Writer and teach Margot Case offered a brilliant workshop at he Richard Hugo House Write-O-Rama workshop entitled Ordinary People. We read excerpts from “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” by Donald Bartheleme, Sixty Stories.

I’d tried The Dead Father by Bartheleme, but found it at the wrong time and had never tried [...]]]>

Try writing Flash Fiction vignettes from different viewpoints and moments in the character's life

Writer and teach Margot Case offered a brilliant workshop at he Richard Hugo House Write-O-Rama workshop entitled Ordinary People. We read excerpts from “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” by Donald Bartheleme, Sixty Stories.

I’d tried The Dead Father by Bartheleme, but found it at the wrong time and had never tried Donald Bartheleme again. What a mistake! I’m hot footing it to the book store to find more of his short stories.

Essentially, “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” is written as a series of vignettes supposedly from Robert Kennedy’s life by various people’s viewpoints. It’s similar to a collection of Flash Fiction.

What happens when we put these disjointed things out there and let the reader’s mind create the meaning and the organization. “The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line.” The story presents the concept of “surprising” the reader by capturing the moment creatively.

Not only does it surprise the reader, but it gave me interesting ideas on creating characterization by viewing my characters through the eyes of others.

Exercise: Snapshots of a Character

Create  a series of vignettes, moments or Flash Fiction pieces about a single character; basically snapshots from moments in a person’s life from different perspectives. A exercise in exploring characterization that would be great for non-fiction as well as fiction writers.

For the first part of the exercise, we made a list of the times we really see people:

– offering a last bite
– in the voting booth
– @ church/temple
– watching CNN/the news/football
– home for the holidays
– unexpected generosity/kindness
– in conversation with mother
– with telemarketers
– new introduction
– on safari/tracking
– treating the cashier
– company picnic
– crying child
– fixing things/ broken things
– when someone asks for forgiveness
– reacting to something broken

– lost while driving
–reaction to success
– asking forgiveness
– eating
– performing
– stuck in traffic/driving
– response to someone’s misfortune
– being lost
– walking into the water at the ocean
– moments when they don’t know they are being observed
– what others might say

Part 2 of the exercise

Next we selected one of the photos of people scattered around the table and wrote our own Flash Fiction snapshots.

This was an interesting exercise and I think very useful to any writer wanting to find a fresh way to portray a character. Alas, the guys in the workshop were so predictable. The first one wrote about hookers and doing drugs with Putin. The second guy talked about  Daniel Craig “screwing” his girlfriend and  later his wife. The 3rd man did a long piece about a black singer sensuously caressing guitar. Thank goodness none of them broke out the cigars!

Here’s my efforts working with a black and white photo of an intelligent looking woman looking outside the frame as if paused in her rush to somewhere, something else:

An Unplanned Conference in the Hall
She gets stopped in the hall by a a group of co-workers. There’s a problem. Nothing major, but they can’t decide what to do. She stares at them intently. She understands the entire situation in 2 sentences, 5 seconds. Her face is still but you can tell she’s impatient. She knows the answer and is just waiting for the rest of them to catch up. One of the men finally, tentatively suggests the right solution. He surreptiously glances towards her. She says, “Yes. That’s right.” Then she walks on.

*****

Her Aunt’s Observations
“Oh, she was always good at school, but she got into trouble a lot because she was too impatient. She wasn’t very pretty when she was young. All angles and gawky and kind of klutzy. They all knew her in the emergency room because she was always getting stitched up or dislocated her shoulder or broke a bone. And when you’d ask her what happened, she’d be all wide-eyed with surprise and say she was walking along thinking about something and just fell into a ditch, or drove her bike into a parking meter or some such nonsense. And when you asked her what she was thinking she’d say something like she was thinking about some show she saw about the Conquistadors or wondering why Arthur didn’t just give Lancelot a quest that would take him fair away from Quinevere for several years and crazy things like that. It’s just too bad she doesn’t dress up more and do a little something with her hair. She could be really attractive if she just made a little effort.

