Hemingway, Closing, Opening, Character quiz

Please take five minutes to study. You should know the titles, basic plot and character names in Hemingway's collection, types of openings & closings, character vocabulary, etc.

After the quiz, please begin working on the Hemingway Exercise below.

Hemingway Exercise - Fiction Draft #1, Short Story #2

1. Most of Hemingway’s stories have simple plots revolving around the theme of death or alienation. Two characters usually do not have the same world view (or opinion) and their conversation or relationship is strained by miscommunication (or the fact that a character cannot explain him/herself to another human being.)

2. In your journal, brainstorm a series of situations that you might write about. These situations should be simple and able to be described in one or two sentences.

Ex: A man dying of gangrene remembers his youth while trying to convince his wife that he really is dying. Or: Two waiters watch an old drunk man one evening. One of the waiters sees himself reflected in the old man.

3. Pick one of your best situations or one you would like to work with.

4. Use one of the techniques of opening a story. Select one you want to work with. Hemingway often used dialogue as an entrance into the story and plot.

5. Tell only this story for the first draft. Your first draft doesn’t have to be an epic length story. It should simply record the events and dialogue. Keep your action within one day or a short amount of time (an hour, a minute, etc.)I'd suggest trying to write 1 full page or 2 pages at most. Write quickly. Don't worry about getting into the mind of your character/protagonist yet.

Short Story Endings

Endings can be:

Circular: The beginning and the end reflect upon one another, often using the same situation, setting, characterization, or even repeating the same line or idea presented in the opening. This provides a sense of parallelism in your story structure. It is best used when suggesting that the past and future of a character/story is similar.

Matching vs. Nonmatching: similar to a circular ending, the first image is transformed, and is repeated at the end. This is most like the pattern in music: theme and variation. The first image of the story foreshadows or suggests the last image. Sometimes this is obvious, othertimes the image is subtle.

Surprise ending: Often an ironic ending, or an ending that surprises the reader. The American writer O.Henry was a master of this kind of ending. It is often found in horror/suspense or mystery fiction. The "surprise" needs to be planned by the writer, who should include details that prepare the reader for the surprise, instead of "shocking" the reader, who usually resents this strategy.

Summary ending: A summary of the outcome of the story – this kind of story wraps the plot up very tightly, suggesting the future for the characters. No loose ends. This sort of ending has fallen out of favor lately, so use it at your own peril.

Open ending: used largely in contemporary fiction, the story doesn’t end nice and neatly (like the summary ending). Instead, it leaves an important question posed to the reader, so that the reader must interpret the ending. Caution: this can sometimes confuse a reader. It is best used for subtle effect.

Ending with an image/idea: ending a story with an important detailed image or idea that reflects the theme of the story can "stain" the idea or image in the mind of the reader.

Short Story #1 Draft

Today, please turn in your homework and continue writing the first draft of your story. Try to complete your first draft by the end of class.

There will be a test on Hemingway's collection, character vocabulary, and tips about opening and closing a short story Thursday.

Character

Character is key. Readers read to recognize themselves in stories. Plot grows from effective character design. What happens in a story is largely dependent on how well a writer knows his/her character.

What does this mean for you? Know thy character as thyself.

Here are some very important character tips and vocabulary that you should know by heart.

Character:

Hero/Heroine: The main character of a story

Villain: The character who opposes the main character

Antihero: A normal, ordinary character

Protagonist: The main character of a story

Antagonist: The opponent of the protagonist

Foil: Either one who is opposite to the main character or nearly the same as the main character. The purpose of the foil character is to emphasize the traits of the main character by contrast, and perhaps by setting up situations in which the protagonist can show his or her character traits. A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character but, in so doing, highlights various facets of the main character's personality.

Characters can be either major or minor, round or flat.

Major characters are characters who are important to the conflict and plot of the story. They often have motivations linked with the main conflict

Minor characters are characters who are not necessarily important to the story. They often are used to develop the main characters or to provide rising action or complications to the plot.

Round characters have a distinct motivation and personality or “voice”; Often they are complex and dynamic (they change through the conflict of the story)

Flat characters are characters that do not change significantly through the conflict of the plot. Sometimes the reader knows or cares little about them because of lack of detail or purpose.

