Sample first person voices

1. Charles Portis, True Grit
2. Paul Beatty, The Sellout
3. Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Final class: some thoughts and writing activities

SINGLE LINES

When I am ruler of the world…

GROUP WRITING:

Two people write approximately five lines about two characters (from character list)

These two people join together with other two other people. They combine their lines using a transition. Adjust the paragraphs to fit.

Then these four people find four others and repeat.

Then read.

Some transitions:

At the same time

Across the city, province, country, galaxy

On the other side of the desert, city, universe, house, room, coffeeshop, forest

For two weeks

Meanwhile
Afterwards
Previously (unknown to them)

They didn’t know that

At night

For months they did not visit, see, plan, etc.

In the morning, the next morning, one morning years from then

After lunch

The next day

Later that evening

When the sun sank

The following Tuesday, the following century

The previous day, week, year, century, millenium, world

A week later

Months passed

At the appointed time

The next time they met

When they arrived home

As they approached

In the year 2004

It took a month, but

On the first sunny day

Later

*

WRITE TO THE END

Write the scene that goes before one of these:

"Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.”

"Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this."

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing 

could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it."

"After all, tomorrow is another day.”

‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

"He turned out the light and went into his/her room. (S)he would be there all night, and (s)he would be there when (s)he waked up in the morning.

"The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.”

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

"The old man was dreaming about the lions.”

"Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. She was both.”

"In the meantime, she would just live.”

"It's funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever."

(https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/the-best-100-closing-lines-from-books/123681)
*
WRITE DIALOGUE

In a group of 1-3, write some dialogue--a conversation between the group. Each person take one voice.

*

SHEILA HETI's flip a coin exercise.

Ask questions of yourself about your writing project and flip a coin to find out the answer. 

Adapted:  Ask questions about a character/story

You can flip the coin after each question and then determine the next question or just make a list of questions and then flip.

Did John love Jane?

Did Jane love John?

Is the world going to end?
Before they meet?

*

What now?

Sources of inspiration. Ekphrastic writing, phrases, characters, settings, notebooks, constraint, what if, something you know that others don't...

Sheila Heti's writing project: listening.

Creating projects for yourself 

Finding writing groups or starting one

Your own voice.

Writing for different ages.

Publishing follow-up.

Using other media.
Video stories: stories with music.

Publishing and also: the Small Press

On publishing



Chapbooks and other small presseries:

Instagram Story

Every night at 5, George left his job at the technology park and headed to his car. He would walk across the parking lot to section C2 which was designated for employees in his tier. When he had started, back in the late 80’s, he had been division H. A lot had changed since then. Back then he was still living with his parents and borrowing his mom’s car to get to work. Now he drives a 2012 Lincoln, almost paid off, and owns a small home in Wolcott. A neighborhood just west of the city. He’s worked hard to forge a decent salary. He was never late and never left early. Rarely had he used all his vacation days. He didn’t really know what to do with them. There had been no girlfriends. A few dates with girls from work had only amounted to unreturned phone calls and awkward lunch breaks. George was alone. In fact he was lonely. His mother was worried about him. This irritated him. Last month while driving home from Latham, he’d pulled over at a diner off Route 90. He had to pee. He felt awkward just walking in and using the restroom and so he ordered a coffee and sat at a table by the window near his parked car. The waitress had been friendly. Her name tag read: Ashley. Ashley had strawberry blonde hair and freckles and made George awkward when she said ‘A big, strong man like you needs somethin’ more than coffee’. In fact George wasn’t a big strong man at all. He was self conscious of his small frame. Even his hands were small and he quickly put them under the table during this exchange. He ordered a grilled cheese and thought about how he’d be home late for the start of Jeopardy. He finished his sandwich in a hurry and blushed when the waitress asked his name and laid his check on the table. He’d studied her long fingers, tipped with bright red polish. He began to take his meals at the diner every night. Driving in the opposite direction of his home, and onto route 90. This cost him 45 cents in tolls in either direction. He’d keep exact change to quickly hand the woman in the booth.

