Ideas about Revision/Workshopping

FURIOUSLY IS THE ONLY WAY ONE CAN EVER DRINK TURNIP SOUP: A terrible story to revise.

FURIOUSLY IS THE ONLY WAY ONE CAN EVER DRINK TURNIP SOUP


He was 175cm tall and was wearing a blue jacket, red slacks, white gloves, a white shirt, a black tie with white spots and a hat. He weighted about 200 lbs. He was Scottish. His parents were tremendously wealthy and his mother was descended from a Scottish Queen but had lived in Norway since early childhood. In his wallet, he had a credit card, a driver’s license from Manitoba, and $46—two twenties, one five, three quarters, two dimes and a nickel. Outside the weather was cold. How cold? It was cold enough to freeze the monkeys off a goose. It was snowing and outside large slow flakes swirled about the sky and then gradually slammed onto the ground. It was 2018 and the world was continuing as usual, each of us with our small and petty problems, though some of us with quite big problems and the world itself a mess with war, climate change and many social issues unresolved.

“I’m not feeling happy,” he said. “I’m quite sad. My girlfriend hasn’t phoned me in ages.”

Brinnng! Brrrring! His cellphone buzzed ironically. The sound was off.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” a voice on the other end said.

“Who is this?” he asked timidly.

“It’s your girlfriend,” the voice said, surprised.

“Who?” he questioned.

“Gladys,” she said. 

“Oh. Gladys,” he responded. “My girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Gladys said.

"Oh," he said. "Gladys. Hello."

He asked her where she was. She wouldn’t tell him. “Are you at a party?” he asked. “Maybe with my best friend?” His best friend was called Charlie. Charlie was a research scientist who worked at the university and explored the connection between the use of fossil fuels and the rise in water temperature in the world’s oceans. “It’s bad,” Charlie would say. “I think we’re doomed.”

“Doomed?” he’d ask.

“Yes,” Charlie would say. “I’m a scientist. I know. Also…”
“What, Charlie,” he’d ask.

“I’m in love with your girlfriend,” Charlie said sheepishly.

“Oh,” he replied. “Really?”

“Yes,” Charlie asserted.
“Oh no,” he answered perturbedly. 

Charlie was 5'8" and weighted 175 lbs. He lived in on the third floor of a modestly priced apartment near the river. Sometimes, large boats floated down the river and in the night blew their horn which made a sad sound that made Charlie sad when he thought about his mother and father who had died as well as his brother and his dog, Sniffer. 

But back to the phonecall and the falling snow. His girlfriend Gladys told him she was in Fiji, a small and beautiful island in the South Pacific. She had left everything to be with the flowers. She was a painter and wanted to paint. She liked to paint bright canvasses filled with bright flowers. “Flowers,” she said. “Their delicate petals represent the fragility of the human heart, the contingent experience of being mortal here on this fragile blue marble floating in an infinite unknowable universe the purpose of which we cannot know unless we believe there is a God who guides us, who guides what happens in this infinitude of space, who makes the material as well as the spiritual discernable to us, we poor souls who live on the surface, on the lakes, fields, valley and mountains of this earth. Oh, flowers,” she exclaimed. “I am only in love with you and the fragrant delicate nighttime air of this Fiji. What a wonder it is to be alive. Also, to be far away from Charlie and my boyfriend, also.”

She took a large ladle and helped herself to a large bowl of turnip soup which she drank furiously in view of the ocean and its slapping waves. And also shared with her dog who she loved more than life itself. Then she carefully wiped her mouth with a napkin made of woven treebark and turned to her easel where she was painting a painting of a flower. “Oh, flowers,” 
she said. “I think I will live forever.”

