10-Minute Play Project

After completing the brainstorming exercise below, please write a 10-minute play in proper play format for Geva. Due: Feb. 1.

--Your play should be 10 pages or fewer.
--There should be a description of your setting and action occurring on stage before the dialogue begins.
--You should include a short cast list with a short description of each character in your play.
--Your play should be titled.
--You should have at least 2 to 8 characters.

Final Exam - Geva 10 mInute play (generating ideas)

After completing your mid term exam in fiction, please complete the following brainstorming:

1. List common problems that a person can face in their daily life.
2. Add to this list a few uncommon problems that a person in certain circumstances might have.
3. Add at least one weird or strange conflict or problem that a character in extreme situations might have.

Once you have a list, compare yours with a neighbors. Consider what conflicts sound most exciting. Circle at least 3 of these.

Fiction Portfolio & Final Exam Review

Please prepare your portfolio today as it is due at the end of class. The post for January 4 has all the details you will need.

Additionally, before the end of class, please choose your BEST short story (just the final draft) and drop it off in the DROPBOX with your name on the file.

Homework: Keep reading Woody Allen's Without Feathers. Check out the blog entry for Jan. 10 for help while reading.

Study for the Mid-term exam on fiction. The mid-term will be given on Wednesday. You should be familiar with the following:

The writing process: brainstorming, composing the first draft, revision (composing 2nd and subsequent drafts), editing & polishing, publication. (pg. 3-20, blog)
Types of short stories (blog)
The hook (pg. 203 & blog)
In media res (pg. & blog)
White space (pg. 164)
Ways to open a story (blog)
Ways to end a story (blog)
Point of View (POV) 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person limited, 3rd person omniscient (blog)
Character (blog)
Characterization (pg. 156 & blog)
Honest & Dishonest voice/reliable or unreliable narrator/speaker (pg. 154 & blog)
Setting (pg. 177, blog)
Locale (blog)
Symbols (pg. 243)
Regional writer (blog)
Flash forward/Flashback (pg. 234, blog)
Stream of consciousness (blog)
Protagonist (blog)
Antagonist (blog)
Foil (blog)
Minor, flat, stereotypical characters (blog)
Dynamic, round characters (blog)
Tone (pg. 216, blog)
Mood (blog)
Theme (pg. 270, blog)
Tense (pg. 233)
Conflict (pg. 231, 255, blog)
Creating suspense in stories (pg. 205, blog)
Dialogue (pg. 156-157, & blog)
Dialogue tags: speaker, thought, action tags (pg. 158, blog)
Repetition (pg. 168, pg. 189, 258, blog)
Show don't tell (pg. 179)
Plot (pg. 180, 189, blog entries)
Plot elements: exposition, rising action, crisis, climax, denouement, resolution, etc.
Short history of Drama (pg. 285)
Elements of drama: character, action, conflict, language, theme (pg. 296)

Agenda 1/13

Your fiction portfolio is due next class. Today, before we begin, let's take a look at Woody Allen. Please bring yourselves (and your books) to the front of the room. We will read Death.

After reading "Death" together in class, go back to preparing your portfolio.

Agenda for Monday, January 11

I will be at a seminar today and so will miss teaching you. While I'm gone please be polite to the substitute and complete the following:

1. Work on your fiction portfolio. It is due Friday, January 15.
2. In between working on your fiction portfolio, please read the blog entry below carefully. There is some research work that you must complete today in class. Please do this and turn in to the substitute by the end of class. (see below for details)
3. If you have completed all your work or you need a break from writing, please continue to read Woody Allen. Bring your books with you to class next time as well.
4. Please turn in your homework (questions 1-4 on page 290 in your Creative Writer's Craft books).

Woody Allen & Allusion in Without Feathers

Please read the collection: Without Feathers by Woody Allen. Information about Woody Allen is posted here (we'll have to use the wikipedia site until his official website is up and running).

CLASSWORK: (TO TURN IN TODAY TO YOUR SUBSTITUTE):
Please read about Woody Allen. Answer the following:
1. How did Woody Allen get started in his show business career? What jobs did he have and how much did they pay?
2. Name 10 of Woody Allen's plays, books, or films.
3. What awards or honors have been bestowed or given to Woody Allen due to his work in writing and film?

