I asked for you to write stories to respond to naturalism and show that you understood what it means for a writer to be called naturalist; what I didn’t expect was the quality of the stories. Not that I doubted your creativity, but creativity does not always produce great stories, and you guys have done that.

Take some time to peruse these ones, which were each read out loud in class.

Nate wrote “The Drop” and articulated well how he came up with the idea. I appreciate how he informed us how the inspiration for the story came to him. I think many of us would find writing a tad easier if we saw how writers approached the task.

Tiffany wrote her own version of the story she, Stefanie, and I concocted about a girl getting isolated and desperately using her phone to call for help. It’s called “Wrong Reception,” and I like how the cell phone acts a symbol of civilization, and when it goes haywire, her character loses control and her own life as the “inner beast” overcomes her understanding even of the true temperature. (By the way, her detail about the temperature at the end is inspired by the story of a man who froze to death in a freezer that was above freezing.)

Jake’s story, called “Death by Salvation,” gets a bit gory, but he too has a nice symbol of civilization that also leads to the character’s downfall. Interestingly, Jakes character strips off his clothing as he descends into a less human, more beast-like state – a fitting symbol of the beast-within’s triumph.

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• Original image: ‘A un gran paso‘ by: Luis

For this article, however, I am going to dictate the format a little bit. I want to give you a chance to write an article that injects quotes from the text like little asides. It would be the writing equivalent of when a radio announcer makes a statement and then jumps to a sound bite – but where the sound bite is not specifically introduced or acknowledged in the language around it. I did this a lot in radio when I’d make little promotional spots. One time I wrote a letter to my brother to say happy birthday, and I filled the letter with ridiculous advise and bits of wisdom. After each bit of wisdom the audio would cut to a quote from a movie that we had seen and loved. I never said anything about the quotes, they were just there to augment my points by juxtaposition. In that case, obviously, they were also there to get a laugh.

I do this at times in my blog (see this article on the meaning of poetry for an example), and I think it’s a perfect form for the medium. I take the quotation in question and at the most opportune time I insert it as its own paragraph. I set that paragraph apart with the block quote formatting (located in the tool bar ) and never specifically mention the quote. But it does fit in that context, and it does support my point. I also do this with photographs which I pull usually from a search engine that mines Flickr.

The advantage to you, of course, is that you don’t have to worry about how to punctuate the quote in your article. You simply stick it in there and keep trudging along with your insight.

That is what I want you to do in terms of format. In terms of writing, I want you to use the same general topic that you had for “Winter Dreams” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own“: say something interesting about the story by reflecting on it personally, and do so in at least 250 words. Use four quotes from the story as asides to support your reflection. For “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” you should feel free to compare it to “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” since you’ll see obvious similarities. You don’t have to do so, however.

Write on!

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• Original image: ‘rustic country store‘ by: Je Kemp
• Original image: ‘vintage Sinclair pump‘ by: Je Kemp

This time, however, I’d like to hear more of your personal reactions to the story. Take a reader through not only through a basic recap and your biggest insights, but your personal connections with the characters and stories as well.

This story is not easy, of course, and to get you started, I would like you to examine a couple essays on the story. They’re personal essays, one posted on a blog and one on a personal website dedicated to O’Connor, but I think they will help you connect with the higher levels of meaning in the story – places that are difficult for us to understand on our own, but when we combine our insight with those of others, we “get it” in a whole new way.

• Scroll to the bottom of this page to see the review on the story.
• This one ends a bit abruptly but I think it’s worth reading anyway.

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Image Attribution: ‘Railroad Crossing‘  by: Austin Tolin

That’s not much of an explanation, I realize, but that aides my goal for this assignment. I want you to be able to discuss a book, story, or movie in a way that is interesting. I’m trying to teach you to be interesting people. How’s that for curriculum?

Part II of this assignment will be for you to get someone outside our class to read and comment on the article on your blog. It can be a parent or a friend, but the idea is to make your article so interesting that you will engage your readers and draw them into conversation.

How do you do that? I recommend respecting the Rising Levels of Reading that we discussed at the beginning of our unit. Your reader won’t have read the story, so you’ll need to describe it with the right amount of detail to give them a feel for it (not too much, that would bore them, but enough that they understand what you’re trying to say). Then, having described the basics of what goes on in the story, explain what you infer from the story – what you “read between the lines” of Fitzgerald’s text. Once you explain that, you’re ready to rise to the top and write comments that your readers will find particularly interesting: comments about life and your experiences of it.

In class, that top level is where I brought in my conversation about Richard Shindell’s song, “A Summer Wind, a Cotton Dress.”

You read the story, now say something interesting about it.

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Original image: ‘Let’s Golf!‘ by: Guiri R. Reyes