The document provides guidance on various elements of fiction writing such as plot structure, use of scenes and summaries to represent time, choosing verb tenses, types of conflicts, and incorporating sensory details and characterization. It discusses Aristotle's and Freytag's models of plot structure which depict the basic rising and falling action of stories. Students are assigned to write a short story for next week's workshop and given reading assignments on point of view and two short stories. They are warned that failing to complete assignments will put them behind in the course.

1. Let’s do a quick warm-up!
This is an actual free-write! Write whatever comes into your head for
five minutes or so. Just get warmed up.
One rule: You have to use the word I give you (an actual occasional
fiction writing contest prompt). Don’t use it in a snarky way, aka “and
then I had to use this word”

2. Let’s read
from last
week’s
exercise
Exercise either #1 or #2 (p. 122)
1. Consider the ideas of home, homesickness,
foreignness, alienation. Place a character in a scene
where these ideas are evoked by place, time, and
weather.
Or
#2. Two characters are in conflict over a setting. One
wants to stay, the other wants to go. The more
interesting the setting you choose the more interesting
the scene will be. Let the disagreement escalate.
Resolve it. Who wins? How? Why?
Option/Suggestion: Use one or both characters from
the earlier exercise to keep developing them.

3. Fictional
time and
plot

4. Fictional
Time
Stories are both set in time and use time
navigate the events of the story.
Time is navigated through the use of
scenes and summaries.
Scenes happen in the real time of the story
Summaries move the reader through
blocks of time quickly.
Other time-travel techniques in fiction
include flashbacks and slow-motion and In
media res (in the middle of things) when a
story starts mid-action

5. Summary
and
Scene
Summary and scene
are used to represent
time in fiction
Summary moves quickly
over longer periods of
time
Scenes slow down time
and deal with shorter
periods of time

6. Scene vs.
Summary
Scene is “always” necessary in fiction
Summary can be useful, but not
always required
Scene allows the reader to
experience the action
Summary can span any period of
time
Summary is more distancing/un-
experienced

7. Choosing
Which to
use
While a story can be written simply as a
scene or series of scenes, summary helps
transition between scenes
Summary can help highlight the
importance of those events that happen in
scenes
Important events should often be
in scenes rather than summary so that the
reader fully experiences them, is shown,
rather than told, about them.

8. Happy
Endings by
Margaret
Atwood
John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both
have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they
find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming
house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they
can afford live-in help, they have two children, to
whom they are devoted. The children turn out well.
John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex
life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations
together. They retire. They both have hobbies which
they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they
die. This is the end of the story.

9. Flashback
 Allows the writer, and reader, to
move backward in time
 Overuse of flashback can result in
too much back story
 Flashback requires transition from
past to present and back, but not
overly self-conscious ones
 Be wary of tense changes for
flashbacks. If writing in present
tense, use past tense for the
flashback. If writing in past tense,
use the past perfect.

10. A Note on
Verb
Tenses
The main action of a story can be
written in either past or present tense.
Past is more common; present tense
has become more pervasive, but is still
considered more stylized and,
sometimes, intrusive.

11. Present v.
Past
 I see the man enter
 I know what you
mean
 I hear an owl cry
 I walk into the room
 I cry without thinking
 I stand over the
body
 My heart races
 I saw the man
enter
 I knew what you
meant
 I heard an owl cry
 I walked into the
room
 I cried without
thinking
 I stood over the
body
 My heart raced

12. Either/Or
You can write your story in either
past or present tense, but need to
be consistent so that the main
action of the story remains in one or
the other
 I stood over the
body. “I know
what you mean,”
I say. My heart
races.
 I stand over the
body. “I know
what you mean,”
I say. My heart
races.
 I stood over the
body. “I know
what you mean,”
I said. My heart
raced.

13. Which
tense
determine
s past
tense
If you are writing in the present
tense, then you will use the simple
past tense when referring to
events before the main action.
I stand over the body. “I know
what you mean,” I say. My heart
races.
I met the body two weeks earlier.
Then it was alive. It breathed.
Now it stares back at me without
seeing.

14. Or…
I stood over the body. “I know what
you mean,” I said. My heart raced.
I had met the body two weeks
earlier. Then it had been alive. It had
breathed.
Now it stared back at me without
seeing.
If the present action is in past tense,
then the past is rendered in past
perfect.

15. Exceptions?
But of course.
The actual dialogue or thought
may be rendered in present
even if the narrative is in past
(but does not have to be).
“I know what you mean,” she
said.
I thought I knew him, she thinks
to herself.

16. So what is
a story?
And what
is plot?
Stories have characters who have faces, bodies, emotions,
words and experiences
They have settings
They have event(s) that happen over time
They have themes, ideas
They are made out of words
And yet a piece of writing can have all of these elements
and still not be a story.
Pop quiz: What does every story require in order to be a
story?

17. Conflict
Conflict is the dramatic struggle between two
forces in a story. Without conflict, there is no
plot.

18. Plot analysis: Potential Types of
Conflict
Man vs. nature
Man vs. society
Man vs. self
Man vs. Man*

19. Man vs. Man (human vs. human)
This type of conflict finds the
main character in conflict with
another character, human or not
human.

20. Man vs. Nature
This type of conflict finds the main character in conflict
with the forces of nature, which serve as the antagonist.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

21. Man vs.
Society
This type of conflict has the
main character in conflict
with a larger group: a
community, society, culture,
etc. May also include man
vs. technology

22. Man vs. Self
Conflict
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
In this type of conflict, the
main character experiences
some kind of inner conflict.

