I was not expecting the fiction readings to resemble the nonfiction flash essays so closely. To me, fiction always entailed fantastical details and wild storylines, but all these fictional pieces were just incredibly believable. I think they really changed my perspective of what fiction can be and opened up a whole other avenue. I think it’ll be a lot easier for me to write a fictional piece grounded in reality because it’s easier to convince both myself and the reader that it’s believable.
When I finished all of the readings I felt as if they all could have been non-fiction stories, and I wasn’t expecting that. In all honesty, I wanted more fantasy and crazy stories that were obviously make-believe but keep my attention at the same time. I am hoping that we get to read more fun pieces.
The short stories from this week definitely snapped me into a realization that fiction is going to be nothing like nonfiction. I’m excited, but nervous. I found most of my writing that we did in class with the prompts to be rather cliche, and I’m not sure if that’s because of my lack of skill or my own attitudes towards fiction writing in general. I think my greatest hurdle will be overcoming this feeling of internal cringing at my own writing. It feels different than the nonfiction unit, where I felt like the biggest obstacle was sharing work that was real to me, with worries of my own experiences being… boring? Regardless, I’m excited to start this unit.
I was really intrigued by the short readings from Thursday. The flash essays were very obscure and after attempting the writing prompts in class I realized I need to be more creative and break away from narrative writing. I hope to play with point of view and build off of the exercises that help to develop characters because I think it will allow me to separate myself from my writing and create better stories.
(Disregard the previous comment, it is in the wrong place :/)
I thought “Reading the Paper” was a good example of a twist/continuous disconnect between tone and subject that keeps the reader interesting. It starts so casually, “All I want to do is read the paper, but I’ve got to do the wash first.” This doesn’t particularly make you want to keep reading as it is so mundane, but somehow that is also intriguing– why is the washing relevant? So, you keep reading, and all of a sudden Carlson hits you with “There’s blood all over everything,” and now you are invested. I really like these as a juxtaposition, the first line as mundane and the second as the hook that keeps you interested. I thought it was a particularly good example of an early twist that makes a reader invested in finding out the whole story.
I thought that all three of the main fiction stories for this week had incredibly compelling characters, although I was at points confused by the plot/meaning behind the events. In “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, I think I made it about one paragraph in before I had to start over to make sure I had read it right– Mrs. Freeman was almost completely fleshed out as a character before the first paragraph was even over, and the description was genuinely incredible. We also get a sense of her relationship with Mrs. Hopewell in the same paragraph. The amount of detail and characterization present in just the first few lines is impressive: we get that her expression is neutral when she is alone, that she told stories with the focus of someone driving a “heavy truck,” and that she rarely, if ever, retracts a statement. With that, I feel like the reader gets a wholehearted view of Mrs. Freeman immediately. From there, we start seeing their interactions at the breakfast table, and we begin to get a sense of the other characters in the home, namely Joy, Glynese, and Carramae. I think this story does a really good job fleshing out characters while leaving space for them to be elaborated on without repetition. By that, I mean that even though we have a fairly good view of Mrs. Freeman immediately, O’Connor leaves space for her to develop as a character as the story progresses– how she calls Joy by her name, Hulga, or how later on she tells a story about her daughter to Mrs. Hopewell, “insisting upon her attention.” I really liked the way O’Connor wrote the characters in this story, and I hope to learn from it.
Although Dog Days was a bit…disturbing, I found this piece interesting. I was not sure exactly what I was reading at the start but was intrigued with how Budnitz would give an out-of-context story and then provide details that revealed important information to build it up. I loved her message at the end—that despite being desperate, human beings will be animals. The way the message was formed—from the mother trying to convince the family to let the man be treated like an animal as the father insisted it was a human to the mother insisting to not hurt a human being—built up the characters and suspense. The mother went back on her word, exposing her morals and how desperate a human being can be when their desire takes over. Budnitz used this method to reveal the character’s true intentions and questions what human morals/values are.
