Earlier, I wrote about the value of students tapping into their own areas of expertise as the basis for their writing. Yet I also mentioned that I often steer students away from writing slightly fictionalized accounts of their own lives. Here are two exercises, one each in poetry and fiction, that require students to look beyond their own lives and communities.
Poetry: The “Weird News” poem. There are many sources of “weird news.” Simply Google “weird news,” and marvel at the results. The assignment is to find a recent news article that A) is weird, and B) the writer feels some connection to, and then to write a poem that builds on the article in some way. The poem should tap into the article’s deeper implications, or spin off in some entirely new direction—anything, really, as long as the poem goes beyond the facts presented in the article. The “weird news” poem can also be combined with a formal assignment, so that the student would be writing a “weird news” sonnet, sestina, etc.
One student of mine wrote a terrific poem based on the story of a Japanese clothing designer who, in response to increased street violence against women in Tokyo, created a woman’s dress that allowed the woman to disguise herself as a vending machine. If she were ever in a situation where she was being followed, she could simply pull up the dress and camouflage herself amid the urban landscape. The student’s poem explored the strangeness of protecting oneself by becoming a commodity, and in one stanza addressed the clothing designer directly. It was the sort of wonderfully idiosyncratic poem that the student wouldn’t have written in the absence of an assignment that had her looking beyond her own life and community.
Fiction: The “Advice Column” story. You’ll find them in many newspapers and, of course, online. What do all advice columns have in common? The letters people write are rooted in conflict, and not just any conflict: sticky, icky, urgent conflict, the kind that makes you glad it isn’t you in that person’s situation…which happens to be the exact sort of conflict we like in fiction. So the exercise (which works for students at all levels) is this: Find a letter written to an advice columnist, either in a newspaper or online, that you feel would make a good piece of fiction, and then write a story with that conflict at the center of the story. The advice columnist’s answer isn’t important. The question—the predicament—is the important part. Start with that core predicament, then fictionalize a story around it, coming up with original characters, setting, etc. Do that, and you’ll know that your story is rooted in conflict.