*******
Ordering Coffee
“A decaf venti, triple shot, hazlenut, low-fat latte. Please.” She pauses. “And this CD. Thank you.” She pays and puts $1 and the change in the tip jar.
###

I’m definitely putting this in my writing arsenal. And giving Batheleme another go.

I’ve tried reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac three times in my life. I forced myself to finish it last time. But apparently I was reading the wrong Kerouac or the wrong format.

My 1st choice [...]]]>

Try finding the Resonant Detail in your descriptions by using evocative sense memories.

Wow! The beat goes on! Molten meltdown of mental memes send me searching shelves for slender volumes.

I’ve tried reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac three times in my life. I forced myself to finish it last time. But apparently I was reading the wrong Kerouac or the wrong format.

My 1st choice for second period of the Richard Hugo House Write-O-Rama was overflowing. So continuing the medieval mind theme for the day (still taking things a signs and portents), I’m at the Jack Kerouac class — Memory Babe with Deborah Woodard as our instructor.

The first thing was listing the senses:

• sight
• sound
• touch
• taste
• smell

Then Deborah Woodard asked for other senses. Students came up with “thought” and “intuition.” Woodard asked how we came up with thought and a student said ideas were popping out of her brain all the time. Even when meditating. Another student suggested his dreams were merely nighttime thoughts. (Which made me wonderful if my nighttime thoughts would be different without a cat sleeping on my head.)

Woodard then suggested we should practice notation — Notation is a way to quickly capture ideas and memories — and record them in journals. It seems Kerouac kept these kinds of journals which he used when working on his writing. (It seems his works were not the stream-of-consciousness impulses I’d been led to believe in school.) Woodard read us an excerpt for Kerouac’s Dr. Sax describing an urban neighborhood in summer. It contained lots of evocative details. Woodard pointed out that all of these details lead to the Resonant Detail (and yes, you could hear the capital letters in her voice). She asked what people remembered that made them feel the heat of summer in the city and several people mentioned the reference to the wrinkling tar of the sidewalk. Woodard goes on to discuss Proust and his use of details and the Resonant Detail of the limeflower tea (Swann’s Way) in another excerpt. She states that if you sit down and write 30 details, one may be the resonant detail you are looking for.

Resonant Detail Exercise Part 1:

Think back to your home town. (Put yourself in a specific location if you have several “home towns.”) From that vantage point, you’re going to note all the senses and write down details of each. Just do sight, then just do touch, etc. The first part is just to generate lists of the 6 senses, each sense held in isolation and details you remember for that sense.

Here’s my list:

Sight: bright light of sunshine making the sky seem impossible blue; white Conch houses behind white fences; the kapoc tree at the courthouse with it’s rough, knobby bark and short, faded leaves; kids on bikes; the Iguana Man on his old Schwin covered in iguanas, the chihuahua shaking in the basket on the front; magenta splashes of bougainvillea bursting over and through fences contrasting with the violent, shocking purples, reds, oranges of hibiscus; the slatted shadows from palm fronds against the white; pelicans spreading wings to dry

Sound: A masculine voice distinctly enunciating “Here is the kapok tree. The bark of this tree was used to make life preservers during WWII…” rising and fading as the Conch train rolls past; barking dogs in backyards; kids shouting and shrieking on the next block; gulls calling; the infectious rhythms of the steel drum band; the click of the tourist cameras; the lapping of the waves 24 hours a day as constant background to my life

Touch: the heat of the sidewalk, of cars, of steering wheels, of buildings, always warm; the hard, sharp, smooth fronds of the palms; the sharp thorns of the bougainvillea biting me when I wasn’t paying attention; the hard, cutting bumps of coral rock chewing my feet on the beach as I minced my way to the cool water

Taste: the oily, spicy taste of the bollos; the sweetness of fried plantain

Smell: the salty, manky ocean scent; intense sweetness of gardenias, roses, camellias catching you by surprise; the smell of aging wood an undertone to it all

Resonant Detail Exercise Part 2:

Now we each chose a card containing a line from Kerouac and using that line to start, we were to write a short piece using what were resonant details from our own lists.

