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!”
writing workshop
Writing Workshop #69: Fast Sketching Characters (Revisited)
An update from our sixty-ninth Writing Workshop A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, October 1 In this workshop, students created rapid character sketches: short writing pieces that give a sense of a character by focusing on the face, body, and clothing. Students gathered inspiration from pieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesques, The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter, and Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. (Beethoven’s Sixth was used to demonstrate the difference between a fully developed character’s story and just a glimpse of a character; the participants listened to the same piece played by a full orchestra and by just a piano.) William discussed how an author uses words to create visions in the mind of the reader the same way a magician creates illusions with smoke and mirrors, and how authors use character sketches to convey the essence of new characters. He emphasized that a character’s appearance can match or contrast with their personality. As mini-challenges, students wrote character sketches to describe images William provided (a sketch of a young girl, and later a photograph of a homeless man and a self-portrait by Rembrandt), and they later described original characters. The students were asked not to tell a whole story but to give quick yet meaningful snapshots of characters, leaving the reader to imagine the rest. The Challenge: In ten minutes, write three or more quick sketches of humans or animals. You can think about different ages, professions, types of people, and emotional states. The Participants: Anya, Ava, Celia, Crystal, Greta, Liam, Nami, Pearl, Rachael, Reethi, Yueling
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #42: The Poetic Line
An update from our forty-second Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday, September 24, plus some of the output published below “A poem does not make sense. A poem excites the senses.” -Nikki Giovanni “Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines” -James Longenbach This week Conner drew our attention to a more micro topic: the poetic line. To begin, we looked at an excerpted page of prose from Anna Karenina—we could see the margins, that prose goes all the way across the page. By contrast, Conner told us, poetry pays little attention to margins. We then paused for a quick exercise wherein Conner gave us a sentence “So much depends on a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens” (William Carlos Williams’s poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” written as prose” — and we each broke up the sentence into poetic lines in order to show how a poem and its meaning changes depending on the breaking of its lines. Continuing the workshop, Conner showed us four important tenets of writing poetry in lines: A poetic line is not a sentence The end of a line is not the end of a sentence A poetic line is a stand-alone unit of meaning Use enjambment (to break a line) to complicate the meaning of your poems With this knowledge, we read from the poems “Prism” by Louise Glück, “The Great Figure” by William Carlos Williams, and “Popcorn-can Cover” by Lorine Niedecker that showcased short lines, and then we read some excerpts of long line poems like “I Hear America Singing” and “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsburg, and the opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey. The Challenge: Choose between one of the following, and write in 15 minutes: Look out your window and write a long line poem about what you see Find an interesting object in your room and describe it in great detail in a long line poem Write about Picasso’s Guernica in long lines Then change that poem into a short line poem. The Participants: Emma, Allie, Josh, Russell, Anushka, Aditi, Arjun, Tate, Samantha, Savi, Alice, Robert Guernica Emma Hoff, 10 The glowing lightbulb touching the candle that goes out when it hears the long, loud bray of the horse, we didn’t need it anyway, the people say as they look towards the birds that are praying, their heads jutting in all directions, slowly the ghost comes downstairs into the cramped basement, her head, neck, and hair are the only parts of her that are present until she grabs an arm, a wail, entering the paintings on the walls until the people fall and say, we are the painting! Do not hurt us! the bull slowly grins, leaning against the wall, horns on one side of its head, the ear from the slaughtered pig on the other, someone’s nails – sharp nails, scratching at the walls as what’s left of what was a human being tries to makes its escape, while the legs, quickly running legs are released and the man dog howls at the ray of light that is extinguished quickly, someone breathing on the door as they, too, are swallowed up, the knob left untouched, but why not just enjoy the party? It’s blood, but it’s my blood, and so you learn the joy of ownership as your face turns white and your eye slowly clicks and turns in its socket, and the smoky tail of the bull slowly runs over you, making sure you’re dead before it carefully tramples you, then picks you up and sings to you. Guernica Transformed It’s a body, cradled by wisps of what is left, it’s a ghost, a bull transformed with red, you say hello anyway, you’re just passing by, you’re just cold, it’s misty red, it’s a misty red bull wearing hooves for a coat. More Than Just a Clear Sky Arjun Nair, 10 The glowing clouds jog across the endless sky. Over the trees, over the planes, over the buildings. Giving us some shade from the burning sun. Giving us rain when our flowers are withering. Giving us more than just a clear sky.