Stereotypes: Characters who are generally recognized as a “type”; These characters lack individuality and often can be boring because we already know how they will act and why.

Ways to develop character:

Characterization: Physical characteristics and personality characteristics which develop the individualization of a character.

Motivation: reasons for the character to act in the story

Dialogue: What characters say helps to develop them
What other characters say about a character also helps develop them

Action: Describing the actions of a character helps develop them (allows writer to show not tell)

Today in lab: After our discussion on Hemingway and character, please continue to write your 1st draft stories.

HOMEWORK: Please read: The Killers, A Way You'll Never Be, Fifty Grand, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. For each story, choose one character (not necessarily the protagonist) and identify what type of character Hemingway has created (see above) and give a few examples as to how he characterizes or develops the character in the story.

Fiction: First Line & Fiction Exercises

Today we will conduct a fiction exercise. Follow the steps below for your exercise:

1. Create a character name.
No ideas? Use your middle name and combine it with the last name of your neighbor, a distant relative, or your mother's maiden name.

2. Describe your character's personality in a few sentences. What kind of person is this character? Focus only on the spiritual, mental, or emotional traits of your character--do NOT focus on physical characteristics.

3. Considering the character's personality, describe your character's physical characteristics or traits. Make sure you give your character at least one physical flaw. No one's perfect.

4. Describe your character's social or family life.

5. Give your character a long-term goal or desire.

6. Now that your character is shaping up, create 3 premises or situations that your character can find herself in. Your premise should be a very short (1-3 sentence) summary of a potential story. You may change genre or tone. Do not necessarily write three connected scenarios. Each scenario or premise should work on its own.

7. Combining the first sentence exercise with this one, choose or alter your character and first line to start a story.

8. Write a first draft. For the rest of class, please write a 1st draft of a short story (1-5 pages).

NOTE: Hand in Hemingway homework (see post from Monday).

Homework: Please read the article on Character.

First Line Exercise

Write 10 different first lines. This is an exercise. Try using the Beginning a Short Story post below to come up with different ways to enter a story.

Try to write these lines fairly quickly. We will take 10 minutes to do that. That's one minute per opening line. If you finish early, feel free to write another 10 or another 10 or another 10. Write as many first lines as you can in 10 minutes. DO NOT CONTINUE THE STORY. Just grab your reader's attention. Ready, set, go!

After this exercise, we will watch the basic elements of Fiction. Please take notes as you watch the video. This is participation credit. Please hand in after watching.

After watching, we will continue with our next fiction exercise.

HOMEWORK: Please read the short stories: The Gambler, Nun, & the Radio, Fathers and Sons, and In Another Country. To turn in: identify the TYPE of short story you think best describes the story & what technique does Hemingway use to OPEN his story. See blog posts for notes.

Beginning a Story

Beginning a Story

A beginning promises more to come. It should hook our attention, allow us entrance into the world of the story. Beginnings need to be full of potential for the characters (and the reader). Some simple ways writers do this is the following (taken from The Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich)

Setting: setting sets the stage and raises our expectations, introduces us to location, time, and supports character, tone, mood and POV.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.

Ideas: While this can sometimes be dry or essay-like, it can also characterize a speaker, a place, an important motif or tone of a story.

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them…”

Imagistic or Strong Sensations: Imagery invites your reader to experience your narrative, giving you a good start. It also helps establish setting, usually.

1956. The air-conditioned darkness of the Avenue Theater smells of flowery pomade, sugary chocolates, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

A Need or Motive: Need is essential for all major characters. It is usually what drives the
conflict and characterization, also the plot in a story. Starting off with a motive or need is
the fastest way to learn what characters want.

On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, “What have you got for me, daddy?” and he had nothing.

Action: Action catches our attention.

The pass was high and wide and he jumped for it, feeling it slap flatly against his hands, as he shook his hips to throw off the halfback who was diving at him.

Scene: Usually in one sentence, combines action, setting, and character.

Card-playing was going on in the quarters of Narumov, an officer in the Guards.

Symbolic Object: Describe an object that has significance to your story, characters, plot. Usually a reader will recognize the importance of an object if mentioned in the first paragraph of a story.

An antique sleigh stood in the yard, snow after snow banked up against its eroded runners.

Sex: Sex sells. It also gets our attention.

