An update from our fifty-second Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett
A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, January 21, plus some of the output published below
In our first workshop of the new year, we were so happy to see many familiar faces, as well as many new ones. Conner began the workshop by reading three examples of micro fiction—“Sticks” by George Saunders, “Give It Up” by Franz Kafka, and “You Know, Quiet” by David Gaffney. Then, Conner asked students to outline characteristics of micro fiction based on these examples. Students concluded that some key features of microfiction are that the brevity of the pieces forces readers to “think about the title, and the “iceberg technique” is used, meaning much context is left unwritten. Conner advised students to move fast, start in the middle, introduce few characters, and choose words carefully, using few to no adjectives. As a mini-challenge, Conner then gave students one minute to write a prompt based on the examples of micro fiction they had read.
The Challenge: Using one of the prompts from our mini-challenge, write a piece of micro fiction.
The Participants: Lindsay, Anushka, Amaya, Genevieve, Seva, Lucy, Catherine, Yueling, Stella, Ava, Srujana, Lina, Emma, Arjun
Where's My Coffee?
Arjun Nair, 11
I didn’t get my coffee this morning. They said they were out of milk, so I walked right in and checked for myself. This made me mad all day, and I even ripped some important documents up. Later today, I was fired. I tried to explain to my boss that there was no coffee, but he didn’t want to hear it. I took his coffee mug with me as I walked out the door.
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