Our May Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #151, provided by the brilliant Molly Torinus, challenging participants to come up with five “terrible” book titles and write a story based on one of them. What followed was an avalanche of submissions boasting the most creative, eye-catching titles many of us had ever seen. Of course, the exemplary work that followed the titles broke the moniker of “terrible,” and provided us with a lifetime supply of imagination as no one story followed a similar arc. We found ourselves immersed in dramas set in the far reaches of outer space, character driven vignettes set in a classroom, rich narratives told from the perspective of a dog, and much, much more. A big thank you to all who submitted this month; it was a pleasure to read all of your work. In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “The BWBM Students” by Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10, (Riverside, CA) “T.L.G.E.Y.5.T.” by Darren Fisher, 9, (Portland, OR) “Connecticutians, I Ate the Grape” by Rex Huang, 11, (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Book Without a Name” by Serena Lin, 10, (Scarsdale, NY) “The Pheasant Was Delicious” by Juliet D. Simon, 11, (Santa Monica, CA) Honorable Mentions “Once Upon a Time a Friendship” by Sophia Wong, 9, (Short Hills, NJ) “Chocotalia and Hideous Dragon Monster” by Sophie Liu, 9, (Surrey, BC) “When a Chicken Says ‘SQUAWK!'” by Olivia Luan, 11, (Great Falls, VA) “Cats, Dogs, Dragons, and Other Household Pets” by Atalie Lyda, 12, (Portland, OR) “You Are NOT Reading This Book Cover” by Joycelyn Zhang, 11, (San Diego, CA) Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10, (Riverside, CA) The BWBM Students Ritobroto Roy Chowdhury, 10 Hello, I am Mr. Wats. I have a class of very, very, very, very, very, very different 3rd graders. This is a review of school and their life from their perspective. John School? What school. I’m John. Do not like school. No read. Bad write. Annoying math. That school. I tough. I known as bully. John big. Known as bully. First bad write. Second annoying math. Third horrible grammar. Only lunch recess. School BAD. BAD stand for Boring, Annoying, Dumb. I bully. Recess I say to Johnny. You dumb because you love school. Get it? BAD. Last letter stand for Dumb and Johnny like school. Move on to Johnny Mr. Wats. Johnny I love school. School’s the best. I read John’s section. I can hear you. You’re saying that John’s section has horrible grammar. I agree. My section is going to have way better grammar than John’s. Here are some things you should know about me. 1. I’m Johnny 2. I love school 3. I love math 4. I love grammar 5. I love school Hopefully now you know a little more about me. There’s just 1 thing I didn’t include on the list. You may be wondering what it is. I love reading. Yep. That’s it. You know almost everything about me now. Since I have to make this a little more interesting and longer I’ll talk about other things. Did you know that the cafeteria food is the best food in the world in my opinion? The pepperoni pizza is delicious and anyone who says it’s not, they’re wrong. Well, Mr. Wats says that I can go to recess now. BYE! Rick Since I don’t want to make this long, I made a list of everything you should know about me. 1. I’m Rick Dodder 2. I’m always late to school 3. Recess is my favorite thing about school 4. I’m lazy 5. I don’t do my chores 6. I have glasses 7. I play video games 8. I watch TV 9. I don’t like Johnny or John Those are the things you should know about me. Any questions? Send me an email at… “Rick your time is up!” Oh that’s Mr. Wats. Well, I guess you’ll never get to know my email. Jorge You’ll never guess my name. What do you thing it is? Sure, it’s spelled J O R G E but how do you think you’re supposed to pronounce it? If you guessed George you’re wrong. If you guessed Hor-hay you’re right! If you took Spanish lessons or know Spanish or Portuguese then you should have had no problem. If you pronounced it wrong I suggest you take Spanish lessons. I have lots of siblings. 2 older twin brothers, 1 sister in college, a younger sister, and baby brother. My sister goes to college in Northern California. My twin older brothers both go to Martin Luther King Jr. High School. As you know, I go to 3rd grade and my younger sister is
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #3: Lightness
An update from the third Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the Workshop held on Saturday May 1, plus some of the output published below Lightness is a “lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the meaning itself takes on the same rarefied consistency.” -Italo Calvino “My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language” -Italo Calvino For this week’s Writing Workshop, Conner first asked us to consider his original lecture of Good vs. Evil (now split in to two parts) as “Lightness vs. Heaviness,” this week’s focus being Lightness. In order to introduce the two modes, Conner offered a primary juxtaposition of Don Quixote and Hamlet Don Quixote being the quintessential example of Lightness, and Hamlet the quintessential example of