I was not expecting the fiction readings to resemble the nonfiction flash essays so closely. To me, fiction always entailed fantastical details and wild storylines, but all these fictional pieces were just incredibly believable. I think they really changed my perspective of what fiction can be and opened up a whole other avenue. I think it’ll be a lot easier for me to write a fictional piece grounded in reality because it’s easier to convince both myself and the reader that it’s believable.
When I finished all of the readings I felt as if they all could have been non-fiction stories, and I wasn’t expecting that. In all honesty, I wanted more fantasy and crazy stories that were obviously make-believe but keep my attention at the same time. I am hoping that we get to read more fun pieces.
The short stories from this week definitely snapped me into a realization that fiction is going to be nothing like nonfiction. I’m excited, but nervous. I found most of my writing that we did in class with the prompts to be rather cliche, and I’m not sure if that’s because of my lack of skill or my own attitudes towards fiction writing in general. I think my greatest hurdle will be overcoming this feeling of internal cringing at my own writing. It feels different than the nonfiction unit, where I felt like the biggest obstacle was sharing work that was real to me, with worries of my own experiences being… boring? Regardless, I’m excited to start this unit.
I was really intrigued by the short readings from Thursday. The flash essays were very obscure and after attempting the writing prompts in class I realized I need to be more creative and break away from narrative writing. I hope to play with point of view and build off of the exercises that help to develop characters because I think it will allow me to separate myself from my writing and create better stories.
(Disregard the previous comment, it is in the wrong place :/)
I thought “Reading the Paper” was a good example of a twist/continuous disconnect between tone and subject that keeps the reader interesting. It starts so casually, “All I want to do is read the paper, but I’ve got to do the wash first.” This doesn’t particularly make you want to keep reading as it is so mundane, but somehow that is also intriguing– why is the washing relevant? So, you keep reading, and all of a sudden Carlson hits you with “There’s blood all over everything,” and now you are invested. I really like these as a juxtaposition, the first line as mundane and the second as the hook that keeps you interested. I thought it was a particularly good example of an early twist that makes a reader invested in finding out the whole story.
I thought that all three of the main fiction stories for this week had incredibly compelling characters, although I was at points confused by the plot/meaning behind the events. In “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, I think I made it about one paragraph in before I had to start over to make sure I had read it right– Mrs. Freeman was almost completely fleshed out as a character before the first paragraph was even over, and the description was genuinely incredible. We also get a sense of her relationship with Mrs. Hopewell in the same paragraph. The amount of detail and characterization present in just the first few lines is impressive: we get that her expression is neutral when she is alone, that she told stories with the focus of someone driving a “heavy truck,” and that she rarely, if ever, retracts a statement. With that, I feel like the reader gets a wholehearted view of Mrs. Freeman immediately. From there, we start seeing their interactions at the breakfast table, and we begin to get a sense of the other characters in the home, namely Joy, Glynese, and Carramae. I think this story does a really good job fleshing out characters while leaving space for them to be elaborated on without repetition. By that, I mean that even though we have a fairly good view of Mrs. Freeman immediately, O’Connor leaves space for her to develop as a character as the story progresses– how she calls Joy by her name, Hulga, or how later on she tells a story about her daughter to Mrs. Hopewell, “insisting upon her attention.” I really liked the way O’Connor wrote the characters in this story, and I hope to learn from it.
Although Dog Days was a bit…disturbing, I found this piece interesting. I was not sure exactly what I was reading at the start but was intrigued with how Budnitz would give an out-of-context story and then provide details that revealed important information to build it up. I loved her message at the end—that despite being desperate, human beings will be animals. The way the message was formed—from the mother trying to convince the family to let the man be treated like an animal as the father insisted it was a human to the mother insisting to not hurt a human being—built up the characters and suspense. The mother went back on her word, exposing her morals and how desperate a human being can be when their desire takes over. Budnitz used this method to reveal the character’s true intentions and questions what human morals/values are.