AUGUST - Historical Fiction Writing!

Historical Fiction dramatizes the past. This genre brings emotions to history, showing what it was like to live during another era. Working in this genre, a writer chooses a time and place they find interesting when stakes are high. People have been enslaved, unable to own land, marry who they want, or vote. There have been religious divisions, political unrest, movements, revolutions, plagues, and economic catastrophes. Stories from the past are worth telling, so we can remember the human side of history and learn from it.

Here is an example:

Jazz drifted from the ballroom's windows to the lawn where Eleanor stood smoking in her borrowed dress. The newly lit street lamps flickered. The night was brighter on Long Island than in Washington Heights where she lived. Another song ended, and the guests sipped their bootleg cocktails. Eleanor didn’t know how much longer the band would play, but she wasn’t here for the music. She was here to convince the man in the purple suit at the end of the bar to bring her home with him, but she didn’t want to appear eager. He had already confirmed that his wife was out of town, and Eleanor had flirted enough to make him think she was interested. The man in the purple suit worked at the heart of the illegal liquor trade, and she had a proposition for him. It just wasn’t the proposition he was expecting.

PROMPT:
• Think about a time in history that interests you or that you've researched for other projects.
• Consider the specific problems and conflicts of this time.
• What type of person would struggle the most? Cast them as your protagonist.

Write a scene where this character wants something beyond what is possible for their class, race, sexual identity, or gender, and have them try for it anyway. 

OR - you can write your own project for the month and bring in up to 10 pages to share,

JULY - Summer Horrors!

 JULY - Summer Horrors!

Horror explores the darkest, most vulnerable corners of human psychology. It exposes our primal or irrational fears, like a murderous clown in the closet or someone hiding with a knife in the shower. There might be blood, guts, and violence, or a simmering psychological terror. The antagonist in Horror could be a deranged killer, a monster from another world, or the protagonist’s own dark side. Here is an example: The sound came first – a light tapping at the window like a branch jolted by wind. Emily sat up in bed. She had almost fallen asleep. It was an overreaction, she thought, and set her head back on the pillow. But as her eyes closed, the tapping returned. This time, each tap was followed by a scratch. Emily threw herself from the bed and pulled up the shade. A hand with impossibly long fingers was scratching at the glass, its thin joints bending in the wrong direction. Emily screamed as the hand smashed the window. The fingers came straight for her throat, squeezing and lifting her with uncanny strength. Well-known books in this genre include The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, It by Stephen King, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and Dracula by Bram Stoker. PROMPT: • What is your most irrational fear? Describe that fear coming to life for a character who is like you. Let it be bad. Let it be gross. Incorporate as much gore as you can stomach.

June - Anything Goes!

 JUNE - Anything Goes!~

Dystopian Fiction presents a grim vision of the near future if alternative societal structures came to be. What makes this genre unsettling is that it feels like it could happen if just a few things were different or if certain people gained more power. Most of the time, Dystopian Fiction is set in the world we know with a slightly imagined twist. The writing is dark and cautionary, serving as a warning of what might happen if political power goes unchecked, if citizens are monitored, if inequity is forced between social classes or genders, if the environment is neglected, or if technology dominates humans.

PROMPT:
• Think of something that bothers you politically or socially.
• What would make it worse?
• What could happen if social structures shifted or if certain people
received more power?
• Who in power would be dangerous with more control?

Write a doctrine (a codification of beliefs) for this near world from the point
of view of the people in power. Include at least three principles that everyone must live by.

Besides this prompt - write anything you want - work on your novel, short story, essay, theme, play, poem, libretto or anything else.

We will meet on June 29 at the library -send me 10 pages max for us to read.

Thanks!

MAY Vonnegut

 MAY - KURT VONNEGUT

Born November 1, 1922, Died April 11, 2007. Counter Culture, Satire, Sci fi.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the great postwar American writers, best known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. With a uniquely unconventional style, he blends fiction, commentary and autobiography. Raised  in the Great Depression, Vonnegut was taken out of private school after his father's business collapsed and his mother became alcoholic and drug addicted. He graduated high school and studied bio chemistry at Cornell University. He was captured at the Battle of the Bulge during WW2 and was held captive in a prisoner of war camp. He survived the bombing of Dresden because his captivity was 60 feet below ground in an old slaughterhouse. This experience punctuated much of his work. 

Despite the experimental nature of much of his writing, Vonnegut's sentences always remained straightforward, revealing character or advancing story. His work meshed science fiction and reality, yet was literary, dark and yet funny, classic and yet counter-culture, kind hearted yet detached. In his novels he often used the repetition of a short phrase over and over. This combination of simplicity, irony and rue is very much in the Vonnegut vein.

