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WELCOME...

.... to the Prose Narrative Class Online for January 2008!

HOW THIS CLASS WORKS

Each week you’ll receive a short “lecture” with assignments and activities and things to read or links to things to read. Some of the exercises will be for loosening up or getting ideas. The one called MAIN ASSIGNMENT is the one you are supposed to send in for comment from me. You may always substitute something you are more interested in, however. You may send up to 1200 words a week, which is comparable to 4 or 5 double spaced typed pages. Some people prefer to turn in a couple of the short assignments for responses: turn in whatever you prefer, but keep the total word count under 1200.

For this first session, please also include your “Autobiography as a Writer” paragraph described below.

Send the materials to me at MeredithSueWillis@gmail.com. Please put the homework in the body of the e-mail AND attached as a Word file. Homework is due before midnight on the due date, Monday, January 14, 2008 for this first session’s homework. Earlier is fine too. The next class will be posted on Tuesday, January 15, 2008.

As you know, this class is asynchronous— that is, you may work at any time, and the only requirement is that you get your homework in by the due date. You'll receive my response to what you've written soon, but don’t wait for my response to go on to the next session. To repeat: you may always substitute an equal number of words of your choice from any of the exercises or even from some other ongoing project. This class is for you– so make sure you get what you want out of it.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROSE NARRATIVE

All prose narrative tells a story, and one of the things a story does is explore and explain things. Sometimes the writer wants to reconstruct the facts as closely as possible. There is, of course, no way that we can write about the past without editing– leaving out some parts, reconstructing other parts.Some writers of nonfiction invent conversations and even incidents. On the other hand, the fiction writer willfully experiments with what might have happened: what if I had not turned down that boy in high school? What if a person like me had not gone away to college but stayed in my little home town? Both of these situations, the one where the writer is playing “what if” and the one where the writer is trying to reconstruct as accurately as possible, are exploring and seeking a kind of truth.

There are a lot of ways in which people do this exploring and seeking. When a person decides to attempt a factual history of her or his whole life, it is called autobiography. Memoir is a window into a particular part of a life, and it is frequently more like fiction in its techniques of dramatizing events. Thus you have someone’s memoir of a year living in Italy or the story of their experience in the Vietnam War.

At the same time, there is a kind of novel called “autobiographical” that takes the form of an autobiography (lots of detail, covering lots of time) and often uses real life materials, but re-imagined with names changed. The word “novel” covers a lot more than autobiographical novels, of course. It includes everything from Harry Potter and science fiction to fiction that is so close to what happened that only names have been changed. Novels and short stories usually use a lot of real life materials, frequently experimenting with “What if?” as I mentioned above.

Other kinds of prose narrative are novella, which is more about length than genre (generally defined as 15,000 to 40,000 words) and short story (less than 10,000 words). Short stories and personal narratives, which are short memoir pieces, often focus on a single moment or event or mood. Some people, rather than trying to structure a whole book, will write a series of personal narratives that loosely coalesce into a memoir-story of a certain period in their lives.

In prose narrative, however, all of the rules about length and how much you can make up, are pretty arbitrary. They should probably be considered more as guidelines than rules– general boundaries to help you figure out what you are doing and how to structure it. Especially as you move into second and third drafts, it’s useful to think about what genre you’re writing. For example, if you are writing from real life, are you going to limit the period of time covered in memoir style? Or are you going to cover your entire misspent youth? Will you make up dialogues to enliven and dramatize an experience?

WRITE:

.... a one paragraph autobiography of yourself as a writer. Start as early as you want– did you hate writing when you were in the early grades of school? Or, like me, did you go to a school where nobody ever wrote at all? Did you begin with comic books? Poems? What attracted you to writing prose narrative? Do you see yourself as a memoir writer or a fiction writer? Or something else entirely?

READING ASSIGNMENT (OPTIONAL):

Here are some things to read, first the opening of a lovely memoir by Joyce Dyer of growing up in a world dominated by a giant industrial company in Ohio. To read the opening of this memoir, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have it already on your computer, and you probably do, get a free download at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html . The piece itself is located online at http://www3.uakron.edu/uapress/pdfs/dyerweb.pdf .

And, for something completely different, here is an old fashioned short story with a surprise ending by the French writer Guy De Maupassant. “The Necklace” can be found in its entirety online at http://www.bartleby.com/195/20.html .

You've read a couple of examples of prose narratives, and you've written about yourself as a writer. What are your own materials? Here’s an exercise for exploring some of those materials that you may not even know you have yet.....

WRITE:

Try a Directed Free Write. Free Writing is writing whatever comes to mind during a set period of time. The technique is to write whatever comes into your head, keeping your pen moving, repeating the last word if you get stuck until something else comes out. A Directed Free Write works the same, except that you are given a starting point. So get a comfortable pen and paper or turn on your computer, and set a timer or stopwatch for ten minutes.   Think of the first time you did something. This could be balancing yourself on your bicycle or the first time you went to a funeral or the first time you drank too much– it doesn’t matter what it is, but choose something that was a First, and start writing: “I remember the time,” or “I was about 19 the first time I...” or “I didn’t do it until I was already the mother of three kids....” Don’t try to be logical or to write well– you’re after material. Let words come out messy, out of order, with bad grammar– whatever comes.

WRITE:

Read back over what you wrote and circle or underline one sentence or phrase that seems most interesting to you. Do a second Directed Free Write starting with that line as the starter. Write another ten minutes.