Heaviness. “Heavy” characters were noted to be brooding, philosophical, intense, opaque, emotionally closed, and characterized as scheming and calculating; on the other hand, “light” characters were noted be agile, quick, cunning, witty, lighthearted, whimsical, emotionally open, and characterized by action. At this point of the lecture we moved into strictly discussing lightness, first focusing on the character of Perseus, who “moves according to the pattern of the wind and clouds” as an embodiment of lightness. Peter Pan and Robin Hood were also discussed as iterations of Perseus. Next, using Milton’s funny and charismatic figure of Satan in Paradise Lost, we discussed how a quote on quote “evil” character could embody lightness, too. Another example of a character embodying lightness was Scheherezade from A Thousand and One Nights, as we noted her ability to think quickly on her feet and tell stories, and the fact that the stories she told were in themselves examples of Lightness—stories about flying carpets, winged horses, genies, magic, love and romance, and about characters like her: witty, smooth, fast talking characters of action. Following our discussion of Lightness in characters, we moved into a discussion of Lightness in painting, music and literature, beginning with three paintings: Magritte’s The Castle of Pyrenees, Malevich’s White on White, and Turner’s Norham Castle, Sunrise. We also listened to Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21 and Stan Getz’s “The Girl from Ipanema” to set a mood of Lightness. Finally, we discussed the Lightness evident in the haikus of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and Gertrude Stein’s poem, “A Dog.” The Challenge: First answer what “lightness” means to you. Write one of the following prompts: 1) Write about a character who exemplifies lightness; 2) Write a story that makes the reader feel “light;” 3) Write a description of a place that uses all the elements of lightness we discussed in class (lighthearted, whimsical, effortless, or emotionally open). The Participants: Emma, Josh, Svitra, Georgia, Liam, Helen, Sophie, Anya, Simran, Jackson, Sena, Sinan, Olivia, Aditi, Lucy, Harine, Isolde, Audrey, Alice, Sasha, Noa, and Julia. Emma Hoff, 9Bronx, NY Fear of Drowning Emma Hoff, 9 I was flying. It felt like I was floating on the water, but this time without sinking in, without coming up coughing and spitting. I didn’t know how to fly, but I didn’t know how to swim either. Flying was easier, though, because when the wind lifted me up, it didn’t feel like a hurricane. It didn’t feel like a menacing and strong wind, because it was lightly tossing me onto the fluffiest air ever, and suddenly I was floating. I was hoping somewhere my family would be floating. And I knew they probably were somewhere, flying, feeling the most comfortable they had ever felt. And as the wind carried me away, I fell asleep. I woke up, and there was no more soft air. I was in the hurricane again, and I was being swirled and tossed, like fruit in a blender. Somehow, I was enjoying it, because while I was floating, a tiny pocket of my brain had been thinking, This isn’t right. This isn’t real. And when I stopped floating, when I just started being tossed around in the hurricane I realized that if the flying wasn’t real, then my family was probably gone. Helpless. Scared. And here I was, unable to help them. And then I was falling. The hurricane tossed me towards the ground and I was sailing down… until I stopped. And I realized I was with the sun. And it was real, even though it seemed like it wasn’t. And the sun said, “Are you lost?” And I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell the sun that I wasn’t lost, that a stupid hurricane had taken me away from my family. But I couldn’t speak. The sun somehow tossed me inside of it, and when I was inside I saw infinite space. And a lot of people. Everyone. My family, my friends, people I didn’t know. And then we were pushed through the other side of the sun, and we seemed to be in our world. I suddenly forgot about the trials of the hurricane, and how I was just tossed into the sun. I didn’t care, because at that moment I was happy. And I felt like I was floating… for real. Isolde Knowles, 9New York, NY 10 Days Isolde Knowles, 9 10 days. That was how long I’d been in heaven. Heaven was just like people thought of it as. The whole area is up in the clouds above all the souls still tethered down there. Yet still I yearn for the sense of unpredictability you have on earth. And now I start to wonder if I’m thinking about this wrong. Maybe that tether that keeps you down there isn’t stopping you but saving you. Heaven is a beautiful hell. Aditi Nair, 13Midlothian, VA Fly Aditi Nair, 13 Bouncing off the white fluffs, she went into the air. Gliding and soaring with the expressionless winds. Gliding
How Stories Work-Writing Workshop #2: Plot Vs. Narrative
