English 221: Intro to Creative Writing
Agenda: March 4

• "Not likely": Story and Improbability

  Stephen Koch, in The Modern Library Writer's Workshop says, "A storyteller has to be a specialist in this unlikely. Fiction is made from 'exceptional happenings'. Almost every really interesting story is rooted in the improbable in some quite striking way. And that is not merely because fiction is riddled with 'improbability'. So is life... We invariably expect characters in stories to behave like ourselves. "People don't act like that." True enough--most people don't act like that. Your story is not about most people. The true enemy of your fiction is not improbability but imaginative unbelief." It is your job, usually through revision, to make the improbable credible and convincing.

• Freewrite: 10-15 minutes
  • Write about something improbable that has happened to you (nonfiction), OR something improbable that you wish that would have happened (autobiographical fiction), OR something simply improbable that has happened to some character you imagine (fiction), so that any ordinary person would say, "Not likely." If you have already written about such an event in your journal, ask yourself: Why is this improbable? How might you make it more credible? Make a list of things you might do to make it more credible.
• In Groups:
  • In what ways are the events in the story Missing improbable?
  • What specific ways does Robert Olen Butler make the improbable more credible and convincing?
    • Group 1: p 176-177
    • Group 2: p 178
    • Group 3: p 179
    • Group 4: p 180
  • What is the turning point in the story? How does the narrator change?

FOR NEXT TIME 3/6

READ: IW Chapter 6 pgs: 207-222

WRITE: Try This 6.1 (p 209) (For creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry only. Not drama.)

WRITE: Choose one of the entries that you starred in Exercise 6.1. Make the commitment to make this entry a draft of a story, essay, or poem. Type out the entry as your first rough draft of a poem, story or essay. Bring two copies of this to class. Maximum page length: 3 pages.