Ideas for Fiction Draft

Ideas For Fiction. Key Points:

Stories come from:

• 1. Our experiences
• autobiographical writing can be vivid, direct, and introspective. Your observations provide you with the details you need to start a story and make it real.
• 2. Our imagination
• Working from one's imagination allows for the most freedom. Imaginative writing can be vivid, direct, and introspective, but it is also the most creative.
• 3. Our passions
• Use your emotions to move your stories. Live through your characters.

Most stories begin with a seed idea. You may need to model your work on writers you admire to get started. You may need to research your topic and idea more fully before you can start. Most writers build a scaffold around their idea and construct a story.

If you have nowhere to begin, start with a theme. Since there are only 4 of these: nature, life, death, love: pick one. Next, apply a message. What do you want to say about: life, love, death, nature? This will usually get you started or unstuck. If you feel like your story is the same as thousands of other stories, change elements to your fiction until you have a variation on the theme. Your writer's voice will make sure your treatment of the theme and message is completely your own.

Use your imagination to move your story forward. If you are stuck, give your character something to do or think about. An intriguing image, a line of dialogue, or a complication or problem will usually force you to continue.

Write the parts of the story that you can during your first draft. You can always fill the story in later with more details, research, and events.

1. Today in the lab please work on writing your "ideas for fiction" draft from your homework assignment last class.

You had your choice of 13 different prompts from pages: 11-22. Choose one prompt and write a story. Length, genre, style and structure is up to you.

2. Complete the short story sheet for a second short story you read in your collection. Hand in when complete.

Things to do if you finish early:

1. Read your short story collection
2. Rewrite your baseline fiction piece. Call your rewrite draft #2.
3. Write another story. Choose another prompt and work on that one as well to compose a draft.
4. Rewrite any poems you have previously written.

Use your time in the lab efficiently.

HOMEWORK: By now you should have read 2-6 stories in your short story collection. Read another 1-3 and be prepared to discuss these stories next class.

Short Story Collection Analysis; Genre Brochure

To start off today's class, please use the story (or one of the stories) you read in your chosen short story collection to answer the questions posed to you on today's handout.

After completing this step, please continue to work and complete your brochure project today in class. Finish your brochure by the end of class today. Print out your brochure and turn in, but do NOT fold or staple your brochure.

For details about what must be in the brochure, please consult last class' instructions in the post below this one.

If you finish your brochure, you may work on your homework (due Wednesday). 

HOMEWORK: Please read another 1-3 stories from your collection. Bring your books with you next class as well. Please read the handout chapter: "Ideas for Fiction" and complete one of the 13 prompts found in that chapter as a first draft of a new story. Indicate in your heading which prompt you used (the #).

Short Story Collection & Fiction Genres Brochure

After reading "My Date with the Neandrathal Woman" we will be going to the library.

In the library, please select a collection of short stories for your reading project. We will be spending about 20 minutes down in the library where you will be able to read a little of the collection to test it out. Pick a collection that you will enjoy. Please note that you are NOT required to read the complete collection, but you will be required to read a certain # of short stories from the collection.

When asked, please return to the LAB to complete the following assignment/project:

• In Microsoft Word or Pages, from the FILE menu, please select New From Template.
• Choose BROCHURE as a template. Create a brochure about your chosen genre by following the steps below. Be creative. Play around with design and how you present the information in a clear, and creative way. You may use graphics and lists to provide answers to these questions:

1. Describe this genre. What is it?
2. Who is the target reader (a fantasist, a realist, a pragmatist, or what combination?)
3. What are some expectations a reader of this genre might expect?
4. What are some categories of this genre? AND what are the expectations a reader might expect from this genre?
5. Examples of some popular or famous books or films that fit this genre; and/or examples of authors who write in this type of genre.

Today in the lab work on this assignment please.

HOMEWORK: Read 1-3 stories from your collection. You will be using this information and analyzing the stories you read next class. Please bring your selected short story collection with you next class.

