NOVEMBER - Magical Realism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 MAGICAL REALISM

This genre of writing uses multiple perspectives, shifting chronologies and stream of consciousness. Marquez used journalistic style mixed with Kafkaesque surrealism in his writing. Using journalistic skills gives believability to a story by describing details and minutiae of a scene while casually introducing elements of fantastic and magic. 

EXERCISE 1 - Making the magical real

Think of a person, animal, or even an object who has a magical ability or who has something magical happen to them. It might be a pig that flies. Write a short piece describing the scene that unfolds. Stay within the realms of reality just enough for the reader to believe it could be true. Ask yourself why those pigs are flying and what occurrence might make a pig actually fly? Keep the language ordinary and give detail to enhance believability.

EXERCISE 2 - Jesus Wept

"Jesus wept." is the shortest sentence in the Bible. A sentence need only consist of a noun and a verb. Create a list of 25 nouns and verbs, ordinary and unusual. Look them over and find 5 different unique combinations to share.

EXERCISE 3 - Word Associations : Cities

This word association exercise is a great way to capture the various key points of a location in a story. They can then be expanded upon when inhabited by your characters.

Write down four words that you associate with each city.

Then think about the location from a different perspective and write down four words that are new and unexpected associations with the city.

Use these cities:

New York

Mexico City

Pittsburgh

Los Angeles

your choice

OCTOBER - Flash Fiction Writing

OCTOBER - Flash Fiction, less than 1000 words.

Exercise: Flash fiction is a very short story, usually under 1,000 words, that captures a single intense moment or feeling. 

Start in the middle: Jump straight into the action (in media res) rather than spending precious words on long introductions or scene-setting. 
Limit your characters: Stick to one or two characters so you don't waste time on physical descriptions or complex backstories. 
Focus on a single moment: Choose one brief interaction, conflict, or central image instead of trying to tell an entire life story. 
Make every word work: Treat each sentence like poetry. Cut out repetitive phrases, filter words, and slow descriptions. 
Use a powerful title: Let your title do the heavy lifting for world-building, time, or place so the story text can stay lean. 
Leave room for the reader: Like an iceberg, flash fiction only shows the tip. Trust your reader to fill in the missing pieces from powerful hints. 
End with impact: Give the final line a resonance that lingers, rather than forcing a cheap or cliché punchline.

Write your October piece using Flash Cricket:

Here is a list of twenty random words. Don’t read them too closely - but cut and paste onto a fresh document, save and close. When you have twenty minutes to spare, make a cuppa or something stronger, and get ready to write. Only when you are ready, open the document, glance at that first word, and start writing, immediately. No planning in advance. And every few sentences, pick up the next word, incorporating that into the flow. Make it happen - make those words fit - it will feel absolutely nuts, but it is only a bit of fun - and you will end up with unplanned, surprising twists and turns, strange connections.

Shadows

Flint

Shimmer

Stealth

Jealousy

Cashew

Priest

Oil

Mother

Steely

Champagne

Bergamot

Wool

Mississippi

Tiger

Keyring

Hamburger

Candlewax

Absolution

Coast

Who knows, maybe a fascinating character will have wandered into the room while you weren’t looking. When you have a first draft, pare it down to 1000 words or less. If you like, do it again and note the differences. 

SEPTEMBER - Romance Writing

 SEPTEMBER - WRITING ROMANCE

This genre focuses on the emotional, romantic relationships between characters. It emphasizes the desire for intimacy and connection. Nearly everything in the story is related to the protagonist finding love in an unexpected but likely place. There is often a struggle between two people that is caused by a misunderstanding, but it gets resolved in the end. Modern Romance stories almost always have a "happily ever after" and are the equivalent of Rom-Com movies. The writing is easy to read and fast-paced.

PROMPT #1:
• Picture someone you had a crush on in the past.
• Why didn’t it become a relationship? If there wasn’t a serious reason or a misunderstanding, make one up.
• Fast forward 20 years. Where are you living? Where are they?

Write a scene where you run into them in an unlikely but probable place. Use sensory details. Incorporate the way your character feels in their body. Focus on the romantic, unresolved feelings between the two characters.


PROMPT #2:
Write a scene where a character is leaving a bad date and meets someone new in a surprising way who gives them hope that their love life might change for the better.

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.