An update from our sixty-eighth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, September 17, plus some of the output published below In this workshop, we covered the idea of ‘sense of place.’ The students learned that sense of place is a literary device that not only evokes physical, objective descriptions, but also uses vivid imagery to capture the thoughts and feelings of a character about a certain place. We studied numerous example of sense of place within literature and music, including Jack London’s Call of the Wild and an excerpt from Claire Rinterknecht’s story featured in the March 2020 issue of Stone Soup. Students participated in a brief 5 minute write in which half of the class described a place as a neutral narrator and the other half described a place through the lens of a character. Pearl, Greta, Nami, and Peri all shared their incredible work before we moved into our half-hour writing period, during which Peri, Yueling, Pearl, and Ava read. Overall, we had a blast kicking off this fall semester and look forward to more great work yet to come! The Challenge: Describe a place or a setting in which a story will take place. 1) Describe as the omniscient narrator, like the art director for a movie set description including lighting and mood. OR 2) Write from the point-of-view of a character. This is the skeleton vision of the place (lighting, sound, feeling, etc.) as appropriate to your vision. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Cora, Greta, Nami, Pearl, Peri, Reethi, Sofia, Yueling Arctic Winter Pearl Coogan, 10 Cold howling wind whipped through my fur, blowing endlessly. The deep snow crunched under my paws, stretching as far as my keen blue eyes could see. Snow-covered mounds that were once grey cliffs rose out of the white sea, not a hint of rock visible on them. Farther beyond the once-cliffs were the towering mountains, also covered in snow that was continuously piling higher and higher. The streams that ran and pulled in spring were now completely frozen over with ice. Everything was beautiful. But like many things, the looks of the tundra didn’t say much about the tundra. I couldn’t see or smell any other animals except the six other wolves in my pack, all of them my relatives. The prey, even the caribou, had disappeared like all the other animals, having hidden in their snow-covered burrows or migrated south. To make it even worse, the falling snow prevented me from seeing far. I was an Arctic wolf living in my Arctic habitat with a thick winter coat, but I was still shivering. The snow, though beautiful, covered up all of the hare’s burrows and even rocks that I could fall and hurt myself on. Hunger, as ruthless as ever, gnawed at my stomach. But I had survived one cruel Arctic winter before and could live through another, even if I wasn’t thriving. “Taiga!” My cousin Icicle called, standing on top of one of the snow-mounds, clearly trying to find prey like me and the rest of my pack. But, unlike me and the pack, she wasn’t a good hunter. At all. “Leave her alone, Icicle! She’s a much better hunter than you,” Icicle’s mother and my father’s younger sister Snowclaw growled. Icicle bowed his small head and padded down from the mound he was standing on. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was still young with plenty of room to improve his hunting skills and Snowclaw didn’t seem to like him at all. Smelling a wisp of deeply burried hare, I started digging into the endless sea of snow. The smell grew stronger, more vivid, as I dug. Crackly brown grass started to appear, a hole in the middle of it. Lighting up, I started digging in the hole. Surprised yellow eyes glared at me. The snowshoe hare leaped up and started sprinting away from me, but he was tired from his hibernation and wasn’t use to running in such deep snow. My paws pattered on the ground, barely touching the snow before they lifted up. The howling wind was even louder and stronger as I ran, flurries snaking down faster. Suddenly I wasn’t cold anymore. Suddenly the Arctic winter wasn’t as menacing anymore. My sharp fangs sank into the hare’s neck, sinking deeper and deeper. I knew my teeth, once gleaming white, would be stained with blood for days. But I didn’t care. Once I had thought that in the winter, the tundra was a cruel place. A menacing place. An evil place. But now I knew that it wasn’t so terrible. There was still prey but you had to work to find it. There was still warmth but you had to rely on other wolves for it. There was still water but you had to break through the ice to drink it. After all, why would nature make the tundra so cruel that the only good things about were the looks. Holding my head high, I trotted back to my den with my pack following me. My aunt and uncle had brought down a caribou and my brother had caught a bird, so combined with my hare, there would be plenty of food to go around. Maybe not as much as the bounty of prey in spring, but enough to thrive through the not-so-cruel arctic winter. To Let Go Aditi Nair, 14 And I let go. It happened to be a fall much similar to the ones I’ve seen on T.V, and I was ready–well, sort of ready. The adrenaline came to me like a lightning bolt, but I know that this was the best scenario, if any at all. It felt like the world was racing to greet me on all sides, and everything
sense of place
Saturday Newsletter: February 19, 2022
