Saturday One-Day Intensive in Sleepy Hollow

Mapping the Plot

Saturday, December 15

12:30 to 4:30

Hudson Valley Writers' Center

Sleepy Hollow, NY

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SIGN UP HERE

On December 15, 2018, I'll be teaching a four-hour intensive called Mapping the Plot. This is a great class to take if you have something written and are ready to look it over with an eye to shaping and structure. We'll discuss topics such as arc, ordering events, and scene construction. These will be explored through in-class exercises, readings, and sharing short samples of work. During the course of the four hours, participants will build a map of their projected plot, on paper, to take home.

Yes, it's four hours . . . THERE WILL BE FOOD AND CAFFEINE and lots of bathroom breaks. We'll be having so much fun with markers, words, and charts that it will go by fast!

SIGN UP HERE

Star Map, Albrecht Durer, 1515

New Class for Yale Writers' Workshop 2019

A new class I'm teaching in June! Excited about this new format, which will allow us to dig deep, really get to know everyone's project, and generate new material too. Announcement from Jotham Burrello/Yale Writers' Workshop:

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YWW News Flash: I’m pleased to announce a New Intensive Workshop for 2019!

Work In Progress Intensive. This unique ten-day workshop is designed for writers working on book-length material: fiction or nonfiction, taught by YWW faculty member Kirsten Bakis. This cohort of just eight writers will meet and write for ten days next June. (Read: you’re in New Haven for both sessions.) This program is open to YWW alumni.


In Session I writers will critique 7000 words from their fellow writers’ manuscripts. Exercises and readings will be assigned prior to arrival.

Session II will be generative, a mini-retreat if you will, with writers developing new material. The cohort will meet to discuss progress, and strategies to completing confident first drafts.

More information in December newsletter. Applications open January 2019.

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For more information or to be updated when applications open, use the CONTACT ME form on the right!

Van Gogh, Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book, 1888

Writing prompt for the day: burnt socks

“You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.”
― Richard Price

Read: Today's reading is the super-short prose poem "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche. It has been included in both poetry and short story anthologies. Whatever you want to call it, it's a masterpiece of compression: of telling a big story in a limited space. Notice how the small, concrete details-- the window gratings, the good wine, the Colonel's response to the parrot saying hello-- tell a larger story.


Write: Set the timer for fifteen minutes. Start with a concrete detail and write your scene from there. This can be the next scene you're planning to work on in your current project.

Or, get one or two details below and build a scene from them. (Random number generator here.)


1. a necklace lying in the dirt

2. a reflection in broken glass

3. a stain

4. a cracked egg

5. a spilled salt shaker

6. an open book

7. a ship in a bottle

8. a door standing ajar

9. a burnt match

10. a dripping faucet

11. a dead moth

12. a bouquet of roses

13. footprints in snow

14. a cloud of smoke

15. an iron frying pan

16. the remnants of a campfire

17. half a cake

18. knitting needles on a table

19. a half-melted ice cube

20. a "World's Best Dad" mug

21. a very neatly made bed

Prompt for the day: Surprise

Read: “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry; “The Flowers” by Alice Walker

Optional commentary: O. Henry is famous for his twist endings, much emulated to the dismay of college writing teachers everywhere, because beginning writers think a twist ending means throwing a random monkey wrench into the story in the last paragraph. The key to a good twist ending (or mystery) is that when you go back and read the story again, you see the clues were in plan sight all along. Read the O. Henry story again after you find out what the ending is. Do you agree the clues are there?  

Do you think the same is true of the Alice Walker story: are the clues to the ending there all along? Are they present in the same way that the O. Henry clues are? 

In my Wednesday class, one student talked about how when she teaches literature, she talks about the "internal story" vs the "external story"-- basically, what is contained in the story on the page (internal) vs what context it comes from in terms of culture, the writer's place in the culture, etc. (external). Do you think both of these are at play in Walker story? 

How do you write this type of story or passage, with a surprise or a twist at the end? I'm sure there are as many ways as there are writers, but two possibilities are: 1) you can come up with the ending first and plant the clues as you go or 2) write something, see where it takes you, and then go back and plant the clues when you revise. (I would be a #2 type of writer.) 

Write: For some reason, this exercise often brings me to a surprising place in the space of fifteen minutes. Try it!

Prompt for the day: The "I Want" Song

It's not really that there is a "formula" for these things, but I have learned over the years that pretty much any successful musical you can name has an "I Want" song for its main character within the first fifteen or so minutes of the show. 

--Stephen Schwartz

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If your main character sang an "I Want" song, what would it sound like? Set the timer for 15 minutes and write one in any form: dialogue, a daydream, a stream-of-consciousness passage. . .

Writing prompt for the day: Morally questionable

Read

 "My First Goose" by Isaac Babel


Write

Set the timer for fifteen minutes. Show your main character doing something morally questionable.

Prompt for the day: Question and answer

Read 

This is the same great story from a couple of days ago, looked at from another angle.

"Lather and Nothing Else" by Hernando Tellez (very short)

Here's an example of one of the most simple kinds of plot. A question is posed in the beginning and not answered until the end. That's all it takes to pull us through and make the narrative feel like it has forward motion.

Notice how the writer takes his time getting to the answer, yet each paragraph takes us closer--he doesn't go off in another direction.

In one of my classes recently someone brought up the question of "changing the subject" in a narrative--moving away from something that has emotional heat, and is maybe difficult to write about.  It's pretty clear where the emotional heat is located in this story, and the author never really moves away from it or changes the subject. At the same time, you could legitimately call this a quiet, slow, or subtle story.

Write

Set the timer for fifteen minutes and write a scene in which a question is posed in the beginning and not answered until the end. This could be something as simple as whether the main character gets a sandwich she's hungry for, or it could be something bigger. 

Prompt for the day: Iceburg

Read

The very short story "The Old Man at the Bridge" by Ernest Hemingway

One of the pleasures of reading Hemingway is the sense of power under the surface. There's always much unsaid, but you can feel it. Do you think that's true here? What is it?

Note the difference between being vague about something, vs. leaving it unstated yet letting its emotional power seep through every pore of the story.


Write

2 Options for prompt:

1) Set the timer for fifteen minutes. Write a conversation in which something remains unsaid.

OR

2) Do the classic John Gardner exercise: Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do not mention the murder.

Prompt for the day: Slow . . . way . . . down . . .

Read

"Lather and Nothing Else" by Hernando Tellez

As writers, we sometimes find ourselves worrying about boring the reader, and as a result, rushing forward from one plot point or bit of action to the next. (This varies a lot depending on when and where you came of age as a writer! But I have see it a lot in my classes.) In this short piece, the entire story takes place in one long . . . slow . . . scene.

And yet somehow there was no chance that I was going to get bored and stop reading this.

(It also reminds me of Lee Child's secret of suspense: Pose a question and make the reader wait for the answer. That's it--the whole secret.)


Write
Think of the next scene you want to work on. Set the timer for fifteen minutes and start, but slow . . . way . . . down . . .

What did this do to your scene? Did it add anything interesting, did it seem to make it too slow . . . ?