*

NNNNNNNNNNNNOTETAKERS NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDED

The Werewolf by Angela Carter

“The Werewolf,” a short story by Angela Carter (collected in The Bloody Chamber and Burning Your Boats):

It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts.Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, brief, poor lives.To these upland woodsmen, the Devil is as reals as you or I. More so; they have not seen us nor even know that we exist, but the Devil they glimpse often in the graveyards, those bleak and touching townships of the dead where the graves are marked with portraits of the deceased in the naif style and there are no flowers to put in front of them, no flowers grow there, so they put out small votive offerings, little loaves, sometimes a cake that the bears come lumbering from the margins of the forests to snatch away. At midnight, especially on Walpurgisnacht, the Devil holds picnics in the graveyards and invites the witches; then they dig up fresh corpses, and eat them. Anyone will tell you that.Wreaths of garlic on the doors keep out the vampires. A blue-eyed child born feet first on the night of St. John’s Eve will have second sight. When they discover a witch – some old woman whose cheeses ripen when her neighbours’ do not, another old woman whose black cat, oh, sinister! follows her about all the time, they strip the crone, search for her marks, for the supernumerary nipple her familiar sucks. They soon find it. Then they stone her to death.

Winter and cold weather.

Go and visit grandmother, who has been sick. Take her the oatcakes I’ve baked for her on the hearthstone and a little pot of butter.

The good child does as her mother bids – five miles’ trudge through the forest; do not leave the path because of the bears, the wild boar, the starving wolves. Here, take your father’s hunting knife; you know how to use it.

The child had a scabbby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she knew the forest too well to fear it but she must always be on her guard. When she heard that freezing howl of a wolf, she dropped her gifts, seized her knife, and turned on the beast.

It was a huge one, with red eyes and running, grizzled chops; any but a mountaineer’s child would have died of fright at the sight of it. It went for her throat, as wolves do, but she made a great swipe at it with her father’s knife and slashed off its right forepaw.

The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem. It went lolloping off disconsolately between the trees as well as it could on three legs, leaving a trail of blood behind it. The child wiped the blade of her knife clean on her apron, wrapped up the wolf’s paw in the cloth in which her mother had packed the oatcakes and went on towards her grandmother’s house. Soon it came on to snow so thickly that the path and any footsteps, track or spoor that might have been upon it were obscured.

She found her grandmother was so sick she had taken to her bed and fallen into a fretful sleep, moaning and shaking so that the child guessed she had a fever. She felt the forehead, it burned. She shook out the cloth from her basket, to use it to make the old woman a cold compress, and the wolf’s paw fell to the floor.

But it was no longer a wolf’s paw. It was a hand, chopped off at the wrist, a hand toughened with work and freckled with old age. There was a wedding ring on the third finger and a wart in the index finger. By the wart, she knew it for her grandmother’s hand.

She pulled back the sheet but the old woman woke up, at that, and began to struggle, squawking and shrieking like a thing possessed. But the child was strong, and armed with her father’s hunting knife; she managed to hold her grandmother down long enough to see the cause of her fever. There was a bloody stump where her right hand should have been, festering already.

The child crossed herself and cried out so loud the neighbours heard her and come rushing in. They know the wart on the hand at once for a witch’s nipple; they drove the old woman, in her shift as she was, out into the snow with sticks, beating her old carcass as far as the edge of the forest, and pelted her with stones until she fell dead.

Now the child lived in her grandmother’s house; she prospered.

Billy Bragg: Song of the Iceberg 

The True Story of the Big Bad Wolf


Note:
The change in tone or register Using more literary language (Carter) or modern slang (Scieszka) which is different than the usual "Once upon a time" folk talk diction. How is the different character's experience reflected in their language?

The change from a stereotype or stock character into a surprising different character. What additional details does this bring to the story? What new ideas, motivations, thoughts, experiences does this bring to the story?

The change from their point of view/perspective, taking familiar events and recontextualizing them. What new events does this bring into the story? What does it leave out? What would the POV character notice? What would they not notice? What is important to them and how do they understand things different than the source story POV?

Change from third (objective w/aspects of limited) to first person (Scieszka.) What does "getting inside the character's" head bring to the story? How does this affect all of the above? What does it allow you to do as a writer?