Introduction to Fiction

At our level writing is a great way to express yourself. But make no mistake. Writing is a business.
Readers often select books similar to previous enjoyment. If a reader enjoyed a fantasy, the reader is most likely to continue reading fantasy, for example. There are three typical types of readers (note that most people combine these to various degrees, often a combination of two depending on mood or interest):

• Fantasists: readers who read to escape the tediousness of ordinary life, seeking new frontiers and imaginative fiction
• Realists: readers who read about contemporary life to learn about or reinforce personal experiences
• Pragmatists: readers who read for a specific purpose--from cooking to learning history or science

Readers also become loyal to writers so that once you read Stephen King, for example, you might devour as much of his work to make you sick of his style before tearing into another author's work. Publishers count on this to occur.

Lab: Baseline Story

Please choose a type of reader from the above. Write a story for this kind of reader. Your story should be as long as you need it to be. If you finish early with a first draft, go ahead and write another one, and another one. Use the time in the lab to write. Title and label all your work & draft #'s.

Need a break?: Revise and rewrite your poems.

HOMEWORK: If you did not finish your story draft today in class, please complete it at home and print out the first draft for next class. Complete any short story reading we did not cover in class.

Poetry: Closing Our Unit

Classroom task: In pairs:

Please read the following poems, name its basic THEME, and identify an example of each of the following:

A. Figurative Language
B. Sound Devices
C. Line Devices/Form
D. Syntax/Word Choice
E. Character Devices

The poems:

• Wallace Stevens: "The Snow Man", pg. 564.
• Wallace Stevens: "Of Modern Poetry", pg. 572.
• E.E. Cummings: "Buffalo Bill's", pg. 676
• Robert Francis: "Cadence", pg. 688
• Langston Hughes: "Madam and the Rent Man", pg. 696
• Stevie Smith: "Not Waving But Drowning", pg. 698-699
• William Stafford: "Traveling Through the Dark", pg. 732
• Gwendolyn Brooks: "The Mother", pg. 750-751
• John Ashbery: "The Painter", pg. 791-792
• Philip Levine: "Starlight", pg. 794-795

Turn in your answers by the end of class today. Turn in whatever you have finished in one period.

After 7th period or when all students are done with their analysis, those students who would like to retake their test may do so now. When you are done with the test, please go next door and work on the lab assignment.

LAB: Please take any poems you have written so far in class and revise them. Make the poems better by using the techniques we have been working with in class. Or: write a new draft of a poem. Title and label all drafts. Save and keep all your work.

Poetry & Analysis

After your test results today, please note the following:

1. Any student who scored less than average (or those who would like to improve their score to the point of mastery (A-level)) will be able to take the exam again Friday.
2. Before moving to our next unit, let's actually try to learn the basics about poetry writing.

 Key poetic terms and devices that a writer should be familiar with:

Prose: We do not concern ourselves with line breaks. Prose is written from the left side of the page all the way to the edge of the right side. Paragraphs are indented. Prose is broken into paragraphs, chapters, or sections.
Poetry or Verse: Concerns itself with line breaks. The cadence group or phrase of a line is deliberately broken to keep rhythm, meter, or to highlight a literary device and its effect. It does not flow all the way across the page, but is broken into stanzas, sections, or uses line breaks to create an effect. Poetry uses careful diction (word choice) to create texture and meaning in a poem. It often uses more literary devices than prose.

Theme: there are only four basic themes in literature: life, death, love, and nature. While these all can be defined further (the theme of revenge, for example, or human conflict), a poet only writes about one of these basic themes. Life usually encompasses almost everything.
Message/Moral: this is what the author tries to communicate about the theme or subject.

