Creative Writing Project 1: A story by imitation.

May writers learn their craft by imitating other writers they admire. Your first project requires that you select a short story some special feature of which you would like to imitate, then you write a story imitating that quality or feature. Here are some suggestions:

An the most basic level, take a short story which you like and re-write it, literally, changing some aspect of this story. You might want to change the central character from male to female. Rewriting the story from a new perspective will require you to make changes in the story so that it is a different story. Or you may wish to change the location or the time period of the story. In this most basic approach to the task, think of approved plagiarism. You have permission to use as much of the original story as you wish. You won't be attempting to publish this story anywhere, so it doesn't matter if much of the story is borrowed from an original source. Some teachers recommend that their students actually copy samples of the writing they are trying to learn as a means of fixing the rhythms of these stories in mind. The most basic approach to the project works on this premise.

Or, to complicate the project a bit, look for some aspect of the story you like and try to implement this quality or feature in your own story. You may, for instance, like the structure of Porter's "Flowering Judas" where the story centers around one moment, in this case the fat man playing his guitar and singing to a woman who would like very much to get rid of him but can't and whose mind wanders to people she has known and to her secret desire to run away. Imagine a student in a boring English class, whose mind wanders out to other times, unable to get away. What does this student think about? Where does her mind wander?

Or you may like the way Lawrence uses the rocking horse as a symbol of man's pride and his reliance on luck rather than hard work You think of something you would like to use a symbol, broken windows, for instance, to symbolize broken perspectives or disturbed viewpoints, and you write a story centering around lost people or broken promises.

Or perhaps you like the way a writer describes a certain character and you want to try to describe a character in this way. Perhaps there is something about the writer's perspective that you want to experiment. What about Occurrence at Owl Creek, where a man's life passes in front of him in the space of time in which he is hanged? Perhaps you'd like to try to see how you would have a man's life pass in front of his eyes between the time he learns that his parachute won't open and he hits the ground.

I'll ask you to bring a draft of your story to share with members of the class. More about how these groups will be established later. For now, plan to share a draft of your story with your class mates and to make revisions based on their responses.

You'll then have a conference with me over your story, after you've revised it. When you bring your story for a conference, bring along a photocopy of the story you used as a model.