Two images to write about

Write from perspective of two characters with different perspectives on a situation.

1. Use images above.

2. Take two characters from the "Little Red Riding Hood" story.

wolf, grandma, Red Riding Hood, Brothers Grimm, ax, woodman.

What do they know? How do they feel? What is their perspective on the events.

Write from a key moment in the story. Or from after the story. Or…?

You could also update the story and set the Little Red Riding Hood story in the modern world and have the characters be realistic humans (e.g. the Big Bad Wolf is actually a human predator, conniver, etc.)

*
Negative Capability

"I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man [sic] is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason..." 

—John Keats

Portrait for Writing

http://www.bjp-online.com/2018/03/when-shooting-portraits-i-often-feel-awkward-and-i-invite-that-awkwardness-to-begin-with-harry-flook-on-creating-a-compelling-portrait/

Dragons

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

― Neil Gaiman, Coraline (adapted from G.K. Chesterton)

Perspective and Time in Fiction: Class 5

Lydia Davis: Five Stories.

http://www.conjunctions.com/print/article/lydia-davis-c24

Lydia Davis,
“What She Knew”

“People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a young woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?”

*

Third Person Perspective

Control and power: the 3rd person narrator can control and manipulate his/her characters at will, shaping the story

• Access: can access the mind and feelings of a character, even the feelings that the character will not admit to herself
• Insight: can offer wisdom and truth to the situation, showing us why people act the way they do, even if they don’t know it themselves
• Analysis: can reflect on the larger meaning of a situation, or draw parallels between two different situations that the characters can’t see
• Beauty: can describe, build worlds, paint pictures, show action clearly
  
  Downsides of Third Person
  
  Overanalysis: the temptation is to over-explain, over-analyze, telling the reader too much about what something means, what a character is feeling, or why we should care
• Neutrality: the default mode of narration is 3rd person, and it can feel empty and devoid of personality — why is this narrator telling us this story?
• Manipulation: the power the 3rd person narrator has to leave or join a scene can feel manipulative and artificial
  
  Types of Third Person
  
  Dramatic objective - no access
• 3rd person omniscient - all access
• 3rd person limited - limited access (to one person)
• 3rd person roving limited - limited access to one person at a time
  
  How much distance do you want to have between the narrator and the character?
• How much access do you want to have to your character’s mind?
• How much insight do you want into your character and the world s/he inhabits?
• How filtered do you want your narration to be through the character’s eyes?
• What format are you choosing to tell the story within?
  
  Revealing Character
  
  The more distant your narrator is from your characters, the more you must use showing to reveal the character’s inner self
• Use details, props, actions, and direct dialogue to reveal the character
• Dramatic irony: when the reader knows what the character doesn’t
  
  Showing not Telling Exercises
  
  
• He was a cowardly person.
• She was nervous about giving the class presentation.
• She ate lunch with her mother. She didn’t like her mother very much.
• She thought the guy sitting across from her on the bus was very attractive and she wished he would ask her out.
• The boss was hated by his employees.
• The little boy didn’t want his parents to leave on their night out.
• She really only went to the mall with the girls from her school because she wanted to impress them, but they were always mean to her.
  
  
  

Writing Activity


Consider the image. Using eyes. Or other means.


What happened either right before or right after the moment of the image? 

What is the person thinking about?



1. Write paragraph or so in first person. What is the character thinking & feeling?

2. Describe the event with a traditionally insightful narrator (i.e. with access to their feelings.)

3. Now describe the same event entirely in the dramatic objective (i.e. without access to the feelings of the character. Show not tell?

• 
  

Frank Stanford: Don't want them to forget if it was bad.

Perspective and Time in Fiction: Class 4. First Person continued.

READING: Bouncing by Stuart Ross.

What is the relationship between the narrator and the story or events? 

What is relationship between the narrator and the people described? 

How much does the narrator know? What is (or is not) reflected in the telling?

What do they explicitly say vs. what is implied.