An update from our second Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday April 24, plus some of the output published below In the second Writing Workshop of the Spring/Summer Session led by Conner Bassett, we discussed the differences between plot and narrative. Firstly, we considered the fact that while all plots are narratives, not all narratives are plots. Following this, we distinguished narrative as a general term that encompasses all stories, and whose events are incidental as well as connected by the conjunction “and.” Plot, however, was how a story is told, meaning that events follow “and so,” leading to a deliberate beginning, middle and end. We then discussed the significance of plot, how it provides a narrative with inevitability, connectivity, and consequence through its ability to imbue every individual action with meaning. Next, we moved into a musical exercise as a means of further distinguishing plot vs. narrative, listening to an excerpt from “So What,” by Miles Davis, and an excerpt from the third movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, coming to the conclusion that the meandering, roaming tune from Miles Davis better represented narrative, while the building, crescendoing nature of Beethoven’s Fifth represented plot. To wrap things up, we discussed the sequential narrative of Don Quixote, and the taught, precise plot of the story of Moses. The Challenge: Choose one of three paintings between Starry Night by Van Gogh, The Scream by Edvard Munch, or Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Once you’ve chosen a painting, write a story or poem that progresses towards a conclusion, the conclusion being the image of the painting. Nighthawks The Scream Starry Night The Participants: Helen, Jackson, Olivia, Sena, Isolde, Harine, Emma, Svitra, Josh, Aditi, Audrey, Emizzi, Noa, Sasha Sasha D, 10Moseley, VA One Starry Night Sasha D, 10 “Shake a leg Gabby, we are going to be late!” Papa yelled at me. “I’m tryin I’m tryin!” I yelled back. We ran, ducking under people, trying to get to the bank. Mama and Papa forgot to pay the bills because we are moving out of our house. Papa is desperate to get money out of the bank so he can use it to pay bills. Mama has a night shift, so I have to come along. Papa can be mean when he gets stressed out. That’s why I tried not to say a word while we were walking. Mama and Papa are also going on a date in 2 hours. We don’t have enough money to hire a babysitter, which means that I must come along. They say that when I am 15 I will be allowed to stay home all by myself. But that feels like forever! “We are almost there, Gabby!” Papa exclaimed. I did not say a word. I knew Papa would’ve cut me off. Papa burst into the town’s bank, Country Side’s Coins. Everybody stopped and stared. I tried to act like I didn’t know him, but everybody in town knows who we are. “Welcome Mr. Collins.” Mr. Merryson said with a smile. I gasped. “Mr. Merryson!” I yelled. I ran around the desk to give him a BIG hug! “Long time no see, Troy.” Papa said, shaking his hand. “Will you be able to watch me tonight while Mama and Papa go out on their date?” I asked Mr. Merryson with puppy dog eyes. “I am afraid not my little Gabby.. Mrs. Merryson is very ill. I must make sure she will be okay.” Mr. Merryson said with depression. “Oh. Alright. I hope Mrs. Merryson feels better!” I said, sounding gloomy. I stood over by the front entrance, waiting for Papa. Mr. Merryson and Papa talked most of the time until Papa realized it was 8:30 at night. Mr. Merryson gave Papa the money, and we rushed to Mama’s job. Mama works at an Appliance Store. Folks around here mostly call it Amazing Appliances. “Papa? We should take a carriage there. It’ll be faster.” I suggested. “No, Gabby. You don’t understand-” “But I do! I do understand, Papa!” “No! You do not!” Papa said. I could feel a tear slowly slide down my cheek. We kept on walking in silence. We had arrived at Mama’s job. “Oh, Gabby!” Mama yelled. Mama ran to me and picked me up. “Mama!” I said as we hugged. On our way to their date spot, Papa let me ride on his back. “Look, Mama, Papa!” I said as I pointed up to the sky. One little dot had appeared. Several appeared after. Papa looked at the sky too. “You know what? We don’t need a fancy restaurant…..” Papa said. “Huh?” Mama and I both said. Papa put me down and crumbled up the reservation paper and threw it in the garbage can. “Why would you do that?” I asked. Papa just smiled as he held my hand, as well as Mama. As we walked all the way home, Mama and Papa were talking about things I did not understand. Once we got home, Mama and Papa got warm blankets from inside. “ I wonder.. ” I thought to myself. Mama and Papa came out with 3 blankets. Papa lay down the 3 blankets on the soft, newly cut, green grass. He laid on his blanket, put his hands behind his head, and sighed. “What are you looking at, Papa?” I asked. “The stars!” Papa said, still looking at the stars. “Oh!” I said. “May I do that as well, Papa?” I asked, looking at Papa. “Of course, Gabby!!” Papa said. I got in the same position as Papa. I smiled as I gazed up into the sky that was lit up by these little dots that go by the name, Stars. “Mama?” I said. “Yes, Gabriela?” Mama replied. “Can I name the stars?” I asked. “Well… if you would like…” Mama said, confused. I squealed silently. “That one is Sarah, this one Sam, Sadie, Samuel, Rachel, Brady, Briley, Ryan, and Katy!” I only named a few.
