Category: Eng204

Radical Revision

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Holmes and WatsonWhile riding on the train from London to Cardiff, Sherlock Holmes fans Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss decided to adapt the Arthur Conan Doyle stories into a television series. BBC’s Sherlock doesn’t just recreate the stories, but reimagines them for the 21st century.

Revision can, of course, mean changing dialogue so that the characters don’t sound the same. It can mean clearing up confusing passages or making more conscious choices about line breaks. But what happens when a story or poem isn’t working? One way to shake things up is to radically revise. Radical revision involves changing an aspect of the piece and changing it completely. You might switch point of view to one of the minor characters or write the poem in another form. Maybe you set your story in a completely different location–even outer space!

What Sherlock does so well is take the essence of the stories and radically revise them for television. Moffat explains, “Everything that matters about Holmes and Watson is the same. Conan Doyle’s stories were never about frock coats and gas light – they’re about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood curdling crimes and frankly, to hell with the crinoline.”

For your journal this week, write about the revisions you noticed in the episode. How did it change from the story? What was the result? You might look at the portrayal of Irene Adler, the relationship between Holmes and Watson, Holmes’ deductive abilities, the adaptation of the plot, or a topic of your own that relates to the elements of fiction. Use examples from both “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “A Scandal in Belgravia.” This should be one of your longer posts (think 500-750 words).

Looking Back on You, The Creative Writer

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Keep Calm and Write SomethingAt the beginning of the semester, I asked you to tell us about your experience with creative writing. You, of course, all had required reading in school. We’ve all read poems, stories, and personal essays but, as you’ve learned, writing them is a completely different experience.

You wrote a letter to your creative genius, looking toward your relationship this semester. For this week’s journal entry, look back on your letter and your writing. Did you keep your commitment? How was your relationship to your genius successful? Where could it use some work? Also, comment on how you’ve changed as a creative writer. What have you learned in these last four months? How will you carry this with you into your life? Will you continue to write creatively, even for fun?

 

Finding the Creative in Nonfiction

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Creative nonfiction demands the use of the full range of tools we wield as creative writers: imagery and figurative language, scene, character, sound, voice, and perspective.

— Nancy Pagh (Write Moves 174)

As you read personal essays, it’s important to remember the technical skill that goes into writing them. The nonfiction that you’re mot used to writing, academic essays, require presenting evidence, analysis, and argument. They don’t require that you tell a story. They ask you to convince your reader of your authority, but not to give them an experience. Like fiction, creative nonfiction brings the reader into the world of the writer.

For your journal entry, look back at one of the personal essays we read for today, Sedaris or Harjo. How does the writer use “the full range of tools” of creative writers? Use specific examples from the text. Find the creative.

The Things They Say

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Dialogue is an important element of the short story. The first time you write one, though, you may not pay close attention to dialogue. You’re worried about “capturing” the characters and story you’ve imagined in your head and you’re struggling to get it out on paper. What your characters say–and what they don’t–can reveal a lot about them. In “Vampires in the Lemon Grove,” for example, we learn that Clyde’s “life” before he met Magreb was influenced by his perceptions of vampirism. He was foolish and didn’t know it. As readers, we learn this through dialogue. Think about “Hills Like White Elephants” or other short stories you’ve read. Pay close attention to how the writer uses dialogue to reveal character. Then, write a brief journal entry explaining what you’ve discovered. How did you use dialogue in your story? No spoilers necessary, just technique. What might we learn about your characters from the things they say?

Setting the Story

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Hogwarts and Black Lake

What would The Great Gatsby be without Long Island and The Jazz Age? What about Harry Potter without magic or Hogwarts? Setting is an important element to any story, though one we might not automatically think about. Both where and when your story takes place affects your characters.

For this week’s journal entry, explain how you have or have not considered setting. If you’ve already written or planned your story, how might you revise the setting? If you haven’t yet thought about it, how might you use setting in your story? Think about your favorite stories. How does setting help shape them?