Out of the Window (iPhone 11) By Ohad Harosh, 8 (New York, NY), published in the February 2022 issue of Stone Soup A note from Laura Mired in February’s deep winter snow and cold, like many of you may also be, and stuck at home for much of the time during this current Covid surge, my awareness of a sense of place is at its peak! As our Editor, Emma, reminds us in her opening note of the profound influence of our surroundings on our experience in the world, I invite you to consider, as you read the February edition of Stone Soup, the role of setting as a literary device. Consider Ava Cai’s piece, “Honey Dipped in Celery,” in which we are provided with a thick description of a brief slice of time spent inside a classroom during silent reading period. I love the rich detail in which the author describes the classroom setting and the playful way in which she reveals herself through these surroundings. Like, I imagine, many of you, I can relate to the sense of captivity while willing a clock to tick during silent reading time, as well as the sweet feeling of freedom the moment your hand touches the doorknob to leave. Part of what illuminates these experiences and makes them so relatable, is the detailed description of setting the author provides: the dim light with the broken bulb flickering above, the tree beyond the window whose leaves blur together with distance, the clock hanging on the wall whose red arm ticks rhythmically while its black hands crawl ever so slowly, the stale, sterile smell of the bathroom. Now consider how the author utilizes all this rich detail to reveal something of themselves. What do we learn about the author through her experience in this particular setting? Through her description of a stagnant, quiet room, we learn that the author doesn’t like to sit still for long periods of time, that she craves movement, fresh air, stimulation. Setting, in this piece, is used as a literary device to reveal something we didn’t know, in this case, about the author herself. I invite you to pay particular attention to setting in your next piece of writing. See if you can manipulate your depiction of place to point to some kind of broader meaning, idea, or thematic element of your work. For example, what might a description of a home reveal about the family who has resided there for generations? How might the early morning sun, slowly creeping along the wooden floorboards of an empty kitchen, point to the excitement or restlessness of a main character? As always, if you’ve written something you’re proud of, please share it and submit it to us via Submittable! With warm winter wishes, Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest winners! Our February Flash Contest was based on Prompt #190 (provided by intern Sage Millen), which asked that participants write a story about a character who falls into a bowl of tomato soup and into a magical land. The whimsical yet specific prompt served as the perfect vehicle of creativity for our participants as we received more submissions—43!—than we ever had before! While every story was naturally based upon the same premise, these stories could not have had more variety. Submissions ranged from an epistolary story addressing a corrupt king to the origin story for a pet rabbit to a story surrounding the subsequent events of the eerie, dystopian “Orange Day.” As we received a record number of submissions, we found it extra difficult to choose only ten stories worthy of mention, so we added a sixth story to our honorable mentions. As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “The Magic of Tomato Soup” by Ananya Cronin, 9 (Fishers, IN) “Dear King Solanum” by Sophie Li, 11 (Palo Alto, CA) “Tomato Island” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 10 (Brooklyn, NY) “The King Who Fell into a Bowl of Tomato Soup” by David Yu, 11 (Hong Kong) “Ten Times” by Natalie Yue, 10 (San Carlos, CA) Honorable Mentions “It Started with the Tomatoes” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) To”Clara and Whiskers” by Elizabeth Sabaev, 11 (Forest Hills, NY) “Reality or Subconsciousness?” by Emily Tang, 12 (Winterville, NC) “Colors” by Liyue Sally Wang, 11 (Newton, MA) “Wish upon a Dream” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) “Gone Tomatoes” by Savarna Yang, 13 (Outram, NZ) Ava Cai, 12(San Jose, CA) From Stone Soup February 2022 Honey Dipped in Celery By Ava Cai, 12 (San Jose, CA) The quiet classroom was like a prison. The lights were dim, and a broken bulb flickered softly above me. I had never liked the dullness of this room, nor did I like the quietness of reading time. I sat in my assigned seat and flipped through a book about spaceships. The cover was slightly dented, and some of the pages were half torn. I managed to make out only the picture of the Apollo lunar module. I closed the book and placed it on my desk. I leaned back in my seat and let my head dangle off the tip of the blue plastic. I stretched, making all my muscles bunch up, then relax again. I let out a satisfied sigh and sat up, looking around the room. Everyone was still reading besides my teacher, who was swiping furiously at his phone. I shifted into a more comfortable position and began trying to count the leaves of a tree out the window. It was not too far away, but I could only make out the size and shape of it. It looked like a green cloud with two ears on top. I rocked impatiently in my chair, waiting for the teacher to signal that class had ended. I looked up at the clock and then leaned back in surprise. It was only 2:06!
