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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Week Four and yell out This week we're

going to discuss fiction writing.

First of all, what is fiction?

Fiction is simply literature that is in the form of

prose, which especially includes short stories and novels that describes

imagery, events and people.

Generally speaking, fiction is not true in terms of the

reality of the world, and there's rather an imaginative creation

that the author has come up with.

You can see in the picture here these air images

of the Harry Potter books.

Harry Potter is certainly an excellent example of a type

of fiction.

Fiction can be divided up into many different genres of

fiction. So perhaps you really enjoy reading fantasy novels like

Harry Potter.

Maybe you enjoy historical fiction, which would be a false

story, but something based in something that's historically accurate.

Um, you could have romantic novels, which would just to

be completely made up stories about romance and love.

So there are a lot of different ways that you

can write fiction ways that you can enjoy fiction, just

like we know from watching movies or television shows.

There are a lot of different types of storytelling and

that is true for fiction as well.

So the main thing to remember when we're talking about

fiction is that it is literature that is made up,

that someone creatively thought of a story that maybe has

something to do with some aspect of their life or

something they experienced that was meaningful to them.

But the details of the story are completely made up,

you know, For example, Harry Potter takes a lot of

examples from other literature, their characters that can be sort

of traced back thio, Greek literature, their characters named after

constellations. And there are interactions between people, discussions of good

and evil that are certainly accurate and true.

But the characters themselves and the story and the things

that they're doing are things that the author has made

up. Thio help tell the story in, In the case

of Harry Potter, in a fantastical way that, of course,

engages three audience and the readers and allows them to

experience all of the different elements of the story without

having to experience those specific things.

In reality, we can talk about issues of good and

evil and Harry Potter without having to experience, you know,

actual examples in the world of where similar things may

have happened.

Instead, it could be a little bit more black and

white, a little more clear cut so that people can

really experience that storytelling through the creativity of the author.

So again, fiction is a kind of literature that is

generally in short stories, you know, maybe five pages or

even less or full length novels that are describing events

and people using the imagination of the author.

Of course, knowing what fiction is doesn't necessarily mean that

we can write fiction well.

And writing well is, of course, different than just writing

a couple of helpful rules to remember one writing fiction

off course.

You want to remember that when you're writing fiction, you're

writing something that is creative, that you're writing something that

is made up and even if you're taking inspiration from

another story or something that happened in your life, the

goal of writing fiction is that you have fictionalized something

that maybe you are familiar with.

So you're taking something that might be riel and turning

it into something that is unique to your own imagination.

So these eight rules start with show.

Don't tell.

This can be a really difficult thing to dio in

writing, and it actually really changes the way that you

experience that writing when you're reading it.

What this means is if your characters air experiencing something,

you don't need to go right out and tell the

reader in very clear words exactly what's happening.

Instead, show us through your descriptions of the dialogue, your

descriptions of the world around your characters.

What is happening to them?

Um, kind of like we were talking about last week

with writing dialogue and remembering and playwriting that people don't

necessarily always say exactly what they mean.

This is true for fiction, writing as well.

When we experience the world, it's not necessarily that the

world is telling us exactly what it is.

We're experiencing it, So you want to write in a

similar way.

Show us what's going on around your characters instead of

just telling us exactly what's happening to them.

And of course, you want to create three dimensional characters.

This really means that I want your characters to be

complex. If you have a character that is simply just

your evil character, that's not particularly interesting.

They'll fulfill a role in your story, certainly, but there

is nothing for us.

Toe. Learn about them.

They're just evil.

If we think about our readings from the last two

weeks, we know that characters like Amanda, who may be

at first, seems like a really frustrating character who is

really controlling of her Children.

And maybe we really don't like her, Um, but as

we continue to learn more about her, we realized that

while she is controlling of her Children, she's doing that

for specific reasons that she believes is good and accurate.

You want your characters to be like Amanda Toe be

complicated and not super simple because people aren't super simple.

People are complicated, And of course, you need to choose

a point of view.

This is something that we're going to keep coming back

to when we're talking about fiction writing and when we're

talking about nonfiction writing, you need tohave, a focal point

in any story that you write, or any story that

you tell because without that there is no way for

us to really understand the story.

We go through the world with ourselves as the point

of view so you could write fiction that way as

well. You could write fiction from the first person.

So using I statements your you know, main character is

the one who's telling the story.

We're seeing the world through that characters eyes as if

we are that character.

Or we could tell that story through a third person.

