 Good afternoon. Thanks for coming Welcome to all of you in the program and I also understand there are a few people visiting us to find out more about the program Welcome to all of you. This is an interactive seminar I'll be any time you have questions. I want to you know Ask me a question or make a comment feel free to do so don't interrupt me in the middle of a Sentence and then we'll have I will have some exercises built in this is a shorter version of a longer seminar. I've done before I've decided Instead of focusing on longer short fictions because technically speaking when we talk about short prose forms It can be anywhere from six words I'll be giving you several examples of six word fictions and have you try to write one yourself to a couple thousand words And many of many stories that are a couple thousand words long although they're called Short prose forms or sudden fictions are a complete short stories with a Centro dramatic event a beginning a middle and an end and if time allows I'll read you one of those I have several Three examples here, but I've decided to leave out the long the bits of my seminar about the longer prose forms Because that's kind of what we're doing in our workshops. Anyway our fiction workshops I'll talk about that in passing, but I'm going to focus on the much shorter prose forms Sudden fiction also known as short fiction short shorts flash fiction. There are tons of names for it You can go to one of those Robert Shepard What's the other guy James Thomas anthologies and there there's a lot of introductory material and Explications where they talk about the form and they've got dozens of names that people have used for this sort of thing Over the years is very popular these days There's a number of reasons for that. I'll speculate that about about that a little later It can be much shorter than 1500 words. It can be as short as six six words What we'll do this afternoon is analyze and talk about several flash fictions from the perspective of the free tag pyramid In initial conflict a complication and a climax in other words a traditional short story form the slice of life pattern One thing happens after another and the last thing is the most significant the monologue which is a form that's very much Fits fits a sudden short fiction forms very well and the prose poem fiction We'll also consider whether techniques that are most often associated with poetry Particularly with poetic closure might be applicable to short prose forms So here's the first question. I'll ask and I'll read a couple of examples. Is this sudden fiction or is it a poem? Let me read you this prose poem by Russell Edson One a late great Russell Edson one of our great prose poets And listen to it and tell me if it wasn't labeled. What would you call it? You haven't finished your ape said mother to father Who had monk who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers? I've had enough monkey cried father You didn't eat the hands and I went to all the trouble to make onion rings for its fingers said mother I'll just nibble on its forehead and then I've had enough said father. I Stuffed its nose with garlic just like you like it said mother Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay the whole thing on the table every night the same fractured skull the same singed firm Like someone who died horribly. These aren't dinners. These are post-mortem dissections Try a piece of its gum dear. I've stuffed its mouth mouth with bread said mother Bug it looks like a mouthful of vomit. How can I bite into its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father Break one of the ears off. They're so crispy said mother I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes even a jack strap jack strap screamed father Father how dare you insinuate that I see this ape as anything more than simple meat screamed mother Well, what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? Screamed father Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I would submit my female opening to this brute that after we had made love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven after breaking his head with a frying pan And then serve him to my husband that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night cried father Is that a story or a poem? Edson labeled it a pro pro's poem But he wrote at a time when sudden fiction was not fashionable and wasn't even spoken about In a different generation, perhaps he would have called his collection Sudden fictions. Here's another one. Here's a dramatic monologue, which is labeled in the in the anthology in which it appears as a fiction Let's see whether you think that label is right or whether it could also be called a poem This is by Joyce Carols I just want to touch you a little That delicate blue vein at your temple the soft down of your neck. I just want to caress you a little I just want to kiss you a little your lip your throat your breasts I just want to embrace you a little I just want to comfort you a little. I just want to hold you tight Like this I just want to measure your skeleton with my arms These are strong healthy arms, aren't they? I just want to poke my tongue in your ear Don't giggle. Don't squirm. This is serious. This is the real thing I just want to suck a little I just want to press into you a little I just want to penetrate you a little I just want to ejaculate into a year into you a little it won't hurt if you don't scream But you'll be hurt if you keep straining away like that if you exaggerate Thank you. I just want to squeeze you a little I just want to feel my weight against your bones a little I just want to bite a little. I just want to taste of it your saliva your blood Just a taste a little you've got plenty to spare. You're being selfish You're being ridiculous. You're being cruel You're being unfair. You're hysterical. You're hyperventilating. You're provoking me You're laughing at me. You want to humiliate me. You want to make a fool of me You want to gut me like a chicken You want to