Blocked creative writing students part 2
Story, Plot and Structure.
According to Nabokov the first story was not when a little boy runs down the mountain crying ‘Wolf’ with a wolf chasing him but when he runs down mountain crying ‘wolf’ and there is no wolf there.
Check out the short video capsule to help you think about stories and structure this week.
Video HERE
Take 20 minutes to analyse the three short shorts mentioned in the video and then listen to a possible way of analysing them in terms of plot structure HERE
For an amusing take o.n the shape of stories check out Kurt Vonnegut:
I had fun applying his technique to 5 short stories by Lydia Davies and ended up with the following diagrams:
Story Shapes – rearead some of your favourite stories and have a go at drawing a plot line too.
To conclude, have fun thinking about the shape of your stories and what you wish to achieve thanks to their structure. Remember, there is no right or wrong answer – it’s what works for your particular writing context and enables you to tell your story convincingly. And whatever you do, don’t lose the plot!
Day 406.
Bausch, R. & Cassill, R.V. (Eds.). (2015). The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. (8th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Nabokov, V. (1983). Lectures on Literature. Picador. (Original work published1980).
Rimmon-Kenan, S. (1983). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. Routledge.
Thomas, J., Shapard, R. & Merrill, C. (2015). Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World. W. W. Norton & Company.
Thanks for Lou’s ranunculus ruffles