The Creative Writing Department Welcomes You!

Welcome to the 

Creative Writing Department's 

Coffeehouse Readings, 2019

Script Reading & Writing Assignment

Please get together in groups of 3 and read the script handouts. Notice the format of the play script. Your own script should be in the same kind of format.

After reading the handouts and scenes, please follow the instructions to the post below this one to complete a dramatic/comedic scene of your own.

Script Assignment

Get into groups of 1-3. You are going to write a scene together.

In your group:

• Place your name(s) on the paper. Create a title for your scene.
• Decide on a place or setting. Write this on the screen. Describe the set or location.
• Decide on a time. You may also indicate a season or holiday. Drama often happens during a holiday.
• Each member of the group should create a character, name the character, and write a one-sentence description of the character for other members to see: 
• • for example: 
    • Setting: A playground
    • Time: 2:00 in the afternoon, Memorial Day weekend 
    • Character: Mrs. Chittlesworth: a twenty-seven year old woman who stutters.
• Describe the opening scene. What are each characters currently doing? Give them an action to perform on stage.
  • Mrs Chittlesworth enters the playground with her baby carriage. She stops at a bench and unpacks a lunch.
• Once at least two characters are on stage, go ahead and begin writing the dialogue.
  • Script dialogue is not "quoted"
  • Each speaker should write their character's name and a colon before they speak. 
    • MRS. CHITTLESWORTH:
    • MS. JONES:
    • MRS. CHITTLESWORTH:
• Write dialogue for each character. Try to give each actor at least 10 lines or more before ending the play.
• Indicate stage directions where appropriate. These are usually separated from the dialogue by parenthesis and italics. 

Writing Prompts

Often students just need a push in a direction to get their ideas on the page. The best part about writing is that you (as the artist) are in complete control of everything. There is no wrong answer. Yes, the more you practice writing the better you will get at it, but imagination can take you anywhere. The prompts are just ways in which to point you in a direction.

Feel free to use any of these prompts from this page throughout your life to express yourself through writing.

Creative Writing Prompts
The One-Minute Writer

Today, please take a look at these websites.

Assignment: Write something using one of the prompts you found. If you finish early (before the bell), please finish a piece of work you didn't finish writing last class (for example: the ode or the cinquain poem).

NOTE: Your portfolios will be due Monday! Please make sure you have completed and printed out all the assignments for this class.

Don't forget to check the blog post under this one about poetry.

Micro Fiction

For those of you who like to Tweet and Twitter and so on, here's a type of fiction that has become popular lately: micro fiction!

Most short fiction can be anywhere between 3,000-10,000 words. 3,000-5,000 words are preferred by most magazines. 

Micro fiction is a very short story (usually a story between 300-1,000 words in length). It was originally meant to fit snugly on a computer screen (just like the one you're looking at right now!)

For those of you who like your fiction even smaller, there's something out there called hint fiction, which can be anywhere between 6-100 words, with the most common being 25 or 50 words in length. 

Let's take a look at some of these as models for our own writing:

Or Even Longer
Together they throw the dirt, listen to its plunk against wood, a sound so unlike anything else in the world, one you could remember forever.

Nothing Hurts Anymore
Seth’s energy paths are blocked to his spleen and stomach and large intestine. The acupuncturist places the needles in his tiny body. Seth sees Jesus.

The Test In Front Of Him
It’s that nothing stands out, each detail equal. What to focus upon? Moths in the classroom screen. Leaf-blowers. His teacher’s smile flying like birds, south.

My Son’s Fifth Grade Journal
This boy catches balls, divides fractions, won’t die if he drinks milk, grabs flags off the other team’s players. My dad loves this other boy.

See? That didn't take long at all.

How do I write a short, short story?

1. Start in the middle. Get rid of an introduction and minimize your backstory or character history. Begin with the action!

2. Use the familiar. Use familiar situations or settings. Use historical places or situations so not much description is necessary

3. Use small ideas. Focus on a single specific event or aspect of your topic. Avoid complex plots or long timelines. 

4. Build your story around one central image or moment. Choose something striking.

5. Remove unnecessary words and characters. Edit out any unnecessary words. Combine characters whenever possible. Using short, choppy sentences creates urgency.

6. End with a bang. Keep the reader guessing until the last line. Use a twist by setting up the reader's expectation (what the reader expects to happen) then turn it upside down.

As you read these examples/models, look for the six tips we just read!