Literary devices:

• Figurative language: imagery (metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, symbol)
• Sound devices: alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme
• Line devices/form: stanzas, meter, enjambment, caesura
• Syntax & Word Choice: inversion, juxtaposition, diction, tone
• Character devices: persona, voice. tone, monologue

Classroom models:

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost (pg. 538)
"Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost (pg. 548)
"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" by William Shakespeare (pg. 165)

Classroom task: In pairs:

Please read the following poems, name its basic THEME, and identify an example of each of the following:
A. Figurative Language
B. Sound Devices
C. Line Devices/Form
D. Syntax/Word Choice
E. Character Devices

The poems:
Wallace Stevens: "The Snow Man", pg. 564.
Wallace Stevens: "Of Modern Poetry", pg. 572.
E.E. Cummings: "Buffalo Bill's", pg. 676
Robert Francis: "Cadence", pg. 688
Langston Hughes: "Madam and the Rent Man", pg. 696
Stevie Smith: "Not Waving But Drowning", pg. 698-699
William Stafford: "Traveling Through the Dark", pg. 732
Gwendolyn Brooks: "The Mother", pg. 750-751
John Ashbery: "The Painter", pg. 791-792
Philip Levine: "Starlight", pg. 794-795

Turn in your answers by the end of class today.

LAB: Please take any poem you have written so far in class and revise it. Make the poem better by using the techniques we have been working with in class. Or: write a new draft of a poem. Title and label all drafts.

HOMEWORK: None. Unless you wish to study for your re-take exam, or have not yet completed your portfolio. Turn in any missing work by next class if you'd like minimal credit this marking period.

Poetry Test & Portfolio

Today after our poetry test, please use the lab to complete and prepare your portfolio. See post below for details about preparing your portfolio. Remember to include a reflection in your portfolio.

Please turn in your homework (Mary Oliver poetry study sheet).

HOMEWORK: None.

Preparing for the Exam & the Portfolio

On Thursday we will be taking our unit exam in poetry and the writing process. You should be familiar with the following terms and concepts (taken from your class readings, notes, and from the blog posts).

Test review: the complete writing process, techniques to avoid writers block, theme, the four common themes in literature, persona, moral or message, line breaks, stanza forms, sound devices, diction, tone, voice, caesura, enjambment, cadence groups, onomatopoeia, assonance, alliteration, consonance, euphony, cacophony, rhyme, diction, texture, imagery, figurative language, metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, symbol, allegory, meter, iamb (iambic), trochee (trochaic), dactyl (dactylic), anapest (anapestic), spondee (spondaic), couplet, tercet or triplet, quatrain, sestet, octave, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, Terza Rima, Shakespearean sonnet form, free verse, prose.

Today, please prepare your portfolio by doing the following:

1. Check that you have all the assignments done. If not, please complete them. A full list of required assignments and drafts can be found below.
2. Your portfolio should have a short 3-5 paragraph reflection. Talk about what is working for you in this class, what is easy in poetry for you, what is difficult for you, what you have learned about poetry, what you are still confused about poetry, and discuss your own work: are you happy or dissatisfied with it and why?
3. Remove any assignments that are not the baseline piece or the poetry assignments (i.e., tests, homework and chapters should be removed)
4. Complete second (or third) drafts of any first drafts you have written, using the skills or techniques you have learned: for example:

Using stanzas (change your stanza form)
Using enjambment (change your line breaks to include enjambment)
Using a caesura (change your line breaks to include caesura)
Using meter (change your meter)
Using free verse (change your structure or form by removing meter or pattern)
Using ordinary subject matter (if your work is too vague or abstract, go back to the drawing board; subjects for contemporary poems generally use ordinary subject matter)
Using alliteration (revise your poem specifically to use alliteration)
Using assonance (revise your poem specifically to use assonance)
Using consonance (revise your poem specifically to use consonance)
Using cadence groups (consider the flow and wording of cadence groups and phrases)
Using onomatopoeia (consider the shape and sound of your poem to match tone)

