An update from our forty-seventh Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 29th Excess: more than necessary—exaggeration, extravagance, exuberance, abundance, unnecessary, overload, overkill, surplus, luxuriance, improvisation, unrestraint, ridiculous To kick off this week’s workshop, we began with four artworks—Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle Griet, Peter Paul Rubens’ The Garden of Love, Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, and the Sistene Chapel—all of which illustrated, in one way or another, the theme of excess. While we technically defined “excess” as “more than necessary,” the purpose of this workshop was to show how sometimes excess is necessary in order to create the feeling of being overwhelmed or overpowered or repulsed, an idea perhaps best encapsulated in the work of Peter Paul Rubens: he emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. We explored two more of Rubens’s paintings: Daniel in the Lion’s Den and The Tiger Hunt. Once we finished looking at these paintings, we looked at the art of contemporary Australian sculptor Ron Mueck. We looked at a few of his hyperrealistic, larger than life works in order to demonstrate how something almost “too real” becomes grotesque. Following our discussion of Mueck, we looked at examples of Baroque architecture, a style associated with ornamental excess as is the case with St Peter’s Basilica and La Sagrada Familia. We also discussed a piece of Postmodern architecture, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, a “non-functional” building more characteristic of a dream or a work of science fiction than reality. The last section of the Writing Workshop was devoted to examples of excess in writing as we looked at an excerpt from Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (exaggeration, hyperbole), Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky (pleasure in its own silly sound making), and, finally, an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy (functional resistance to grammar, repetition of the word “and”). The Challenge: Write as much as you can, as fast you can, without worrying about making sense; write excessively. The Participants: Benedetta, Savi, Anushka, Ella, Tate, Robert, Samantha, Alice, Russell, Josh
how stories work
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #46: The Villanelle
An update from our forty-sixth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 22, plus some of the output published below This week Emma Hoff, 10, led her third class since joining the Stone Soup workshops, and taught us all about the form poem known as the Villanelle. First, we went over the requirements of a villanelle: A villanelle has 6 stanzas First five stanzas have three lines Last stanza has four lines First and last line of each stanza rhyme First and third line of te first stanza repeat alternately in following stanzas as the final lines, until they both appear in the final stanza The four villanelles we read were “The House on the Hill” by Edward Arlington Robinson, “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop, “The Waking by Theodore Roethke, and “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. In all four poems, we noted that the poets had the option to play with the form by using off-rhymes and sometimes they didn’t adhere to the rhyme scheme at all. The Challenge: Write a poem in the form of a villanelle. It can be about anything you like and you should feel free to tweak the structure of the poem. The Participants: Anushka, Benedetta, Savi, Arjun, Aditi, Samantha, Robert, Alice, Allie, Russell, Shelley, and led by Emma Quiet Night Emma Hoff, 10 It’s a quiet night, alone, ashes on the ground instead of leaves, cities turned to bone. A voice, speaking over the phone, the little girl, laughing, it’s a quiet night, alone. The scraggly pyramid shaped like a cone, in front of which sits the hunched old man, cities turned to bone. On the clock the time is shown, you sigh and admit its existence, it’s a quiet night, alone. You need to go home, but you chew on your pen, cities turned to bone. You want to write one more poem, but you can’t think of anything to say, it’s a quiet night, alone, cities turned to bone.
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #44: Writing Dialogue
An update from our forty-forth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 8, plus some of the output published below This week’s workshop, Conner began with the caveat that these tools for writing dialogue, while strict, are just his opinion, and that we are free to write dialogue however we like. Conner’s “eight tools for writing dialogue,” not rules, started with the suggestion that dialogue should be realistic, but not too realistic. For example, even though most people overuse the word “like,” we don’t need to pepper our dialogue with these phrases. The rest of the tools were as follows: 2) use dialogue to reveal characters (differentiate characters, show a character’s personality, make character’s seem real, only write down interesting, essential, and surprising dialogue). As an example we read an excerpt of dialogue from Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. 3) Start dialogue late, and end dialogue early. In other words, forget about hello and goodbye; jump into the dialogue at the moment the dialogue is essential, and end before the dialogue gets tedious. 4) Avoid the “information dump,” situations in which the characters are presenting each other with information they already know, but that the audience doesn’t. This information should be placed in summary. 5) Gestures are more communicative than words. As an example, we revised the sentence “‘I can’t believe it,’ he shouted, covering his mouth in disbelief” into “he covered his mouth.” 6) Have your characters talk to each other while simultaneously doing something else (as in the 2013 Pulitzer Price winning play Disgraced); 7) Use indirect dialogue, or when characters speak past each other with their own agendas. We used an example from Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants,” wherein the man wants to talk about their relationship, whereas the woman wants to talk about literally anything else. But you don’t want to get too indirect to the point of using non-sequiturs. 8) Avoid synonyms of the “to say” verb. They often end up being redundancies. Let the reader infer the mood rather than explaining it. The Challenge: Write a poem or short story entirely in dialogue, in which the characters are doing something else—walking, building something, making dinner, writing a letter, playing a game, telling a story—while talking to each other. The Participants: Emma, Anna, Alice, Russell, Savi, Anushka, Arjun, Allie, Robert, Aditi, Benedetta, Tate, Ella, Josh, Samantha In the Kitchen Emma Hoff, 10 “And she brought along all of her friends… I swear, people flit to her like moths to a lamp!” “Moths… horrible things.” “And I simply had to sit there and take it all, trying to pull her over to the side to tell her that I’d never invited any of these people without seeming rude!” “They make holes in clothes, you know that? Well, they’ll never get near any of my clothes… they’ll have to meet my swatter first!” “And then she insisted that they were ‘ever so kind,’ and ‘wouldn’t I let them stay?’ and I had to say yes. She makes me so angry sometimes!” “I would never invite her to a party… she’s just as bad as one of them moths!” “And then she said, ‘oh, Jerry, you’re ever so kind to let them stay!’ and then bustled about, trying to help, but she didn’t do anything at all! She isn’t even interesting to talk to!” “Parties are such a waste of time… oh, look, I’ve burned the potatoes! Stop distracting me with your talk of insects.” “But I’m not talking about insects… here, let me help you, you’ve gone and covered the whole counter with potato skins, how many did you use?” “Don’t tell me I didn’t hear you… you were talking about insects! Female insects, who do nothing but buzz in your ear all day, who you, for some reason, invite to your parties.” “Well, it was definitely a mistake… I’m serious, how many potatoes did you use? And you’re not planning on using all those green beans, are you?” “I’m not planning on wasting my time looking at that silly recipe… I trust my cooking instincts. You can never have too many potatoes.” “This is absolutely ridiculous!” “Maybe you can invite that bug and her millions of friends over to finish our leftovers.” “Stop calling her a bug!” “Why? I thought you didn’t like her.” “I simply don’t believe in calling people bugs.” “Phooey… Myrtle called Janet a nosy fly all of yesterday… of course, I won’t tell her that I agree with her, I would never live it down…” “That many green beans is quite enough…” “You know, Myrtle was telling me earlier that I should go to a nursing home somewhere, where someone can take care of me… I told her that I had my son to take care of me, if you weren’t always away at your parties…” “You can stop glaring at me, you’re exaggerating… and don’t dump all the green beans in!”
