Fiction Exercises #4 and #5

Fiction Exercise #4: "Ghost Children of Tacoma" by Richard Brautigan and "Murder in the Dark" by Margaret Atwood

Write a story that includes a childhood game (or imaginative play) that relates in someway to at least one serious, adult issue (like death, war, relationships, work, etc.)

Think of an interesting point of view and narrator. (The narrator might be looking back on a childhood game and but writing as if he still believes in the make-believe, as in "Ghost Children of Tacoma." The narrator might be observing, as in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." The observer could be a parent or stranger or someone who has only recently stopped playing imaginatively and is longing to return to childhood. The narrator might tell stories about playing and then reflect on the underlying meaning of the games.)

Include lots of very, very specific vivid and precise detail. Bring childhood alive.

Fiction Exercise #5: "Bread" and "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood, "The Fifth Story" by Clarice Lispector [We didn't read this one this year.]

Tell a series (3-5) very short stories, in which one literary element stays the same: characters as in "Happy Endings," an object as in "Bread," or a conflict--a woman vs. cockroaches--as in "The Fifth Story". Other elements should be varied in the linked stories.

The variations can be significant for any reason you wish. In "Happy Endings" the variations suggested something about relationships and about how since all the stories begin the same way (John and Mary) and end the same way (death) that it's what's in between that matters. In "Bread" the variations suggest something about how the meaning of an object can change when it's put in different situations.