castrate me You want to make me fight for my life? Is that it? You want to make me fight for my life? Is that it? Sudden fiction or prose poem The labels don't really matter do they we're talking about short prose forms today, but you could just as well submit such a piece As a prose poem and russo edson certainly with the dialogue and the setting and everything the mother and the father and the ape And so forth could just as easily have called that a short story Here's some additional examples um As for the two above the first the first the one by russo edson was called a poem the second the dramatic monologue Is in telling stories edited by joys carol oates an anthology Described on its back cover as an anthology for fiction writing courses that anthology also includes Among others the following miniature narrative by france kafka This is a very short one. These are the seductive voices of the night The sirens too saying that way it would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce They knew they had claws and sterile wounds and they lamented this allowed They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful Translated by clement greenberg And here's one from varieties of disturbance a collection of short fiction by lydia davis It's titled a man from her past I think mother i think mother is flirting with a man from her past who is not father I say to myself mother ought not to have improper relations with this man france Frans is a european I say she should not see this man improperly while father is away But i am confusing an old reality with a new reality Father will not be returning home. He will be staying on at vernon hall as from mother She is 94 years old How can there be improper relations with a woman of 94? Yet my confusion must be this Though her body is old Her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh even the uh Cadence could be poetic had lydia davis decided to lineate this poem or call it a prose poem Okay, first exercise take out a blank piece of paper write a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 100 words Dramatic monologue That includes action and conflict Or implied conflict No less than 50 no more than 100 words less than a page Dramatic monologue if you're finished how many have finished We haven't had enough time yet. Let's take one more minute and then I'll ask for two or three volunteers As you might guess mood and tone are also very important to short prose forms They're very important to all fiction, but especially to shorter forms Anybody care to read what you've written give us an example Bill told me I need to walk closer to whoever reads so that they will pick pick up on the mic Okay Goldy needs a home today Oh, I like that repetition at the end. Thank you anybody else To recreate reality I wanted more of it he said But why for what purpose? You don't need peyote or mushrooms. I said All alternative realities have a purpose. I pleaded No, no purpose as he cut the rabbit like a european If there is no purpose to reality then why recreate it? I loved the wine How's the rabbit? Oh, I like that Did you want to read one? Okay, he stood on the street corner with her on his arm They were secret lovers daring to be public as they stood at the light and waited to cross The red BMW drove slowly Into the intersection. It was him with her And her husband of 10 years the father of her children glanced over from his car She slid further into her lover's being hiding from what would become a media spectacle Oh good stuff. Wow We should make an anthology at the end of class Anybody else one more Okay Spoiled and covered in jelly sticky peanut butter fingers Pull and pinch my perfectly pointed nose Sculpted by hands that cost more than your baby gear You're loaded diapers leaking and your babble is bubbled by spit Uh your vinky is too damn bright. I should have had you scraped and sucked when I had the chance. Oh good And that sort of goes with your oof because you've been work trying to work from the point of view of children at times, right? Yeah Yeah Thank you. These are great I'd be happy to hear some more, but I want to make sure that I cover the rest of this as well Um The next point I want to make is that southern the sudden fiction short prose forms can be craft based just like any other prose form of whatever length Um, they don't have to be conventional narratives, but some some are so crafted john both in his essay incremental perturbation Like that phrase how to know whether you've got a plot or not an essay he wrote for the anthology creating fiction Oh an anthology well well worth your time by the way says this in my shop By which he means his writing workshop dramaturgy means the management of plot and action The architecture of story as distinct from such other fictive goodies as language Character and theme being understood at the outset that mere architectural completeness mere storyhood Doth not an excellent fiction make Every competent hack hacks out complete stories Structural sufficiency is hackwood's first requirement On the other hand about a third of france kafka's splendid fictions, for example And a somewhat smaller fraction of donald donald model maze happened to be mere extended metaphors rather than stories Metaphors elaborated to a certain point and then like lyric poems closed And they are no less artistically admirable for that As charles baxter pointed out in a lecture that he gave out in minnesota a few years ago It's not the size of the consequence that matters. It's the frame or the pressure of the event in the story While some stories as janet boroway points out in her by now well known anthology writing text writing fiction depend on a structure of conflict crisis and resolution in other words the free tag pyramid Which isn't really a pyramid, but you know what I mean others depend on patterns of power Shifting the power back and forth from one antagonist to the other Which is a good pattern a good structural pattern for shorter fictions or on connection and disconnection Where in