Week
2: Alien EncountersWriting Notebook Topics for English
114
Write on one or more of the following every week.
Week
1: Animals
Week 2: Alien Encounters
Week 3: Place Descriptions
Week 4: Cyborgs & Cyberpunk
Week 5: Feminist Utopias/Dystopias
Week 6: Writing Fantasy Fiction
Week 7: Dreamscapes
Week 8: The Natural World
Weeks 9 & 10
You are an animal. What kind? Where are you? Something or someone is approaching. Who? What happens next?
Describe someone you know well from an alien's point of view.
Describe an alien encounter.
A woman in an airport approaches you and tells you about alien "walk-ins" that inhabit the airport. You think she is crazy until. . .
Ten years have passed since the aliens landed in L.A. They haven't bothered anyone, in fact have done their best to be helpful. One of the things humans have learned is that instead of two genders of male and female, they have a very different arrangement. Describe in detail.
Week
#3: Place Description
Description: Now & Then
1. Write a description of a place that makes it seem real to the reader. See
Judith Merril's That Only A Mother, p. 46, the paragraph that begins, "The
city in the early morning. . . " . First describe a room, a street, a
place that is grounded in "our" reality as she does. Make
it vivid and memorable.
2. Write a description of a place that cues the reader into the fact that this takes place in the future. For example, Judith Merril's story, second paragraph, incorporates technology from the future. Don't overdo it.
1. Turn a poem (yours or someone else's)
into a short story.
For instance, the following poem in which inanimate objects become sentient
could provide the seed of an idea for a story of a conscious door.
WITHIN ANOTHER LIFE
Those whose days were grudging or confused
may come back trapped within another life
as a boulder, or a pane of glass,
or a door that suffers every time it's slammed.
If I return a boulder, love, some summer day
come sit by me and contemplate these horses and these hills.And if a windowpane, gaze through to see
the meadow on our walks where the brown geese strut.
And if I am a door, come home through me,
be sure I'll keep you safe.
And if a knotted, twisted rope,
from long self-clenching and complexity,
oh love, unbind, unbraid me then
until I flow again like windswept hair.-Barry Spacks
2. Embed a poem as a plot element in a short story as in Mimsy Were the Borogoves.
Nonfiction: Describe how using a particular technology--the Internet,for instance--has changed you (or us).
1. Designing a cyborg:
a) design a cyborg who will be your companion on a long trip.
b) design a cyborg to be used as a parent.
c) design a cyborg to be used to protect and defend you and your children.
d) design a cyborg to be used as a business partner.
e) design a cyborg who will be your lover.
f) design a cyborg who combines all of the above functions. What conflicts do you encounter?
2. Describe a human person who is like a cyborg. Explain how he/she got that way.
3. Write a love poem from one cyborg to another.
Nonfiction:
1. Multi-nationals are often the "bad guys" of cyberpunk. What would have to change in order for a multi-national to become a force for good?
2. Respond to Donna Haraway's essay, The Cyborg Manifesto, especially the last line: "I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess."
Week
# 5: Feminist Utopias/Dystopias
1. Feminist Utopias such as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland and Joanna Russ's The Female Male are worlds without men. Feminist Dystopias often depict a society where men are in charge. Imagine either a feminist utopia or dystopia. Visualize it in detail to yourself, then use it as the setting for a story. Show, don't tell.
2. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the narrator describes her dress in a way that gives you a glimpse into her controlled, repressed world. (Page 80 in reader.) In a similar way, describe clothing in a way that reveals or suggests a world.
3. Taking the character of Mrs. Burridge in "When It Happens" as an example, go into the mind of someone you know and delienate their personality through their fantasy life.
4. The narrator of "Boobs" and of Nadya both describe a transformation from girl to wolf. Describe a sudden transformation from girl to _____________.
Non-Fiction:
Analyze the elements of feminist utopias or dystopias in SF, compare the different treatments by such authors as Joanna Russ, Margaret Atwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Lisa Tuttle.
Week # 6 Writing Fantasy Fiction
1. Sound over sense exercise: from Sarah LeFanu's Writing Fantasy Fiction
Think of three language sounds that give you pleasure, and write them down. Then embody the sounds in as many words as you can, or as you feel like. Then write three or four or five sentences using all the words (e.g. your sounds might be 'ush,' 'ock' and 'eeze' and the words might included 'hush', 'rush hour', 'luscious', 'frock', 'grockle', 'socket', 'breeze', 'frieze', 'easy', etc. The aim of this exercise is to allow yourself to write sentences that are sound-led rather than sense-led. To place hearing above thinking. To explore the sensual pleasure of speaking and hearing words that include sounds you like. You should say the words out loud and the sentences out loud. . . .Listen to the pattern the sounds make; you will find a rhythm there that has come from somewhere inside you. Remember tat all spoken language has an internal rhythm. If the language spoke in your fantasy world has an internal rhythm it will sound natural, and therefore authentic.
2. Write a page of dialogue which indicates that the action is taking place "elsewhere, elsewhen" but doesn't sound hokey. (Not easy!)
3. Pick a part of your body and let it speak in the first person. Let it say whatever it wants to, let it rant, complain, compliment, celebrate. Your feet talking about those high heels. Your hands describing tapping on a computer, digging in the soil, stroking a baby. (topic inspired in part by Sarah LeFanu but also by Alberto Moravia's novel He & I ).
Nonfiction
1. Research archetypes such as the shadow, especially in the work of C.G. Jung. Analyze how archetypes are used in fantasy.
2. Read the stories/excerpts that 114 students have posted on this site.
Your checklists are due this week: May 17th. You may turn them in by e-mail or hard copy.
1. In Memoirs of a Survivor, Doris Lessing uses many of the techniques of dream: rapid, unexplained transitions, disregard for "normal" time and space, characters that suddenly morph into someone else -- all of which is held together by an inner logic all its own.
(a) Write out a dream which has some of the above elements (or stitch together a number of dreams) to create a dreamscape setting for a story.
(b) Take a realistic short story that you have written and turn it into a dreamscape.
Non-fiction:
1. Investigate the Sufi elements in Memoirs of a Survivor.
2. Read the stories/excerpts that 114 students have posted on this site.
1. Write a story using natural objects (rocks, flowers) or forces (wind, rain) as characters.
2. Pick a natural object (rock, flower) and write a poem from its pov.
3. As discussed in class, extrapolate political correctness into the future. Positive or negative.
Read over your writing notebook. Turn one or more of the entries into a short story.