Please turn in these answers as part of your participation credit today. When you are finished, please take a look at the following material. As you read his collection Without Feathers, understanding "the joke" can be helpful with a little background. Those of you who read widely will probably find more humor in his work. See the information below to help you figure out what you're reading.

Much of Allen's humor requires a little knowledge about form, content, or knowing a little bit about his life (or the life of a Jewish New Yorker intellectual). To help you, please refer to this page for explanation of the allusion and humor in Woody Allen's book.

The title: Refers to Emily Dickenson’s poem: “Hope is a thing with feathers.” Ergo, if you have no feathers, you have no hope.

Selections from the Allen Notebooks & The Early Essays: Both these essays parody the publishing industry’s love affair with memoir, creative non-fiction, and publishing a well-known author’s private writings after they have died. Hence, the humor of these weird insights into the famous “Woody Allen” journals. Traditionally, creative essay form always used the same form: the word “ON” and then the subject of the essay.

Examining Psychic Phenomena: The supernatural is always a good subject to parody. In this case, a review of a newly published “non-fiction” book on Psychic Phenomena. Look up Psychic Phenomena on the internet to see the sort of thing Allen is parodying.

The Guide to Some of the Lesser Ballets: When you attend an opera or ballet, inside your program you often get the story synopsis. Since opera is usually in another language, and ballet is hard to follow if you don’t know the story, these sorts of program notes are helpful in interpreting the performance. Allen, of course, is poking fun.

The Scrolls: A few years before the book was published, the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered. In the early 70’s this sort of thing caused a lot of controversy between religious scholars and scientists. They wondered if these scrolls were part of the Bible. Allen is also Jewish, so the humor relates to this fact as well.

Lovborg’s Women Considered: The playwright Henrick Ibsen is the bane and love of many literary scholars and theatre students. Woody Allen is poking fun of the field of literary criticism (scholars who write about books, authors, and their “private” lives).

The Whore of Mensa: Allen is parodying the hardboiled detective novel made popular by writers like Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon). Think of Humphrey Bogart as the narrator and you’ll have the idea. Mensa is a national program/club – entry into which is based on I.Q. The idea then of whores who intellectually stimulate their johns is a very funny idea.

Death, A Play: Allen was a philosophy major in college. He is also interested in psychology. The two main philosophical ideas this play refers to are existentialism and Nihilism. Existentialism is a type of writing or the study of answering the question: what is the meaning of life? Existentialism tries to explain what the meaning of life is. Some people believe we are alive for a reason, others are Nihilistic and say that there is no point in our existence, that there is no purpose to our lives. Kleinman is representative of everyman. He represents all of us. We sometimes don't know what our purpose in life is (Kleinman doesn't know his purpose in the play, for example). By the way, we are all being "stalked" by death, just as Kleinman is being stalked by the maniac. Death is the great equalizer. All living beings are going to die. Along with LOVE, DEATH is one of the most common themes in literature.

A Brief, yet Helpful, Guide to Civil Disobedience: People were protesting the Vietnam War when Woody Allen wrote this book. Even this serious topic is humor-fodder for writers. The allusion to The Trojan Women is referring to a Greek Tragedy (see: God) about the women of Troy banding together to protest the Trojan War.

Match Wits with Inspector Ford: In the 70’s books such as 5-Minute Mysteries were very popular. The idea was that the author gave you a very short mystery or crime. The answer to the “riddle” was in the back of the book. A fan of whodunits will enjoy this parody.

The Irish Genius: This is a parody (similar to Lovborg) but dealing with the poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats was an Irish culture fanatic and wrote “Irish” lyrics celebrating Gaelic and Irish legends. His poems drip with allusion and Allen plays around with this idea by providing fake “footnotes.”

God, a Play: Poking fun at Greek Theatre, Allen is also joking about writers and the process of writing a play and the challenges of performing it. Allen was a playwright before he became a film writer. So you can assume the Writer character is partly autobiographical. Of course, the character of “Woody” is also Allen’s alter-ego in the play. Enjoy the absurdist ideas of the piece. By the way, the machine reference in the play is a reference to: Deus Ex Machina (or God from the machine) referring to a contrived ending of a play (a God comes down and fixes the characters’ problems).