Using diction (consider the specific words you use in a poem)
Using texture (consider your word choice or diction to reflect tone or mood)
Using persona (consider WHO your poem's speaker is)
Using theme (there are four major themes in literature: love, life, death, nature--life can be divided into a myriad of themes...from apathy to yearning)
Using voice (your voice is unique. Revise your poem and consider your use of voice)
Using imagery (revise to appeal to the senses: most likely visual, but also tactile, auditory and olfactory)
Using metaphor or simile (compare one thing to another; revising for this helps visual imagery)
Using allusion (revise by adding an allusion)
Using personification (revise by adding personification)
Using symbol, allegory, or figurative language (revise to suggest larger meanings outside of the obvious)

Remember to spell check and proofread your work. Poems should be punctuated correctly. Review your grammar rules!

What's been due? Here you go:

• The baseline piece (fiction or poetry, your choice and style)
• The baseline poem
• The revision of the baseline poem (we did three versions involving line and meter)
• The sound poem
• The 6-20 line poem
• The Diction/Tone/Voice poem (homework draft)
• Five ordinary poem drafts (5 first drafts on ordinary subjects)
• A Lucille Clifton Style poem draft

All draft assignments should be present in your portfolio. Portfolio work is graded on 1. content, 2. quality 3. creativity and 4. revisions. I want to see you using the poetry techniques we have covered so far in class.

HOMEWORK: Please study for your exam on poetry. Please read the selection of poems by Mary Oliver and answer the questions on your homework/study sheet to turn in Thursday.

Lucille Clifton & Poetry

Lucille Clifton is a contemporary African American poet. Her work has influenced generations of new poets and therefore her writing is a good model for our own. She was from upstate New York. In 2010 Lucille Clifton died of cancer. Her awards include a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (one of the highest poetry awards and honors) and she was a Poet Laureate. 

As many African-American poets she tends to write about her experiences. She attempts to bring her voice to the forgotten or silent history of African-Americans.

With a partner please look up the following allusions used in Clifton's work. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper to turn in at the end of class with you and/or your partner's name on it. This is participation credit for today's class.

1. Amira Baraka
2. Hector Peterson or Soweto Riots (1976)
3. Nelson Mandela & February 11, 1990 (what's the connection?)
4. Walnut Grove Plantation, South Carolina
5. Sotterly Plantation, Maryland, 1989
6. Drug abuse common in African American contemporary culture
7. Rosa Parks
8. Huey P. Newton

READ the handout QUILTING. If you'd like, you may read this with a partner. It is sometimes better to read a poem out loud to hear how it sounds. Sound devices will be more obvious when read aloud. This also is a good way to practice your oral reading skills. As you read, pay attention to meter (if any), line breaks, enjambment, caesura, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, diction, tone, metaphor, simile, imagery, allusion, stanza form, and so on.

For LAB WORK (after reading Lucille Clifton's poetry): please compose a 1st draft of a poem in Lucille Clifton's style.
1. Choose either a similar theme, style, length, line, meter (free verse), persona, tone, etc. that Clifton uses.
2. Use appropriate imagery, sound devices, and/or allusions in your poem.

IF YOU FINISH YOUR POEM, please continue this class by reading and answering the handout ?'s for the chapter on IMAGERY. See homework below.

WHAT YOU MUST COMPLETE TODAY:

1. Take notes on imagery and poetry that we cover in class.
2. Alone or with a partner, look up the allusions Clifton uses in the selected poems from her book: "Quilting". Turn in at the end of today's class.
3. Read (alone or with a partner) the selected poems from the book "Quilting" by Lucille Clifton.
4. Compose a 1st draft of a poem in the style of Lucille Clifton.
5. If you have time in class, please read the chapter on IMAGERY and answer the questions for that chapter as notes. Hand in your notes if completed. Otherwise complete reading and notes for homework.