Ideally, this kind of free writing, and lots of journal writing, and perhaps dream collecting will give you lots of material for writing. The objective here is not some pre-existing “right” material, but just to explore and try to find the story you want to tell. The Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison says in “The Site of Memory” in INVENTING THE TRUTH: THE ART AND CRAFT OF MEMOIR, “the crucial distinction for me is not the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth. Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot.”

For this reason, it seems to me that all the forms of prose narrative that attempt to make sense of the world are closer to one another than not. This session’s main assignment is an experiment in trying material both as memoir and as fiction.

WRITE: MAIN ASSIGNMENT:

Think of an event from your own past. This can be from childhood or only last year, but be sure it is something that has some emotional resonance for you, perhaps something that left you puzzled, a conflict with another person, or a moment when you realized something for the first time. Focus on the actual moment of the conflict or the realization, or whatever it is. The assignment is to write three versions of this event or incident.

FIRST, in a few sentences, narrate what happened. Don’t bother with detail or dialogue, just give an efficient summary of the facts. For example: “I really hated first grade because of my mean teacher.”

SECOND, dramatize the scene, keeping to the facts as you remember them, but focusing on concrete details of what people said, smells and tastes, etc. Again, this is not the time to analyze the event but to pull out as many details from your memory as you can. For example: “I looked out from under my arm and saw her sturdy two inch heels and the nylons on her well-shaped calves that seemed too young for her face. When she got to me, she stopped, and I looked over her skirt, over her crossed arms, to the grimacing yellow teeth and the purple splotches of rage on her cheeks.”

THIRD, rewrite the scene, from the point of view of someone who was there OTHER THAN YOURSELF. Going into another person’s head immediately turns even a realistic piece into fiction because it is always an act of imagination to theorize about what is going on in another person’s mind. For example: “Sometimes, she thought she was going to explode, thirty six of them with their angel skin and big eyes and each one of them plotting the next revolt against her authority. Knowing that as soon as she turned her back, they would whisper, wiggle, make fun of her...”

That’s it for this first session. Please send you assignment or other passage of your writing both in an email and in a attachment. Please also include the little autobiography-as-a-writer-paragraph.    Feel free to ask any questions if something isn’t clear or to ask to make sure I cover something of interest to you– I like your notes!

Send in your homework by midnight Monday, January 13, 2008. The second session goes up Tuesday, January 14, 2008. I look forward to reading your work!

                         Meredith Sue Willis

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Meredith Sue Willis Author and Teacher

Prose Narrative Class Online! January 2008

An extra assignment, just for fun: Did you ever take a dance class? Did you ever want to? Write a personal narrative about yourself and dancing...

A Four Session Writing Class with Meredith Sue Willis

Session One

Tuesday January 8, 2007 Session One homework due Monday, January 14, 2007 Midnight Session II Session III Session IV

WELCOME...

.... to the Prose Narrative Class Online for January 2008!

HOW THIS CLASS WORKS

For this first session, please also include your “Autobiography as a Writer” paragraph described below.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROSE NARRATIVE

WRITE:

WRITE:

WRITE:

Read back over what you wrote and circle or underline one sentence or phrase that seems most interesting to you. Do a second Directed Free Write starting with that line as the starter. Write another ten minutes.

For this reason, it seems to me that all the forms of prose narrative that attempt to make sense of the world are closer to one another than not. This session’s main assignment is an experiment in trying material both as memoir and as fiction.

WRITE: MAIN ASSIGNMENT:

FIRST, in a few sentences, narrate what happened. Don’t bother with detail or dialogue, just give an efficient summary of the facts. For example: “I really hated first grade because of my mean teacher.”

Send in your homework by midnight Monday, January 13, 2008. The second session goes up Tuesday, January 14, 2008. I look forward to reading your work!

New Book for Kids
Billie of Fish House Lane
From Montemayor Press
Read a chapter:
Click on Catalogue,
Literature for Children

A literary Map of
West Virginia!

Writers' Links
& Resources
Resources for writers
Poetry Daily
Writers Almanac
How Artists Get Paid
Int. Women's Writing Guild
New Publishing Paradigm
Resources for writers
Thunderburst
Edwards Bros. Printers

Writing by MSW
Online Fiction
Online Nonfiction
Article on Revision
Article on Dialogue
Getting Published
Reviews
Books
Adult Fiction
Books for Children
Books on Writing
Free Newsletter
for Readers

FamilyOriented Websites
Ellen Kahaner's Mural class
Reading and Traveling with Kids

More
Jeremy Osner

Photos and Art
Some great graphics?
http://ann-s-thesia.com/

Visual Artists's Websites
Charlie Cowger
Ann Olson
Rochelle Ratner
Duane Smith
Ella Yang

Music& Mixed Media Websites
Peter Sciaino
Deep Listening

Blogs I Read
National Book Critics Circle
Sherry Chandler
Fred First
Cat Pleska
Valerie Nieman
Dee Rimbaud
Larissa Shmailo
Christopher Vera
David Weinberger
Lisa WIlliams
Loho (Group Blog about the Lower East Side)
Brooklyn Parrots Blog!

Meredith Sue Willis
Author and Teacher

Prose Narrative Class Online!
January 2008

An extra assignment, just for fun: Did you ever take a dance class?
Did you ever want to? Write a personal narrative
about yourself and dancing...

Tuesday January 8, 2007
Session One homework due
Monday, January 14, 2007 Midnight

Session II
Session III
Session IV