Faults of the Soul: Part 1

Sentimentality: false emotion through cheating or exaggeration.

• Who is this character that we are to care for?
• Appealing to stock (cliche) responses
• Of course we all feel bad about those victims of 9/11. Does that mean we have to like those people who died or survived? Your job is to make us trust the emotions we have towards those characters.
• Too many ...breathless...sentences. And. Too many short paragraphs kills us.

Action and Dialogue are your BFFs

• Focus on the life lived, and insert details in the action, as opposed to over-telling a character's life. 

Defy Expectations to Defy Circumstantial Cliché

Writing Exercise:

·     We may have a story that is structured well, but we may also bore our readers with a lack of surprise. We can call this plot cliché, or circumstantial cliché (one of other writing clichés discussed in Writer's Digest).

·      First, look at these examples and think about:  1. What is generally expected from this character type and/or from this scenario?  2. How may I use the situation or setting to discuss a different conflict between characters than what might be expectedly going on in the larger setting amongst all characters?

o   Ex.: If your story takes place at a funeral, make the story less about the dead person or how people are sad for their loss, etc., Instead, what are some surprising things that one can imagine (or have experienced) that have gone on at funeral?

o   Ex.: You have a story revolving around the head cheerleader and the start quarterback of the high school (or college) football team. What is the easy, stereotype of their relationship? How might you take the story in some less expected directions? 

§  For example, on my example: maybe the QB is more interested in history classes than he is sex or beer or abuse! 

HW for 4/16

Read Bobby Ann Mason's "Shiloh."

• Look at Mason's first line.
• Look at her use of the place as a metaphor
• Look at her prose. What do you think of her sense of pacing this story?

Needless Explanation

Why put in the exposition what can be accomplished in a scene--in action or in dialogue?


Writing exercise:

• Try to build a scene in which this detail is uncovered within the dialogue or the action, and not through the narrator's own exposition. Even if you use first person, think about where the details can be placed within the scene:

• Your character has an eating disorder.
• Your character's disorder stems from issues with a parent or sibling
• Your character loves Fritos.

Three Syntactic Slots: Crafting a sentence

Subject + verb + object. 

• The key to not overwriting a sentence--to not fall in love with the language so much the sentence loses meaning--is to give and take, pick and choose, where you modify the sentence. As Gardner writes, "the writer cannot cram all three syntactic slots with details." Now, that sounds like a rule! Faulkner might disagree, as we see in the opening line of Absalom, Absalom.

Writing Exercise

• Take the following sentence and try and write the action differently by filling in different syntactical slots.
• We want three different sentences, altogether, showing different modifier choices.

Basic Sentence:    Jamie sat down at the park.

Homework for 4/14

Read chapter 5: "Common Errors" in The Art of Fiction.

Work on your second short story, and be ready to discuss your story's  plot.

30-minute Fiction

Review the handout, and then use the template to move through a story. Perhaps this will become the first draft of your second short story, or perhaps it will be only a good exercise to practice pacing. Either way, the technique is helpful.