Mimicking the Artist 2 (30pts): One

Due: Monday, June 8, 2009

One image, one word, one event, one setting, one phrase, one theme, one metaphor...

Pick one of the authors we've encountered over the second half of the term to imitate in your own story. Write an original piece in which you follow the lead of your author in using one image, event, metaphor, or phrase to center your story around. 

For instance, Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" centers around the title metaphor; Viramontes' "The Moths" uses the title image; John Updike centered his "A&P" around the title setting (the A&P grocery store); Kincaid uses the her title "Girl" to define gender roles of impoverished Caribbeans. Garcia Marquez gives us "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." 

What will you give us? These authors' stories use these focal points to explore the lives of their characters, and the worlds they live in. What is your story, what kind of world does it exist in, and what kind of image will help shape that world? Rather than tell us directly, use your focal "one" to paint your story. Use sensory descriptions; pay attention to your mimicked author. How do they write? What language can you take from them and make your own?

Guidelines: 2 pages, single-spaced, and title your piece with a title that is going to grab your readers attention and get them into the story (The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World!)

Mimicking the Artist 1

Mimicking the Artist 1: (plot, narration and character)
due: Friday, May 1 2009

Guidelines:

- 1-2 page short story (perhaps one brief scene from a larger piece) that serves as a creative homage to a writer you admire (or don’t!).

- Can be an author we’ve read, or a writer you’ve read and feel you understand their literary techniques/writing style.

- Imitate/parody the author’s writing style – the literary device(s) that make them famous (plot, characters, language/dialect/syntax/word choice, dialogue, theme, symbolism, suspense, allegory/ etc.)

o At the top, on left-hand side, head your paper with:
    • Your name
    • Mimicking _______ (insert their name)
    • ID story and/or aspect of their writing you’re mimicking

Modernize the stories (or sci-fi them), update the language and setting, etc. If an author is known for thick language or dialect of their time and culture – use the dialect of our time and culture. However, be true to who you are, and consider if your language might offend your audience! In other words, do your best not to have flat characters (stereotypes) unless this is part of the authorial imitation.

The ubiquitous advice to burgeoning writers (even if forced to write!) is to be honest, and “write what you know.” However, leaving the statement at that is dangerous. Without context, it tells you to write with an authority of having the answers, when this is simply not the case What that statement really means is this:

Write from the reality and experiences of your life; what have you been through, what people in your life have gone through; what is the world you live in; what themes of humanity obsess you? What do you know, but not really know? What is worth exploring based on you and your experience?