And while you know that character might be a main

character and we're still telling the story from their perspective,

we're almost like we're a fly on that particular characters

head. And we are just the narrator that follows that

character around everywhere.

But we are not necessarily that character.

And either way is a perfectly appropriate way to tell

a fiction story.

Rarely do you see fiction being told in the second

person, which would be you.

Statements, um, so you could tell a fiction story that

way as well.

It's just a little bit more rare, and of course,

you need to give your character's motivations.

This is something that we talked about with playwriting as

well. If your characters don't have something that they're overcoming

something that they want, then your story kind of doesn't

have a point.

You need your your characters to want something to have

a goal of some sort, and it gives your story

direction. You also would be wise to write what you

know. Now I know I'm saying that fiction is something

made up, something that you're creating in your head.

It's not riel, but it still needs to be based

in something that you understand.

Now you could write an excellent novel about space exploration

on a planet that is completely made up.

And that, of course, is not something that you personally

know, since we can't do that yet.

Um, but maybe you're writing about a family that goes

and does that, and the family actually is quite similar

to your family, and that would still count as fiction.

You're writing what you know in the sense that you're

writing characters, that you're familiar with your writing family dynamics

that you're familiar with.

But you said it in this really fantastical made up

space, and that is completely appropriate and good within fiction.

Writing. You want to move yourself if you're trying to

move your readers by perhaps writing something sad or writing

something really happy, you want your readers to feel that

in your writing And to do that, you need to

make sure that you feel that in your writing.

If you're writing a scene that it's supposed to be,

you know, a scene in which the main character goes

through something really, really hard and you read that and

you don't really care that the characters gone through something

hard, then you need to revise that, which is, of

course, the next thing.

Um, and make sure that the way you're writing that

scene moves you as well.

And of course, revise, revise, revise.

As with anything that you're writing, you're gonna have to

keep coming back to it.

Keep editing it.

I like giving myself lots of time for writing so

that you have a lot of time for revising because

the revising process, if you are truly writing a novel

to be published, would take significantly longer than the actual

writing off.

Um, you know your piece of fiction and finally trust

yourself. You ultimately are the person who's writing this piece

of fiction, so I want you thio.

Enjoy it.

I want you to trust your instinct with how you're

writing your piece of fiction.

It's your story.

And if you follow these other rules, and especially if

you continue to revise it, trust yourself that you're telling

the story.

Well, for this week you'll be reading a short story

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called the Yellow Wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that was originally

published in the U.

S. In 18 92.

So a bit like the Glass Menagerie, you will see

some outdated uses of the English language, though there aren't

quite as many instances of very complicated terminology or vocabulary

in the yellow wallpaper as there is in the Glass

Menagerie. What you will notice, though, is pretty outdated.

Um, cultural implications, especially around women's rights.

The yellow wallpaper is really a story about mental health,

Um, as specifically about the mental health of the main

character, just a woman who has recently had a child.

So we will discuss all of that more in class.

But as you're reading the yellow wallpaper, I want you

to, of course, recognized that this has been written, you

know, more than 100 years ago and that some aspect

of this story, you're going to be really outdated for

the way that we would think about mental health or

women's rights today.

And I want you to sort of focus in on

those aspects of mental health to try and evaluate the

story thinking outside of the time period that it was

written in.

And of course, I want you to think about those

aspects of writing fiction.

And what fiction is that we've talked about here and

think about how that works in the yellow wallpaper.

Does it work?

Well, what isn't working?

We'll discuss all of that in class homework for this

week for Week four.

Of course, you'll be reading the yellow wallpaper.

You'll also have weekly journal and in class writing on

Model. You will also be posting three ideas for your

narrative paper on model.

We'll discuss those ideas in class so that we can

have sort of some ideas from your classmates and see

what they think.

And I will, of course, respond to those as well.

For the week afterwards, you'll be reading an excerpt from

a nonfiction book called The Endurance, and you will also

have a weekly journal on model.

You will not have an in class writing on model

during week five because I would like you to focus

instead on the draft of your narrative paper.

And of course, in Week five we will not be

meeting together in person.

We will instead be meeting remotely and a synchronously so

not together at the same time.

For you all to work on editing the drafts of

your classmates.

Andi, I will be posting things in week five with

some guidance on how Thio peer review someone's work.

Well, that is everything for week.

For I'm looking forward to discussing the yellow wallpaper.

With all of you in class on, I will see

you on Wednesday.

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