After I became a prostitute, I had to deal with penises of every imaginable shape and size.

Character portrait: Introduces a reader to your protagonist or an important character.

The girl’s scalp looked as though it had been singed by fire—strands of thatchy red hair snaked away from her face, then settled against her skin, pasted there by sweat and sunscreen and the blown grit and dust of travel.

Character’s Thoughts: Like a portrait, this one’s internal.

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Question: A direct way to motivate the reader, who often wants to know the answer to a posed question.

“Well, Peter, any sign of them yet?”

Prediction: Creating an ominous tone, a prediction foreshadows or hints at the ultimate ending of a story.

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.

Anecdote: an anecdote (a short story) can introduce an important idea or theme, create a symbol, or set a particular tone.

The village of Ukleyevo lay in the ravine, so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the cotton mills could be seen from the highway and the railroad station. When passers-by would ask what village it was, they were told: “that’s the one where the sexton ate up all the caviar at the funeral.”

Activity: In your journal write a variety of "opening lines."

Using the best opening, begin a short story. With the rest of class, write. See where this opening takes you. Call this Opening/Hook Exercise - Draft 1.

The Different Types of Short Stories

“The best guide on how to write short stories is to read those already published by any good author, and the best way to discover your own talent, if you have any, is not to talk about the stories you find swimming about in your head, but to write them down, and keep on writing them…the only way to find out if you are a writer or not is to write.”

Types of Short Stories:

• The Traditional Story

o The goal of the traditional story is to tell a simple story.
o Usually unsophisticated or simple, the author usually draws experience from his/her own life or similar experience.
o Traditional stories may use any genre (sci-fi, fantasy, western, romance, realism, action-adventure, horror, suspense, etc.) but, again, the focus of the story is on telling a simple story, usually to entertain.
o Usually the story is written in a realistic style.

• The subjective story

o The author has found his/her voice.
o The author discovers that his own personality can play a large part in a story.
o Usually these stories use first person POV and gets into the mind of its protagonist.
o The focus then of the subjective story is development of character.
o The story can be written in a realistic style, but may also begin to move toward a more complex subjective narration.

• The objective story

o The author is able to suppress his/her own feeling and view of things for the sake of a more objective presentation of his/her story and characters.
o The author’s personality or life is not found consciously in the story.

• Experimental and symbolic story

o These stories fool around with the structure of fiction.
o They are often experimental or symbolic, pushing the boundaries of what “fiction” is.
o These stories are often less obvious, more subtle in their meaning, characters, plot, etc.
o These forms play around with fiction convention, they often break the “4th wall”, may use multiple subjective narration, tell a story backwards, break fiction convention rules, etc.

• Complex story

o The author utilizes techniques from the first four groups here: (traditional, subjective, objective, experimental), combining the best techniques from all these forms.

• Universal story

o The skilled author hits upon certain human truths.
o The universal story form is similar to the complex story, except that it transcends the form to become “classic” short fiction.
o The universal story is often found in novel; many authors at this stage find novels more to their liking.

Hello Fiction...

Goodbye poetry. For now. You are free to continue writing poetry. You are free to continue revising and working on your poetry. But let us take our focus to another genre. Welcome Fiction!

Writing exercise in 5 minutes. Write a 100 word story. Your story should be exactly 100 words--not 99 or 102, but 100. Write quickly and in the next five minutes tell a story to your reader.

To start off we are picking up our first collection of short stories: The Snows of Kilamanjaro & Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway. When we get back upstairs, there's a bit of work you need to do before we read a few of these collected stories.

For one, take a few minutes to research Ernest Hemingway. Learn a little bit about him. Then we'll talk.

Then read this advice:

Stories are divided into scenes. One scene written after another creates a sequence of events (plot). The best scenes connect, one causing action to further complicate or move the story along.

Poetry Unit Quiz Today!

Today, please take 5 minutes to look over your notes, then prepare for the exam. After our test, please do the following:

A. Write a short story draft of 100 words exactly.
B. Revise any further drafts of your poetry cycle or character poem.
C. Complete your segue poems drafts.

Figurative Language

Metaphor
Simile
Personification
Symbol

Metaphors and similes are the backbone of many poems.
• A simile is a comparison between two objects (nouns) connected by like, as, or than or a verb like resembles.
• A simile expresses a similarity, a connection between two things.
• The art working here is that the two things are not normally thought of connecting or going together logically.
• The more dissimilar the objects being compared the more interesting and challenging the reading/listening process.