23. Conflict
does not
mean
extreme
action
 Plot does not require bank heists
or aliens landing on the planet
 It does require characters to want
something and to be changed
through actions in the story
 It requires conflict that reaches a
crisis and is resolved to some
degree
 Ordering events to show conflict,
crisis and resolution in some way
is what constitutes a plot.

24. Pyramid Plot Structure
THE MOST BASIC AND TRADITIONAL FORM OF
PLOT IS PYRAMID-SHAPED.
THIS STRUCTURE HAS BEEN DESCRIBED IN MORE
DETAIL BY ARISTOTLE AND BY GUSTAV FREYTAG.

25. Aristotle’s Unified Plot

26. Freytag’s Plot Structure
Plot is the literary element that describes the structure
of a story. It shows arrangement of events and actions
within a story.

27. Modified Plot Structure
Freytag’s Pyramid is often modified so that it extends slightly
before and after the primary rising and falling action. You might
think of this part of the chart as similar to the warm-up and cool-
down for the story.

28. Plot
Components
Climax, also known as Crisis Action: the
turning point, the most intense moment—
either mentally or in action
Rising Action: the series of conflicts and
crisis in the story that lead to the climax
Exposition: the start of the story, the
situation before the action starts
Falling Action: all of the action which follows
the climax
Resolution: the conclusion, the tying
together of all of the threads

29. Checkmark—plot condensed in
shorter fiction
From
“Story
Form Plot,
and
Structure,”
Janet
Burroway,
Writing
Fiction

30. Plot &
Story
Simply put:
A story is an event or series of events
A plot is the arrangement of these events to
that shows causality, drama and meaning.
The King Died. The Queen Died.
(Events/Story)
The King Died. The Queen Died of Grief
(Plot).

31. Silver Water by
Amy Bloom
 Author of two New York Times best-sellers and
three collections of short stories, a children’s book
and a ground-breaking collection of essays. She’s
been a nominee for both the National Book Award
and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her
stories have appeared in Best American Short
Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and
numerous anthologies here and abroad. She has
written for The New Yorker, The New York Times
Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, O Magazine and
Vogue, among many other publications, and has
won a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Her
work has been translated into fifteen languages.
 She has written many pilot scripts, for cable and
network, and she created, wrote and ran the
excellent, short-lived series State of Mind, starring
Lili Taylor. She lives in Connecticut and is now
Wesleyan University’s Shapiro-Silverberg Professor
of Creative Writing.

32. Silver Water
My sister’s voice was like mountain water in a silver pitcher; the clear
blue beauty of it cools you and lifts you up beyond your heat, beyond
your body. After we went to see La Traviata, when she was fourteen
and I was twelve, she elbowed me in the parking lot and said, “Check
this out” And she opened her mouth unnaturally wide and her voice
came out, so crystalline and bright that all the departing operagoers
stood frozen by their cars, unable to take out their keys or open their
doors until she had finished, and then they cheered like hell.

33. Silver Water
That’s what I like to remember and that’s the story I told to all of her
therapists. I wanted them to know her, to know that who they saw was not
all there was to see. That before her constant tinkling of commercials and
fast-food jingles there had been Puccini and Mozart and hymns so sweet
and mighty you expected Jesus to come down off his cross and clap. That
before there was a mountain of Thorazined fat, swaying down the halls in
nylon maternity tops and sweatpants, there had been the prettiest girl in
Arrandale Elementary School, the belle of Landmark Junior High. Maybe
there were other pretty girls, but I didn’t see them. To me, Rose, my
beautiful blond defender, my guide to Tampax and my mother’s moods,
was perfect.

34. Group Work
 Group 1: Find the summaries. Discuss: Why are these presented as
summarized time? Find one to present to class and talk about why
it’s useful to present as summary
 Group 2: Find the scenes. Find one to present to class and talk
about why it’s useful to present as summary
 Group 3: What is the crisis action?
 Group 4: What kind of conflict is it? How is it resolved?

35. Writing
Exercise
Déjà vu
 Write a scene in which a character
experiences something significant,
which reminds him/her/them of the
FIRST TIME he or she had the
experience of:
 Death, love, violence, shame,
wonder, anger, etc.
 Transition from the current
experience to the past experience
and back

36. Next week:
first work
due
Write a short two to three-page story in
which a character wants something he or
she DOES NOT get, but which ends happily
anyway (exercise #5 on P. 152).
You can use any writing FROM THIS CLASS
you’ve already created in an exercise as part
of this story. You can’t use previous class
work. This should be original.
You must bring in FIVE copies of this piece.
We will be dividing into groups and
distributing them for our first small-group
workshop on March 12
As you write and then revise, look to
incorporate elements of:
1. sensory detail
2. direct and indirect characterization
3. Sense of place
4. Plot
You will each be evaluating the writing for
use of craft elements, using critique sheets I
will bring in and explain next week.

37. Reading
assignments
Chapter 7, Call Me Ishmael: Point of
View in Writing Fiction
.
“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest
Hemingway
“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen.

38. Mid-terms:
Around the
corner
Our midterm work will be out first
workshop on March 12. If you are
behind on your reading, catch up.
Failure to turn in the writing
assignment with copies for workshop
next week will place you very behind
in this course. Similarly, you will be
expected to have read the work for
your group on March 12 and
completed the critique sheets I’ll be
distributing. If you are having any
questions or issues, please let me
know.