you're stuck for ideas. Use the "Image + Action + Open-Ended Question" approach for both, but use different images and actions and questions to start the story. Also use different sentence styles -- for one, use short, simple sentences. For the other write longer sentences with more commas and dependent clauses. Each paragraph should be at least 100 words long.

Prompt #11: Beginnings

Pick one of the following first sentences as the germ of the opening paragraph to a story:

...The Superior Wallcoverings Wildcats were playing in the Little League Championship game and I wanted them to lose."

...Graves had been sick for three days when, on the long, straight highway between Mazar and Kunduz, a dark blue truck coming toward them shed its rear wheel in a spray of orange-yellow sparks."

...The girls were searching Arleen's room and had just come upon her journal."

...He did not have friends.

...He had a weird growth along his dorsal fin and that gape-mouth grimace you see in older fish.