*

First person:

protagonist, 

witness (eg. Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes, Nick in The Great Gatsby) 

can be part of the story (like examples above) or describes story that happened to someone else or that they are only on the margins

reteller (“I” narrates a story told by someone else)

The narrator could be telling the story in a variety of ways:

1. thinking it, reliving it in memory, reflecting

2. writing it in a private journal or diary as read by no-one else or 
      else intended for someone else (eg. a report – cf Captain’s Log        in Star Trek)

      (e.g. Book of Negroes)

3. self-consciously creating a literary structure for a future reader–         the narrator is aware of this.

4. speaking the story aloud

5. recording the story as it happens

How much time has elapsed? Does the narrator know what has happened since the event and the telling?

How different is s/he now? What’s happened since?

What’s his/her attitude toward his/her former self?

To what extent is s/he still emotionally involved?

To what extent does the story’s tension arise out of different between difference between charater’s attitude and remembering narrator?

How much can the narrator be trusted? Vested interest? Bias? Education/lack of perspective? 

1. Write.  Person is dying in their bed. They have a secret/confession/hidden knowledge to impart. It could be something they were involved in directly or tangentially, or something they heard or knew, something someone else told them. Something they know.
2. Write. Spirit animal: what animal would they want to come back as?  If they came back a second time? Why? Now write their story. Begin with “This is my story.” (cf. Sheila Heti, My Life is a Joke)

Perspective and Time in Fiction: Class 3: Joe Brainard: I remember; George Saunders: On Story

I Remember is a masterpiece. One by one, the so-called important books of our time will be forgotten, but Joe Brainard's modest little gem will endure. In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, he charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world. I Remember is both uproariously funny and deeply moving. It is also one of the few totally original books I have ever read.--Paul Auster

http://anaphoric.blogspot.com/2011/05/excerpt-from-joe-brainards-i-remember.html

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/russ-wade-1/i-remember-excerpt-july-70#t=1:00


*

George Saunders: On Story

Perspective and Time in Fiction, Class 2 -- Donald Trump

Excerpt from phone interview between journalist, Bob Woodward & Donald Trump





Trump: But all I can say is the country is doing very well. We’re doing better economically just about than at any time. We’re doing better on unemployment maybe than ever. You know, I mean, if you look at the unemployment numbers, you’ve heard me say it. And we’re doing better on unemployment than just about ever. We’re having a lot of — a lot of companies are moving back into our country, which would’ve been unheard of two years ago. If the other administration or representatives of it had kept going, had kept — you know, if the other group had won, I will tell you, that you would have, I think you’d have a GDP of less than zero. I think we would’ve been going in the wrong direction. Because regulations are such a big part of what we’ve done, Bob.


Trump: I mean, you do know I’m doing a great job for the country. You do know that NATO now is going to pay billions and billions of dollars more, as an example, than anybody thought possible, that other presidents were unable to get more? And it was heading downward. You do know all of the things I’ve done and things that I’m doing? I’m in the process of making some of the greatest trade deals ever to be made. You do understand that stuff? I mean, I hope.


Trump: Well, you know last year, if you see the secretary, [Jens] Stoltenberg, he said I believe $44 billion just last year, and that was from last year’s meeting. And this year it’s much more money they’ve agreed to put up. So it’s a tremendous amount of money. No other president has done it. It was heading down in the opposite direction. So I don’t know if you’re going to report it that way; probably not. But that’s too bad, but that’s all right, but you know, one of those things.


Trump: It doesn’t matter. Let me tell you what matters: The economy is the best it’s been in many, many decades. And it’s going to get a lot better. And the country is doing very well. That’s what’s important.


Trump: Yeah, okay. Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you. So that’s . . . And that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years. But a lot of people feel that, Bob.

BW: I believe in our country, and because you’re our president, I wish you good luck.

Trump: Okay. Thank you very much, Bob. I appreciate it. Bye.

Perspectives & Time in Fiction. Class 2--First Person.

David Mitchell, Bone Clocks

Charles Portis, True Grit

Mona Awad, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day