One night, after a month or so, Ashley joked “the food here’s not that good George. You sweet on me sugar?” He’d turned the shade of her nails and she’d laughed “This one’s sweet on me Janice” she called over to her co-worker. Then the two of them laughed and so did a few costumers. George left 20 whole dollars on the table and slipped out when she’d gone in the kitchen. On his way home he stopped at the toll booth. He stayed stopped like that. Minutes began to tic by in the red glow of the stop light. The barrier arm remained down. The line of cars behind him began to honk. He’d run out of change. George takes his meals at home again now. On a tv table while sitting on the couch. In front of Jeopardy. He didn’t used to drink beer but now he does. And sometimes when he stands up and heads for the fridge and asks her if she wants a refill, she’ll raise her legs straight out, blocking the path between the couch and the coffee table and say, “That’ll be 45 cents please”.



* * *
Aase Berg: In the Guinea Pig Cave

https://greenlanternpress.wordpress.com/tag/in-the-guinea-pig-cave/?fbclid=IwAR26M6td4SFaLK-xzLMN-2FMVVV71RASPYJHE0UDt04izmQ6bmdmzhXR78E

* * *
Leslie Vryenhoek: Under the Surface

Like a Pancake out of Hell, it was Silent as a Bull in a Haystack.

1. Update on due dates for portfolio

2. Christopher Dewdney: Dialectic Criminal (On the use of clichés)

‘Good as gold’ – connections between value and wealth
I was feeling good. It was like finding your favourite desert, the finest variety, in the yellow-stickered reduced section. 

‘As hard to find as a needle in a haystack’-- connections of difficulty in finding a minority in a majority

I couldn’t see it. It was as if I was lost and looking for my mother in a crowd where everyone wore the same cardigan and jeans. They all walked with the same concerned expression on their faces, yet none of them are ever her.

‘Flat as a pancake’ – connection with flatness
It was as flat as freshly wet sand. There is the impression that there were once sculptures there, before the tide. But now there is nothing. Just the sand.

‘Hard as nails’ – connection with solidness, toughness and immovability
He stared me down and did not move. It was as if he had become a brick wall, and with every word I spoke he became two times thicker and twice the height. There was no getting past him.

‘Faster than a bat out of hell’ – connection with recklessness and speed
He ran. He darted down alleyways like street mice run through gutters and drains, dodging raindrops as they go.

‘Meek as a lamb’ – connections with being gentle, docile and innocent
She sat trying to look innocent. She thought only of a single goldfish in its bowl, swimming meekly in circles, quietly and unsuspicious.

‘Charging around like a bull in a china shop’ – connection with clumsiness
Like a sightless sheepdog, confused in the dark, the boy ran onto the playground falling into the other children around him.

‘Silent as the grave’ – connection with unnerving noises
The room was quiet. It was as if every worker had been silenced by a bad punch-line, all of them too ashamed to acknowledge that the joke had ever been told.

(see https://ashhartridgeonline.wordpress.com/2013/09/08/writing-exercise-10-rewriting-cliches/)

INTERESTING COMPARISONS

She had a smile like a broken deckchair.

He had the personality of the common cold.

 He danced like a lawnmower.

It was quiet as stone.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. — The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood 

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make? — Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison 

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. ― The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter 

 3. Dialogue conventions:
https://firstmanuscript.com/format-dialogue/


4. STORY IN A BAG (part 1)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/68ww3ktz4328k9w/short%20story%20in%20a%20bag.key?dl=0

Time, the afterlife, the future, spooneristic spacetime manipulation

bpNichol: Fictive Funnies

Spacetime Trousers

1. Sheila Heti: "My Life is a Joke."





2. David Byrne: In the Future

Writing: Write "In the future..." piece after Byrne.




3. Steve Venright: Manta Ray Jack and the Crew of Spooner

How does the structure of this text (i.e. spoonerisms) subvert the linear flow of the narrative, insisting that time (and reading) cannot proceed in a straightforward line? How this also affect the construction of meaning?

Calvino: Cities and Memory 1 & 2

Cities and Memory 1.

Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows every morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time.

Cities and Memory 2.

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.