Homework for 4/9

We will discuss "How do writers create suspense?" by discussing two short stories famous for their suspense and their ends:

1. Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

2. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart" 

For each story, I want you to record three (3) main points about how each author created suspense using foreshadowing techniques and the chosen point of view.

Description & Exposition

•       Sensory language:  try to provide details that use each of the five senses

•       Images that give tone/atmosphere to plot action

o   Brief exercise:  Describe all of the things a character would see inside a room that would scare them

•       Use the setting to symbolize/represent – “Hills Like White Elephants”

•       Contextualize the scene with need to know information, and save other details for later on, closer to when the background information is important to a scene.

•       Diagram a story for when the author presents information; how long do they withhold information, and what do they “do” with that information in the ensuing scenes?

o   Integrate a detail into the plot by having the character do something that uses the information.

Writing Exercise – Easy Symbols

• Re-cast a Biblical ||religious story  (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+19&version=NIV)

Other ways to create verisimilitude with symbol

• Humanize Aesop’s Fables or modernize a Grimm’s Fairytale

• Pick a popular social issue and have the central character’s job related to the issue (climatologist and global warming; 16-year-old drug-lord’s assassin for cartel being busted…)

• The Absurd: Have an inanimate object take on the alternate character commonly associated with object (pacifist knife; a kitchen table with a weak back, an undertaker who finds the dead to be icky…).

Restraint in Fiction: Stories for Monday, 4/7

Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage was the 2009 National Book Award winner. The collection supports the lesson that a writer can imaginatively explore contemporary life with restraint.

Restraint in plot is important. You do not want to overstretch the action happening in your story, especially if you are not writing with a fantasy, sci-fi, magical realist slant. 

I'd like you to read "The Trespasser" from Campbell's collection to discuss next class. 

I'd also like you to read Junot Diaz' "Alma," which gives you a larger view of today's literary landscape. Diaz writing style is, to say the least, less restrained than Campbell's in many ways. Here, we see contradiction. Contradiction for the writer is necessary. Despite the unrestrained dialogue and exposition for which Diaz is becoming more infamous, the plot of "Alma" is quite basic.


Additionally, read chapter 4 in The Art of Fiction.

Symbols and Themes as Techniques

• Symbol – person, place or thing in a story that represents an abstract idea or concept (flower=virtue; bald eagle=America) à preferably (skillfully) the symbols in your work will reinforce the story’s main theme, and be able to be understood as representing what you intend in a non-grotesque way!

• Allusion – phrase or figure of speech that references a specific piece of art, literary piece, cultural reference (including events, pop cult), and myths (le royale with cheese – alludes to Pulp Fiction; the British Invasion and mop heads à the Beatles)

• Allegories – extended metaphor in which you can see the characters and the action of a story as having dual meaning that refers to and relies on an outside person/story (often religious, moral, political, social)à the literal meaning within the story and the referenced person/story à  Example: a character may have the characterization and actions that refer to Jesus Christ. Or, a story may have a plot that reminds people of a famous political scandal, like Watergate or JFK’s affair with MM!

· 

“Rules” For Creating a Believable Fictional World

1.     Consistent Behavior of Characters

• Foreshadowing: add detail in plot that suggests change in character is likely à scatter appropriately in right parts of exposition and dialogue

2.     Avoid “The Easy Fix” | Avoid Surprising Plot Elements

•  “out of nowhere” is no good à ex. Killing a character off with a “twist”

3.     Foreshadow Your Props in Plot

4.     Accurately Portray the Outside Reality

• Check your facts (this cannot be emphasized enough with reality-based fiction). The Atlantic Ocean is always on the East Coast of the United States.

• Experienced Readers v. Care-free readers – ALWAYS side with experience

5.     Pay Attention to Cause & Effect Relationships Between Characters and Environment

6.     NO Coincidences

Point of View Techniques

Creating a Narrator through Point of View

·      First Person – limits story to the narrator’s mind and ears! (I/me/mine/my)

·      Second Person – rarely used, difficult to stay in the “you” mode. Narrator is making the reader participate in story by telling them what they are doing and thinking, etc. (You, your)

o   Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City

§  “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already.

·      Third Person Limited – narrator knows only the thoughts and feelings of one character in the story, but is structured “He/she/they/their”

·      Third Person Omniscient – narrator can access everything about characters (He/she/they/their)

POV Exercise: write the same scene from different distances (points of view).

·       You must consider with each distance: What can be known? What details would narrator focus on? How much dialogue; exposition; internal versus external thought?

The Plot: a guy and a girl are in a canoe in the middle of a lake.

o   Try First Person – choose one of the characters and write from their POV (I)

o   Then, try Second Person – focus on same character!

o   Then, try Third Person Limited – again, focus on the same character you did with 1^st person so that you can show how the information differs

• Then, 3^rd person omniscient – finally(!), you get to be the God Narrator and get in both characters’ minds