The line I had was “Dirty snow piled in the gutters.” Here’s what I came up with:

Dirty snow piled in the gutters
Makes me long for Key West.
Fried, sweet plantains,
black beans,
yellow rice,
spicy bollos from brown paper sacks fresh, dripping from the oil
All salty from the taste of the air.
Warm air, heated air
Iguana Man rides past on his old rusty Schwin.
His iguanas basking in the heat, stretched out still, unblinking along shoulders, back, handles as his chihuahua in ratty basket trembles.

Most of the class are poets, but there are some folks who work primarily with prose. There are some excellent snippets, but one especially stood out. The young woman had asked before we started writing what to do if you had no home town. It seems her childhood was spent traveling around the country. Woodard suggested she choose whatever memory came to mind, a moment in those travels that stood out. She chose spending holidays at a Waffle House. In a few short lines she evoked the basket of assorted hot, sticky syrups and the potential delights it offered and then turned it into a symbol of resentment and longing for a home and community.

I’ll never be able to look at a Waffle House the same way again. Now that’s writing well!

I’m falling behind on getting my posts about Write-O-Rama. Life — and other people — keep having other ideas of what I should be doing. Isn’t that always the case? I’ve got 5 more workshops (and the exercises from them) to write up plus lunch and the post Write-O-Rama dinner party (yep, they gave us breakfast, lunch AND dinner).

See you in Ordinary People.

The idea was to choose strong words;  words of one syllable. [...]]]>

Try using single syllable words to focus your writing. It can make it stronger and more dynamic.

My first Write-O-Rama workshop was “Pare It Down” with Anne Leigh Parrish. A workshop to get us to write simply and therefore strongly. Think Hemingway. Not one of my favorites. Not as pathetically macho as Mailer, but too focused so-called “masculine” values for me.

The idea was to choose strong words;  words of one syllable. If we couldn’t write with monosyllables, we were to go back and edit replacing polysyllabic words with monosyllabic ones.

Exercise: Pretend to write a letter using words of only one syllable.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Heidi,

Thank you. You gave me the this chance to go to this class to write. I find I am sparked and fired up by the aura and the dare to write short and clean. You are a great and true friend. Who would have thought that such a strong link could be forged by chance on the Net.

On my first draft of this exercise, I find it hard to use one syllable words. I do not think in one syllable words. I try to write like Hemingway. It is cool and gray this day. The clock on the wall ticks, ticks, ticks. A woman at the table coughs and clears her throat. A plane flies in the sky while a car drives by. You are used to these sounds. I am not now. I do not live in the city now. I can not block them. This is a good test.

I must decide which task to work on for the May trip. I want to work on my book but I want it to be good and there is not much time. My tech thought would be fast and I would have more time to hone it. What do you think is best?

Have I told you how proud I am of your work and grit? You are a spur to me. I get a lift each time you write to tell me of your feats and acts. Bless you! I will now have to use your strength to rein in my glut so I can meet you in May at the class.

This will be a short note since I am stuck with such short words. I do not think in short words. I was taught to use all my words and to learn more words. I respect writing of short words and lines, but I like a mix of words better. You can not get a book like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with just short words even though you must use very few long words.

It’s peaceful with everyone working quietly — except me. I am very conscious of the key clicks as I work on my MacBook Pro over here in the corner. I appear to be the only person who brought a notebook computer to work on. Some didn’t even bring a pen and paper!

There are 2 men and 9 women in this class. I think that may be a consistent ratio, although I suspect things like the zine, graphic novel and performance workshops may have a higher male ratio. I considered going to the workshop on Diary Comics, but I think I’ll keep focused on prose. (Although I have a smashing idea for a non-fiction training guide done as a graphic novel…).

The exercise was a lot of fun and very stimulating. I, obviously, can’t do it all the time, but I’m now more conscientious about paring down some of my writing.

My 1st choice for second period was overflowing. So continuing the medieval signs and portents theme of my day, I’m off to the Jack Kerouac class — Memory Babe by Deborah Woodard.

Given my inability to actual finish On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) the three times I’ve tried it, this is an interesting departure for me. Definitely pushing out of my comfort zone. Check out the next post.