Some years ago I became concerned about an unusual student in a summer English 101 course. It wasn't her age-mid 30's - or her behavior-very quiet. It was her ability. After returning the second batch of papers, I spoke to her in the hall. "What's up? You write as well as I do," I said. "You don't need this course, at all."
"I do need it," she insisted.
I backed off, but after the next paper came in, I took her aside again. Finally she said, "You've blown my cover," and explained that she had a graduate degree in religious studies, but now wanted to change careers. An admissions officer at the veterinary school she'd applied to had insisted she must fill a supposed "hole" in her record by taking English 10 I-a course for which she had been given AP credit by a prestigious university years before. Absurd! So why am I telling you about this "ringer", this obviously overprepared student? Well, I read two of her graduate school papers, and we had a conference. What could I teach her? As we talked, I learned that she had never in her school-shaped life written a single piece of imaginative writing. So we agreed that to complete freshman comp she would write one poem and one short story-an assignment that turned out to be tremendously challenging for this highly intelligent student. In a way, she was less prepared to do this task than many of my regular students were. She learned as much as she could in a few weeks about creative writing craft. In the end, I believe both of us saw this episode as beginning to mend a true gap in her liberal arts education. In one way, she was underprepared. The same gap affects millions of American college students today. This gap would shrink greatly if creative writing were seen in higher education as essential to the liberal arts, and to general education.
For freshman writers, especially in pre-college-level remedial or developmental courses, there are two zones of educational "preparation" that need to be addressed. The familiar first of these encompasses all the reading and conventional freshman romp skills that students will need in order to write adequately, across the curriculum. An important second zone of preparation involves creative writing experimentation, along with careful reading of certain stories, poems or plays-reading them with an eye to entering these genres as writers. Supplementing composition assignments with "spin off" creative writing assignments, ones that emerge from assigned readings, can engender new levels of attention to writing craft. We can view such creative exercises as a run-up to creative writing course work that a small fraction of these students will undertake later, but these activities have a more immediate, wider claim to value. My experience indicates that, by working in forms other than the conventional 500-word theme, our students increase the likelihood that they will become more nimble as writers and enjoy a wider, more honest sense of the literary world and their own powers of language.
How can this best be done? For me, some of the most effective imaginative writing activities intertwine with interpretive tasks. In conjunction with their analytical writing, I may ask students after they have studied an article or story to adopt alternative narrative voices and points of view; or to write to real or fictional persons with questions or advice; or to attempt creating alternative endings to stories; or to hold trials for the players in history or the characters in fiction, and to write partial transcripts of these fictional trials. Mere pedagogical gimmicks? If done well, they help create understanding, stronger discussion, and eventually, more versatile formal writing. Here's an example: after they read Jamaica Kincaid's much anthologized piece, "Girl", students write their own gender memory collages. The form Kincaid offers provides excellent entryways into creative writing craft: it resembles a monologue, but has a surprise second voice; it's a prose poem; it's a short short story. Students are impressed with how rich and revealing some of their own products become, and writerly decisions about the sequencing and possibly ironic juxtaposition of items in the collage become topics of real interest. Another example: in Bebe Moore Campbell's memoir chapter called "Envy" she recalls herself as a model second grader sent to integrate a white public school in the 1950's, getting into trouble and embarrassing her mother. I often ask students to write two carefully thought out letters. One is to the child Bebe, to replace the scolding letter she receives from her faraway father, and throws away. The second is a letter of advice to any adult in this non-fictional story, about how to respond to Bebe. The interpretive essays students produce on "Envy" later are almost always significantly more insightful, when preceded by these preparative creative writing assignments.
In my experience, at the beginning of the semester students placed by test scores into developmental English courses are often somewhat depressed and anxious. I find that early success at writing poems and other creative pieces can help counter initial discouragement, while developing skills and providing a sense of continuum among the many writing forms.
Right from the start, treating developmental students as writers, rather than as faulty students, can make a positive difference. We do introductions the first day, and one of the questions to answer is: "What writing do you already do?" It often turns out that half the students have poems they are willing to bring in and share at the second class meeting. This can help create an energized group, eager to share their further work with each other and to grow as writers. The possibility of publishing the best work in a class or college magazine can playa part in the success and good morale of the developmental writers--something Leslye Friedberg will tell you about.
In developmental English I favor the use of small writing groups-peer workshops but not initially editing workshops-several times each semester. These groups hint at an audience beyond the instructor. If set up with good guide questions and coached well, writing groups can also teach their participants new and better ways to heed the features of fellow writers' drafts, and articulate what they really experienced as readers and now have to say in response to those drafts.
Developmental students who become skilled at running 4- or 5-person essay draft critique groups can readily make the transition to reading and responding to pieces of imaginative writing-thus becoming at least an elementary version of the kind of creative writing workshop Simone Zelitch has described.
I am sure Simone's creative writing students profit greatly from the extensive written feedback they provide on each other's draft works. Working with developmental writing students, I want to prepare some of them to be Simone's students by making them more responsive readers. I advise them that to interrogate a draft essay, story, poem or other text they need to habitually interrogate themselves when they are with the text. Inexperienced members of an English 098 or English 101 writing group minimize anxiety and provide the writer with some of the initially most useful information by asking themselves (and answering aloud) reader response questions such as these: At what point, if at all, did you become most interested in this piece? What attitude did the writer seem to have toward the subject and toward you, the reader? If you experienced any confusion, where exactly in the piece did your confusion arise? What was especially convincing? I find that if students find value in asking themselves such questions, they readily ask new questions in response to their peers' imaginative drafts. What effects (if any) did this poem or story have on you? What particularly caught you, puzzled you? How did the piece sound, read aloud? Did something bother you, amuse you, make you angry or sad? Was the language or the plot so familiar to you that it was hard to remain interested? If so, what do you imagine the writer could do about this?
Conversation based on questions like these turns out to be highly useful to underprepared creative writers. It establishes a climate in which one's work is being taken seriously, in a semi-public setting, and it prepares everyone for the instructor's aid in moving to questions about craft, such as: Would it be more effective for readers if this character's dream of rescue from drowning were more vividly described, or if the last paragraph were reduced to a single sentence? Students in developmental English courses can think and talk usefully about line breaks, verbal economy, the order of stanzas, and similar concerns. But first they have to feel some safety, respect, and challenge, and sharpen their ability to respond to good writing. To enjoy success, and to become better prepared, they will often need to work harder than they thought they would. We will have to work harder and smarter, too.
Nine Creative Writing Exercises/Assignments for Use in Developmental English Courses
Except for (5), (7) and (9), these could all be characterized as "interventions" in response to assigned readings.
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Maintained by Jay Howard,Jan 2007