Look Into My Eyes
She snaps her fingers at her companion and I cry like a baby, sucking my thumb and calling for mum. The other travelers stare and giggle, then look away.
Further down the train a man turns the pages of his newspaper. WORLD'S GREATEST HYPNOTIST DIES MID ACT reads a headline.
© Rupert M Loydell

Loose Like A Noose
His dentures were lying on the stairs.
She discovered them after the undertaker had left, so she saved them for the Chapel of Rest.
“His teeth,” she said. “They popped out when he took the leap.”
Clearing out the drawers later she found three tubes of denture glue, all unopened.
© Ben Myers 2001

Dad
I thought my father looked like Captain Kirk. There was the blond quiff and the proprietary way he marched around his supermarket, surveying the chiller cabinets.
When he left early in the mornings, I'd wave goodbye through the bug screen. He'd be multiplied in the raindrops hanging in its squares.
© Carrie McMillan 2001

ACTIVITY: Now it's your turn. Using the advice above and inspired by the models, try writing your own hint fiction: between 25-50 words. Use the title of your story to help identify a key idea, character, setting, or plot point.

Try writing a few of these short, short stories. You can put them all on the same page. Print them out when you have completed this exercise.

Poetry & Poetry Advice

Please read:
What is poetry?

Mark Strand: "Eating Poetry"
Marianne Moore: "Poetry"

There a millions of answers to this question. For our purposes, it is the careful organization of words and phrases to express an idea or emotion concerning the human condition (what is means to be human).

Poetry is found in song, in novels, in advertisement, and children's television programming. It's everywhere!

Q: Does poetry have to rhyme? NO. Rhyme is only one poetic technique that writers use. You don't only use a hammer when a saw or wrench is a better choice. So it goes with rhyme. Use it when it works; don't use it when it doesn't.

What are the ELEMENTS of a POEM?

Content: poetry can contain feelings and ideas. Poems can tell stories about famous or common people, places, or things. But content comes from the writer. It is often what the writer THINKS or FEELS about a topic that makes it appropriate for poetry.

Images: Color, taste, texture, sound, scent, temperature are all the stuff of images. Poets use imagery by using metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and other figurative language in their poems. Try to include at least one of these techniques in every poem you write.

Let's watch a few poems:

Billy Collins: The Dead
Some Days
Alone
The Letter
The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac
Shel Silverstein: Crocodile's Toothache
Shel Silverstein: The Giving Tree
Dr. Seuss: Fox in Sox

POETRY VOCABULARY & DEVICES (to use when writing poetry):

Ode: A poem praising its subject. Please read Pablo Neruda's ode: Ode to My Socks in which he praises his socks.

Elegy: a poem of mourning or grieving about something or someone lost.

Ballad: a narrative poem (a poem that tells a story), usually written in quatrains (4 line stanzas) and often sung.

Here's an example of a ballad (and elegy, come to think of it): Molly Malone sung by Sinead O'Connor

List or Pattern poem: a poem that repeats a particular phrase. For example: "I Believe" "I Am" or "I Remember" poems.

Lyric Poem: A short poem about an emotion, meant to be sung or read with music.

Song: a lyric poem set to music.

Repetition: a line or phrase that is repeated in a poem. Usually a key phrase or important idea is repeated.

Verse: A stanza in a poem.

Chorus: A repeated line or group of lines in a song. Another word for this is REFRAIN.

Tercet: a 3-lined stanza.

Quatrain: a 4-lined stanza often found in Ballads.

List or Slam Poem

A list poem repeats a significant phrase or line throughout the poem. It is generally used in Slam and performance poetry. The use of REPETITION or (REFRAIN) is a poetic device poets and writers use to stress an important idea in a poem. In music this would be the refrain or chorus. It works the same way. Each time the phrase is repeated, it gains strength and stresses the point.

In PROSE (and poetry) writing, a repeated phrase in the beginning of a sentence is called an anaphora. At the end of the phrase or sentence it is called: epistrophe. And when it is used at the end and then again at the beginning of a sentence it is called anadiplosis.

Click on the links above for examples of these forms and what they look like. At this point you may begin using anaphora, epistrophe, and anadiplosis in your writing, along with metaphor, simile, personification and chemomorphism.

Here are some sample poems that are list or slam poems:
classic examples

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

What Teacher's Make by Taylor Mali
I'll Fight You for the Library by Taylor Mali
Kill Them With Love by Boonaa Mohammad

LAB WORK: Choose a line. Any line. Use this line as an anchor, a repetition of idea or theme.

Some sample lines might be:

• I believe...
• When I die, I want...
• The world I live in...
• This is for...
• Tomorrow I will go...
• I am...

or pick any other line starter you'd like.

Use metaphor or simile or chremomorphism or personification, anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis to help explore your theme.