I don't care much about the fiction/nonfiction boundaries -- any good exercise should really work for both (besides, obviously, those genres which can not exist in one or the other), and it should be up to the writer to alternate between the two (for example, if for "sin" I had written about the greed of, oh, I don't know, the CEO of Enron -- obviously I'd have to fictionalize some of it, but it would've still fallen well within scope of the exercise).
I personally hate research, so I'll avoid non-fiction as much as possible ;)
Anyways, I do think certain exercises are more fun than others, and after several weeks of essentially "write a short story," we'll change things up a bit. Everyone knows about Hemingway's six word story?
Well, I think six words is not enough, but I love the concept. So, this week, we'll use fourteen (twice one more than six, chosen mostly at random). Tell me a story in fourteen words. And have fun with it, kay? If more than one pops up, go right ahead -- they're short, so theoretically they should be easy, right? (right? Riiiiight?) Also, these can be non-fiction (see Shatner's six word story) too, if you're clever enough.
edit: because they're so damn fun, I demand five stories each. Please?
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3 comments:
I politely disagree with a couple points... I like the idea of focusing either on fiction or non-fiction; the different authors here have different talents, and if the weekly assignment were just left open, I think people would be tempted to just do what their comfortable with. We really don't learn or grow, that way.
Also, I do research for my fiction. Sometimes not much, but I think the idea that fiction does nto require any research simply because it's "made up" is not always true.
I like this assignment idea, Zach. Stories are tougher than novels in some ways, mostly because it involves boiling things down to what's essential. this is the quintessential boiling-down exercise, even tougher than writing song lyrics.
If you do this assignment well, it'll show. If you just throw 70 words together without that effort, that will show as well.
uh
okay
i was not exactly expecting critique on my assignment but i suppose there is not strictly anything wrong with that
at least not strictly
(i do research to sometimes but usually it is for technology and it is usually just for background not you know 'this guy was hell of crazy here is a list of things he did' and then make reference to them in the story sort of research
more 'hey did you know they can read your mind with a robot now' research)
: )
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