 

The Shape of Your Story

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Shape of StoriesKurt Vonnegut’s explanation of the “shape of stories” is incredibly accurate: “man falls down a hole,” “boy meets girl,” and “girl loses mother.” Those “shapes” appear in every genre, in every time period. Yet writers find a way to make the stories seem new.

Your task for this week is to decide on the shape of your story. Although you don’t need to give anything away in your journal entry, explain why you chose the shape that you did. What type of story are you writing, or are planning to write? How might you make it seem new? Make sure to rewatch the Vonnegut video first.

Characters

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Characters, as we’ve discussed in class, can be round or flat, major or minor. Each play an important role in building your story. How a writer reveals characters–characterization–is crucial. Characterization done well, avoids telling the reader about who the characters are. Instead, it shows them through actions, dialogue, and narration.

For this week’s journal entry, choose one character from your favorite short story, novel, film, or television show and answer the following questions to the best of your knowledge from the text. Not all questions will apply to all characters. Then, write a brief (2-3 paragraphs) analysis of how the author reveals that character.

Character name:

Age:

Occupation:

Family members and/or significant others:

Personality traits:

Character history (where is he/she from?):

Highest level of education:

Physical traits:

Biggest motivator:

Biggest fear:

Things he/she likes:

Things he/she dislikes:

(Not So) Free Verse

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Free verse is a popular poetic form especially, it seems, for students. It may be because “form” seems dated. Form suggests Shakespeare’s sonnets or Keats’ odes. But free verse is a form. In fact, it’s a form that’s over a century old.

Perhaps the reason that students prefer free verse is because it seems less intimidating than having to count syllables or worry about rhyme. Free verse, though, is not the same as “anything goes.” T.S. Eliot famously declared, “no verse is free for the man [or woman] who wants to do a good job.” William Carlos Williams similarly stated, “being an art form, verse cannot be free in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principles.” So what do we mean, then, by free verse?

Free verse means that there are no set rules to follow. It doesn’t have follow a particular rhyme scheme or syllable count. Rather, the poet and the poem establish the “rules.” The poet must figure out what form works for a particular poem. Line length, stanza count, and punctuation all help decide the musicality of a poem. If we don’t think about these things, we aren’t writing poetry. We’re writing lineated prose.

Most students choose free verse for their workshop poems. Discuss you “guiding principles” for your first poem. Were there any? Was it “anything goes”? How might you revise knowing now that free verse is not entirely free? If you wrote a formal poem, what did you notice about others’ free verse poems? How might you write one of your own?

I Survived My First Workshop

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…and all I got was this discussion question!

balloons

Congratulations on making it through your first workshop. Sharing your writing with other writers is daunting. At their best, though, workshops are an incredibly rewarding experience. I’m proud of all of you for embracing the challenge.

For some of you, this was also your first poem. You’ve discovered what the seasoned poets already know–writing poetry is difficult. So, for this week’s journal, I’d like you all to reflect on how you did it. What was your writing process? What surprised you? How did you know when it was “finished”? What did you learn from your workshop experience that you can use to write your next poem?

On Form

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Although formal poetry was overshadowed by free verse for most of the 20th century, there’s been a revival of form in the last few decades. Formal poetry can be challenging for any poet. You’re given a set of rules, instead of creating them yourself. New formalists don’t always adhere to the strict rules of the past, though. A sonnet, for example, may not look exactly Shakespearean or Petrarchan. Still, it will have elements that make it a sonnet.

We’ve read and discussed a variety of forms. For your journal this week, please go to The Academy of American Poets website. Click on “forms” in the “poem index” menu. Choose one form, click on the “read more” button to learn about the form. Then, choose one example of a poem in that form to read.

poets.org form

poets.org screenshot

When you’re finished, write a journal entry that discusses which forms most interest you? Do you like reading formal poetry or do you prefer free verse? Did researching a form make you see formal poetry differently? How? Why? What form might you try writing this semester? Feel free to expand on these questions!

Feel free to choose any form. I’d recommend choosing either one you’re not familiar with or one of the forms from either Wednesday’s or today’s class reading.