A simile equation looks like an analogy:
X:Y (x is to y)

By leaving out the connective (like, as, than, etc.), the result is a metaphor. Metaphors are more direct, making the connection deeper and more significant.

• One goal for a poet is to extend the metaphor, thereby prolonging the effect of the comparison.
• By selecting words which recall or connect to the metaphor being made, we can extend the comparison.

A metaphor equation might look like this:

X = Y (x is equal to y)

To extend a metaphor, choose the Y and list words which come to mind when thinking about Y.

Example:
Love is a bird.
X = Y

Bird associated words: peck, fly, feathers, worm, beak, hawk, egg, etc.

Love is a flightless bird
An ostrich with its head in the sand.
What sharp beak pecks my heart
In search of the green worm?
What comes first to this lonesome nest—
The egg or the chicken?

Beginning a Poem

One thing to remember is that when beginning a poem, your real "poem" may not appear until later in the draft. Often the first few lines we write are the turning the key in the ignition, the release of the brake, the shifting into gears, the checking of the rear-view mirror, until pulling out of the driveway and getting onto the road. We may be far down the road before we realize we forgot our luggage.

In other words, the REAL opening of the poem, may not be the first line we write.
An opener, just like fiction, should grab our attention and provide us with information regarding what the theme or meaning behind the poem is, provide the reader with a setting, a speaker, and an occasion for the speaker to speak.

There is no one way in which to write a good poem.

Getting started can be difficult. If you have one of these problems consider the solution:

Writer's Block: lower your standards. Just write through it; you may have to cut a lot afterwards, but you'll at least have something written. Don't let writer's block be an excuse. Poets write hundreds of bad poems to write one good one.

Busy: Set aside time to write. Make this time sacred. You are fortunate in that you have 40 minutes everyday set aside for you to write. Use it!

Not sure what to write or what your subject is: try automatic writing, freewriting, brainstorming, etc. Use your journal to come up with ideas. None of these have to be good to start off with. But by the time you have crafted your work, it should be presentable and good enough to share.

Not sure what to write or what your subject is: try reading other poems. Then borrow ideas or subjects. Don't copy, but borrow words and put them in different order, steal a subject, a setting, a conflict, etc. Then write it your way!

It may help to answer these questions BEFORE you begin:

1. Who/What is my subject?
2. Who is my speaker (or voice)?
3. Where is my setting (where is my speaker speaking)?
4. Who is my speaker speaking to? (audience)
5. Why is my speaker speaking? (motivation)

Poetry Unit Quiz

Thursday, you will take the poetry unit test.

What should you know?

The Complete Writing Process: brainstorming/generating ideas, composing a first draft, editing, revision (drafting), publication.

How to begin a poem
Imagery: the five senses, simile, personification, metaphor, allusion, universal images or symbols.
Figurative language
Elements of sound: onomatopoeia, assonance, consonance, alliteration, euphony, cacophony,
Line: length, metrical lines (particularly pentameter, tetrameter, and alexandrine.) Iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, caesura, enjambment stanza
Meter
Open form; Closed form

Segue Poems & Diversions

Please work on your segue poems today in class. When you get stuck or need more inspiration, take a look at these poets reading their poems. Pay attention to the sound of the poem. How do the words build and connect or create an overall tone?:

Mary Oliver's Wild Geese read by a woman in a car.
Mary Oliver's Something read by a busy woman.
Mary Oliver's Sunflowers read by a woman whose battery is low.
Mary Oliver's God at Work read by a woman who is worried about her ovaries.

Draft and revise your character poem and your poetry cycle.

POETS: some advice about your poetry:

--Many of you overuse participial phrases and gerund phrases. You add adjective clauses to almost every sentence. Please don't. Poetry often sounds better when you state ideas clearly.
--Present tense is stronger than past tense.
--Choose interesting and active verbs over blah, passive, or neutral verbs. (looking is a weak verb as opposed to stare, peep, glance, or inspecting for example.)
--Again, you need to use punctuation in your poetry. You are not e.e. cummings. Fragments are NOT okay in poetry. They are confusing.