EXERCISE #028 - Extreme versions of you

Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, allowed him to stretch the dimensions of his own character.

Think about your own characteristics. You have a wealth of elements and quirks that form you own character. Think of one of these elements and take it to an extreme. Create a fictional character based on an extreme version of yourself. Who are they? What is their name? What major characteristics do they have? 

Write a 300 word monologue in the voice of an "extreme version of you", placing them in, or reporting on, an extreme situation. Thinking about yourself, and building fictional characters around elements of your own character, can be a great source of inspiration.

EXERCISE #029 - Dialogue with the future.

In many of his stories, Kurt Vonnegut experiments with structure by using time travel as a plot device. 

Place yourself in one of the years listed below and imagine yourself in a crowd of people, somebody's house, or somewhere else, speaking to somebody.  Write a piece of dialogue.

2100

2500

4000

100,000

EXERCISE #030 - Expanding Dialogue

Rewrite the line of dialogue shown below five times, expanding the level of detail, and perhaps changing the meaning, on each rewrite. After the final rewrite, add a line of dialogue from the other person in response.

"I've never let you down before."

EXERCISE #031 - Word Progression

Starting underneath the word "cardiac arrest", write a continuous list of words, each word an association of the previous one, until you reach the 15 words. Do the same with the other three words:

Mountain

Ballerina

Despair

Then, constuct a sentence, long or short, containing the four words at the end of each list.

APRIL - Iris Murdock

APRIL - MURDOCK

Exercise #024 - The sea, the sea

Note as many adjectives, nouns, and verbs as you can think of associated with the sea.  Then look back at the words and write down any interesting word combinations that you find. This process of word generation can lead to images and ideas that may otherwise remain untapped.

Exercise #025 - Zeugmas

A zeugma is a sentence where multiple shades of meaning in a single word or phrase are used in relation to two other parts of a sentence. 

Example: "He had been married, but his wife had left him childless and long ago..."

"They covered themselves with dust and glory"

"When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes."

Write some sentences incorporating a zeugma. Is it a device that might find a place in your work?

Exercise #026 - Random Place

Find a random proper noun from a newspaper or magazine (scan articles for capital letters).  Use this as an imaginary setting.  What does this place look like, who lives there, and what happens there?

Exercise #027 - "Sunlight...awaits"

Write a short piece, starting with the word "Sunlight" and ending with the word "awaits" and including in the body of your writing the following words:  Fridge magnet, Venerable, Artistic.

MARCH 2026 - BURROUGHS

 WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS - MARCH 2026

EXERCISE #21 - The William S. Burroughs exercise

Record encounters you have during a day (or days) - whether they are on holiday, at work, climbing Mt. Everest - breaking them down Burrough's style. One column will contain simply an account of your trip, what happened, what was said and what you overheard, what other things you did. Next column will present your memories; that is, what you are thinking of at the time, what memories are activated by the encounters. And the third column, the reading column, gives quotations from any book you are currently reading from.  As you collect all aspects of the encounters you will build up plenty of material to work with and they may trigger an idea or turn into a piece of work.

EXERCISE #22 - Cut-ups

Pick a non-fiction book and write down five random sentences from anywhere in the book. Mix them up and splice them together in some way to make a new, coherent paragraph.

EXERCISE #23 - Dialogue Clutter

It is essential to avoid clutter within dialogue. It is equally important for each line of dialogue to push the action forward and/or develop character. Much of what we say in real life would be useless on the page.

Imagine two people bumping into each other and starting a conversation, whether it is in the street, at a wedding, a funeral or wherever. Write dialogue between the two people, avoiding any meaningless clutter.  Think about why their meeting might be less than small talk.

FEBRUARY 2026 - Nabokov

 FEBRUARY 2026 - Nabokov

Prompt #018

    Wordplay

Vladimir Nabokov is known for the playfulness of his language. Nabokov takes words, pulls them apart, twists them, and makes something new. 

Exercise: Describe something in an unusual way by forming an unexpected association.

Prompt #019

    Alliteration

The repetition of sounds in a series of words creates rhythm and the visual similarity of the words affects the focus of the reader. 

Exercise: Write down some words using alliteration. Start off following James Joyce's lead and then continue from there.

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Joyce

soul        swooned        slowly    snow           falling     faintly     faintly       falling

Prompt #020

    Unusual Comparisons

Forming similes by making unusual comparisons can enlighten an image and last in the memory.

Exercise: Write some similes creating an unusual comparison between two things.