Fabulous Tales and Mythical Beasts: Bestiaries were an old fashion (Medieval) form of the nature guide. They were all the rage in the 1500’s.

But Soft, Real Soft: There is a scholarly debate over who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Many critics say that Marlowe (another Elizabethan playwright) wrote Shakespeare’s work. Others say Queen Elizabeth or Francis Bacon wrote the plays. Probably, odd as it may seem, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The title refers to a line from Romeo and Juliet.

If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists: The Impressionist painter Van Gogh kept close correspondence with his brother Theo. Later a song and a movie were made from Van Gogh’s private letters. The title tells the rest of the joke.

No Kaddish for Weinstein: Kaddish is a Hebrew prayer of mourning usually recited at a person’s grave. Woody Allen often jokes about Freudian Psychoanalysis or therapy. He is using a comic technique of the non-sequiter (or surprising a reader by saying something unrelated to its subject or something that makes no sense or is nonsensical.)

Fine Times: An Oral Memoir: Another parody of a book review and autobiography of a fictional character. This one is about Flo Guinness, a speakeasy owner in the 1920’s. Alcohol was prohibited (illegal) in the early 1920’s and later repealed. Guinness is the name of a popular beer. Allen references many famous 1920’s musicians and people.

Slang Origins: The English language has so many weird expressions and sayings. Allen pokes fun at them in this “essay.”

Fiction Endings - Revision

As you revise and prepare your portfolio, consider how you ended your stories. If you are unsatisfied with your endings, look below for some advice regarding new 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.

Fiction, Fiction, Fiction portfolio

Continue to edit, revise, and prepare your fiction portfolio. For those of you who need a break, feel free to begin reading Woody Allen's Without Feathers. Please bring this book with you next class as we will be using it.

HOMEWORK: Apart from preparing your portfolio, please read chp. 13 in your Creative Writer's Craft books (pgs. 284-293) Please answer the 4 questions on page 290 for Monday, January 11.

Fiction Portfolio

Before we leave fiction, please complete this long-range project as a major portion of your mid term grade.

We have written the following this semester:
--Chapter 8: A Reliable or Unreliable 1st person POV fiction story.
--Chapter 9: A 1st person POV story that focused on setting and character; it may have used flashback.
--Chapter 10: A 3rd person POV story that added suspense & tone (while still focusing on setting and character), advancing the plot through a series of events or scenes
--The Hemingway story (see December for details)
--Some people wrote a short story for their baseline piece. This can also be included.
--Any other story you wrote in the past four months

Put Together a Fiction Portfolio:

1. Gather all your draft files.

2. Revise your most current draft. Proofread, correct grammar, add details, description, etc. Make sure your story is complete and you are satisfied with the outcome before you print.

3. Make sure you have a title for your stories. Don't leave your babies unnamed!

4. It doesn't matter what project or assignment created the fiction; likely your fiction will expand and change from the initial assignment or project. Consider going back to earlier projects and revising now that you have a more complete understanding of fictional elements. It's okay to change POV, plot arrangement, add/cut words, etc.

5. When you are satisfied with your work, print these files. Make sure your drafts are numbered. Unnumbered drafts will not be given credit.

6. Most recent drafts (the higher number) should be on top. Paperclip or staple drafts together. A good way to check whether or not you really crafted your work is to look through your drafts. Each draft should add pages or cut them. Crafting is a series of additions and subtractions -- or sifting to reveal the polished creative story beneath.

7. Keep your drafts in your portfolio.

When you have collected all your drafts together and placed them in the portfolio, please write a 2-3 page (double-spaced) explanation of what you learned in writing these stories. What have you learned about fiction? Do you feel your work has improved? Describe how you work best. How did writing a second or third or subsequent draft help you? Which story do you think is your best (and why)?

Use fiction vocabulary and refer to your own stories in your self analysis essay. It should be clear to me that you have learned what I've covered in the class.