HOMEWORK: If you did not complete your reading of the chapter on IMAGERY in class, please complete the reading and answer the questions on the handout regarding IMAGERY. This is due Tuesday, Oct. 9. There will be a unit test on poetry at the end of next week. Gather your notes and study our poetry terms, the writing process, and everything we have covered so far in the craft of writing. Please compose a poem draft in Lucille Clifton's style. Call this: Lucille Clifton Style poem draft #1.

Diction and Imagery

Imagery comes in a few flavors: figurative language, metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, and then sound techniques (alliteration, assonance, consonance, cacophony, euphony, onomatopoeia, rhyme). These techniques help create sound and sight in a poem (two of our most important senses). Using diction, a poet can also recall senses of smell, touch, and taste, but these are harder to do. Here's an example:  

Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

The reason poets rely so heavily on metaphor and simile as the common currency of poetry is that it relates to imagery. Metaphor and simile say with pictures and specific objects what abstract nouns cannot. They help clarify, focus, and bring an image to the foreground of a poem. This is necessary to communicate an idea.

"Metaphors set up precise identities between two halves of a comparison" - Ted Kooser

However, we don't want our comparisons to be either A). too obscure and difficult to understand or B). too obvious (bordering on cliche).

Its a fine strand of web the poet scuttles across to anchor two dissimilar points of space. When working with metaphor and figurative language in your own poems consider the relationship between the subject and the object (or setting, event, etc.) The most beautiful metaphors/similes are subtle ones that are both fresh and new, while also being familiar.

Pick words (particularly verbs and adjectives) that correspond to the main metaphor/simile working in your poem. This helps to create tone as well as picture the subject in an effective way. Try to extend your metaphors through at least a stanza, if not the entire poem.

Example:
Martin Walls' poem "Snail" is about a snail. There are a series of "snail-appropriate words found in the poem"

Snail
It is a flattened shell the color of spoiled milk, a bold
Swirl slowly stirred that charts the age of what's
Curled inside with the tension of a watch spring. A creature
That embodies the history of metaphysics: first it exists,
Then it doesn't, then it emerges once again, unrolls
One, then another, eyestalk, like periscopes breaking
The surface of its wet-life. And here's the tongue body
The petal-body, molding its shape to the world's shape.

The snail is compared to: spoiled milk, a horoscope, a watch spring, periscope, flowers, tongue, and the world. By writing about a snail, we consider it in its proper function as a comparison/contrast to other life, particularly ours. If a snail has purpose, then so do we.

Spoiled milk gives us a negative image, but the words bold, stirred, and curled (curdled) all seem appropriate word choices for the comparison. The snail furthermore encompasses the world in an orderly way. It is both a watch spring (human made and intelligently designed) indicating the spiral shape of a snail shell, but also a tongue (natural object) that goes along with wet and unrolls.

All in all there are snail words: eyestalk, swirl (the shell), shell, slow.
It moves slowly, and the pace of the poem is also slow: words like slowly, emerge, unrolls, molds (also connected to the smell in the first line as a double meaning), recall the movement of a snail, leaving a wet slime trail behind it. This disgusting invertebrate is compared to the function of the world--giving this little animal a metaphysical meaning that compares its life with ours.

Note that this is a small poem. It doesn't function as a grandiose political idea or earth-shattering observation. It compares (metaphor/simile) us and our human made world to its natural world linking us with nature, reminding us of our own value and worth. Sometimes that's all that's needed.

Ordinary Things Drafts

In the lab please complete your 5 short poems with ordinary things as their subject. Choose items from the list you created from last class, or from your observations now, or from your journal.

Form and structure (line, sound, tone, diction, etc.) is up to you. Write each poem in the same file. Call these drafts ORDINARY THINGS

We will write for 20 minutes to get these 5 drafts completed before we move to our next activity.

During the second part of our class, we will be going next door to read some poetry (see post above regarding Lucille Clifton)

Your portfolios will be due Oct. 11. More information about this will be forthcoming. There will also be a unit test on poetry around that time as well. More on that later.