Writing Workshop #38: Sense of Place–Beyond Geography
An update from our thirty-eighth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday April 17, plus some of the output published below In his first class in the spring 2021 series, William visited the idea of of Sense of Space, taking us beyond geography to think about the impact of place on characters in our stories, and consider the sense of place through the emotions of our characters. Quoting Colin Thubron, William urged the class to take their characters with them in their heads and think about the impact of place on characters as individuals: for one, the jungle might be beautiful and liberating; for another, humid and claustrophobic; for another terrifying and synonymous with death. It’s all about perception. We looked at images through different lenses: how might the twisting branches of the trees in the forest look different to Hansel and Gretel when they think they are safe with their breadcrumb trail to lead them out again, and when they realise that night is coming and it is gone? What is the impact of memory on the sense one has of a place? What you see or don’t see, feel or don’t feel, might depend on what has happened there before. The Challenge: Write a short piece that conveys a strong sense of place as it is perceived through the senses and emotions of your character. The Participants: Chelsea, Hanbei, Gia, Maddie, Lena A, Lena, Delight, Julia, Leo, Mahika, Margaret, Peri, Nova, Lina, Pranjoli, Rachael, Wesley, Reese, Helen, Sage, Sierra, Angela, Anna, Madeline, Grace, Iago, Jonathan, Charlotte, Peter, Tilly. Sierra E., 11Mountain View, CA The Dance of the Sea Sierra E., 11 Rays of orange evening sunlight flew down the coastline, taking a calm breeze and charming birdcalls along. A strip of street, shimmering into the sunset glow, separated the sea from general humanity; vehicles in a rainbow of colors rushed down it, in a hurry to return home to their families. A thick, tall layer of green grass ran down the roadside, hiding the ocean from drivers’ view. The sky above was painted a rich, vivid and soothing violet, dotted with heaps of fluffy pastel clouds, as the sea danced. The water rose into frothy white crests, then fell, crashing to the shore, though it scared not a soul, dancing like it did each night, dancing as if it would never stop. The scent of salty sea air became intertwined with the sugary smell of ice cream in a thousand flavors, drifting from a renowned café back on regular land. The tide disappeared again, creating a pathway for the last few humans left on the beach to dissipate. And dissipate they did, laughing, and sprinting up the golden sand dunes that glimmered in the twilight, until the seaside paradise was empty except for its natural inhabitants. The ocean came in again, drenching forgotten shells that had been collected by small children, and breadcrumbs that hadn’t been swept up; the water threw them into the sea, giving the lost items a fresh start among the crabs with their mighty pincers and the twisting, winding stalks of forest-green seaweed. The sky was darkening at a rapid pace; within an hour it would be pitch black, and the sparkling, silver stars would begin to appear. But before then, in the last moments of dusk, the world was tranquil and silent, except for the dance and crash of the waves. Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Last Night Peri Gordon, 11 The seat of my wool couch scratched my legs fiercely. The whir of the breeze through the window echoed in my mind, calling for vengeance. I wrinkled my nose at the odor of fish coming from the disorderly place I called my kitchen and scowled at the far-too-large heap of clothing still to wash. I tried not to recall the violence of last night; I tried to instead remember the gentle feeling of the chair I had been in right before and the melodious song that I had been humming thoughtfully. But the incessant buzzing of the pests outside–and most likely inside–and the pleading mews of the kitten I was supposed to take care of drowned out any positivity left, and I kept thinking about the violence of last night. It took me five minutes to summon the energy to get up off of my uncomfortable furniture. I trudged into my bedroom, looking at the stained carpet. My friend, Rita, was there; I hadn’t told her what had happened. She was whistling; I was sure my dry lips would protest if I tried to do the same thing. Rita said, “You like my hair?” My guess was it was styled in a fancy way or something, but I could only focus on how the colors of her clothes–orange and green–clashed so horribly. I mumbled, “Sure,” while still gazing at the floor, still thinking about the violence of last night. I couldn’t bear to be in a room with someone so vigorously optimistic, so I returned to the awful, itchy, expensive, not-worth-the-money-I-payed-for-it couch. And thought about the violence of last night. Lina Kim, 11Weston, FL The Dark Hospital Lina Kim, 11 I glanced around the hospital cautiously and shuddered. The walls were pure white, but I felt as if they were stained with the blood of those who never survived. The doors were clean, the windows shining. It was all a trick. A trap. I clutched my father’s hand. I rarely did, but the hospital gave me flashbacks of my dead mother. I needed comfort. The stench of a thousand disinfectants hit me. I gagged. Dad put his arms around me. We turned a corner and continued walking down the hall. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people had died in this hospital over the years. It scared me that my grandmother might be next. We found the section of the hospital where grandmother was. The man at the desk searched through the names. “Jiwoo Lee, Jiwoo Lee,” the man