characters make and break emotional bonds of trust love understanding or compassion With one another take that joist carol. It's monologue. I read a few minutes ago And think how it sounds so tender for five or ten seconds and then the tone And the intent changes drastically That also summarizes That connection and disconnection the lydia davis story that I just just read doesn't uh, doesn't it Further boroway writes that quote a short story can waste no words It usually features the perspective of one or a very few characters It may recount only one central action and one major change in the life of the central character or characters It can afford no digression that does not directly affect the action A short story strives to create what edgar allen po called the single effect a single emotional impact That imparts a flash of understanding Though both impact and understanding may be complex The virtue of a short story is its density for it raises a single what if question That definition of craft can certainly fit the story of conventional length Do all of you know the story by Raymond carver popular mechanics? How many of you have not heard popular mechanics? Then I'll read it It's short enough to read Notice I pointed out that often Putting a character in relation to an object Makes the story work. Here's the story popular mechanics. It's about a One page here, maybe two pages if it were printed Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder high window that faced the backyard Cars slushed by on the street outside where it was getting dark But it was getting dark on the inside too He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door I'm glad you're leaving. She said I'm glad you're leaving. Do you hear? He kept on putting his things into the suitcase Son of a bitch. I'm so glad you're leaving. She began to cry. You can't even look me in the face. Can you? Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room Bring that back. He said Just get your things and get out. She said He did not answer He fastened the suitcase put on his coat looked around the bedroom before turning off the light Then he went out to the living room. She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen Holding the baby Notice how the baby's picture is now the baby and that's what makes this story work I want the baby. He said are you crazy? No, but I want the baby. I'll get someone to come by for his things You're not touching this baby. She said The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head. Oh, oh, she said looking at the baby He moved toward her for god's sake. She said she took a step back into the kitchen. I want the baby Get out of here He she turned and tried to hold the baby in a corner behind the stove But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby Let go of him. She said I mean let go of him. He said sorry get away get away. She cried The baby was red faced and screaming in the scuffle. They knocked down a flower pot that hung behind the stove He crowded her into the wall then trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed With all his weight Propositions very important there Let go of him. He said don't she said you're hurting the baby. She said I'm not hurting the baby. He said The kitchen window gave no light in the near dog. He worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other He gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her No, she screamed just as her hands came loose. She would have it this baby She grabbed the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard How do you close that story? Here's how carver closed it In this manner the issue was decided puts it right in your imagination, doesn't he? So that's a story that's complete beginning, middle, and end, but it's limiting itself The character object and making that object do full duty minimum minimum of setting minimum of Description but it's all there in miniature Um to go to the other extreme If um a virtue of a short story is its density and it raises a single what if question Uh, what about telling an entire story in six words? There still has to be movement even in six words Fiction is all about movement forward motion of some kind Here are a couple of examples and I'm going to ask you to write one or two six word fictions The famous one of course is Ernest Hemingway's for sale baby shoes never worn Typical Hemingway implication implication the iceberg theory so much beneath the surface right Uh, there was an an anthology of six word fictions that were put together and Margaret Atwood The ironic canadian Uh Contributed this one longed for him Got him shit What kind of story would that be without that last word that last word takes a conventional story It makes it into something very different So here's the exercise right one or two or three six word fictions include or imply action and character Or write a six word summary for an awk for a longer story that you would write if there were time That also includes action and summary, but would be more craft based Okay, that's a quick quick quick story Lawrence did you have your hand up? I Do you want to read it About some more Anybody else Howlis, thanks Weight compression now lighten up Okay, and and that's also interesting because it also suggests a kind of parody or imitation of an existing form which is the ad that would appear somewhere looking for a connection I'm sorry right right here Huh That could be a bumper sticker John Not guilty, but he was Okay, a lot of implication there anybody else want to read back in the back teacher yarn to teach human beings Okay, then which who's going to read Over the side That seems to be I have a double entendre in there any more anybody Oh, what were the first two words Oh, okay Okay Great. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to move on now to A slightly different emphasis, but we're going to stay with the extremely short fictions and we are going to move on to some haiku I'm working eventually towards suggesting that how to close out a short prose form Has a lot in in common with how we close out Lyric poems in general And I'll give you some examples of that in a bit But right now let's let's talk about sudden fictions that are zen based haiku based Those six word six word Fictions are like are like haiku in a way According to cordon Corvand and huvo in the haiku anthology from simon and shuster The distinguishing features of haiku are not the number of syllables as we often Pretend that we had need 17 syllables, but one Concision to perception and three awareness Suggestiveness is primary Good haiku is subtle and might seem flat or empty to the uninitiated But is very demanding of writer and reader. It's both very accessible and very inaccessible As r.h. Blythe wrote it is an open door which looks shut The reader must share in the creative process by associating and picking up on the echoes implicit in the words That it seems to me is a good definition of sudden fiction if it's 60 50 or 100 words The following haiku by alexis rotella could have been caught a micro fiction had she chosen to do so Trying to forget him stabbing the potatoes domestic conflict The following fiction by lydia davis could have been caught a haiku had she chosen to do so It's titled the busy road I am so used to it by now that when the traffic falls silent I think a storm is coming Put that on my wall While introducing you to the idea of fiction that works in part like haiku I should also put on the table robert blai's description the poet robert blai's description of quote unquote leaping poetry It provides us with a way of thinking about what a micro fiction writer sometimes has instead of craft In the book in his book leaping poetry kevin ward writes robert blai explores the form of modern poetry Mostly that of spanish-language poets just such as gossia locker Uh, naruda and velejo His aim is to examine the movement of the poem The manner in which the poet makes use of association as a tool He writes it is this movement the movement towards an increase in speed and range of association That has given such fantastic energy and excitement To modern poetry in all european countries What blai refers to as leaping is a mean means of traveling between two worlds between the conscious and the unconscious The known and the unknown If you decide to explore sudden fiction or are already exploring it or decide to explore it in the aftermath of this seminar And you read the various introductions and afterwards in the several anthologies edited by robert shippard and james thomas You'll notice that a number of practitioners Compare such fiction to the experience experience of telling a joke or hearing a zen koan If a not micro fiction works, it's like falling off a cliff for the reader Uh, and one technique that can make that happen a technique common to the koan And to blai's leaping poetry Is to compare nature and human nature We all almost always see that in the haiku Here's one by alan pizzarella that does that Driving out of the car wash clouds move across the hood Let me read that again driving out of the car wash clouds move Across the hood Think a minute about that image In closed space clouds the universe the movement Lot going on there There's a leap. There's vertigo. There's a zen moment Do the same in fiction and you've done something significant as in this Fiction by again lydia davis one of my favorite sudden fiction writers. This one's called insomnia My body aches so it must be this heavy bed pressing up against me I felt that way my first night here on the bed in my This bed is really pressing up against me. I'll never I'll never sleep Okay, another exercise and this can be five 10 15 words six words 17 words if you want the haiku the old haiku way that we used to write Write a micro or sudden fiction that includes a comparison or juxtaposition of nature and human nature Or write a summary or treatment for a longer story that includes the same comparison as a central metaphor Or as a structural principle between you nature and human nature. That's zen based So again write a micro or sudden fiction that includes a comparison or juxtaposition of nature and human nature Can be six words 17 words 15 20 Shot shot shot though Read it again Would be crushed red velvet Gritched up finally and resting with worms resting with worms. Ah Okay, thank you His umbrella was always half open. Oh, I like that. Ah very suggestive. Yep As I lay down an ecstasy my body murders each grass root Murders what each grass root, huh? Good good Right here I stepped into the river the icy pebbles burned my souls Huh, okay and next Spiders eat bugs in houses gross but heated jokes at females You've got your hand up Last on a leaf Dances to the ground you'd rather I not mention it Oh, I like that less sentence Anybody else Okay, anybody else no no one more, okay Oh Explosive Okay, I'm going to move on. We don't have a sufficient time to do more than mention briefly the history of such fiction Or the variety of forms though. There are lots. There are now lots of anthologies out there that talk about that Are the cultural reasons for the pervasiveness of such fiction at this historical moment But I refer you again to those anthologies. Uh, if you're interested Charles Baxter suggests that quote link is a feature of writing that is as artificial as an individual pro style It is partly a matter of vision of where you think reality takes place Lydia Davis mentions Kafka's paradoxes Charles Johnson calls Edgar Allen Poe the unlikely father of sudden fiction Not sure what Poe would make of that And refers us to Poe's essay refers us to Poe's essay on the aim and technique of the short story 1842 More than one writer mentions. Oh, Henry uh Who was famous for his reverse endings or trick endings? Um, h.e. Francis for example tells us that the form is hardly new and that its impact should be oh, henry without the cheating Borges bottle me and brought again the three bs are more recent practitioners cited more than once by various, uh Theorists and critics of the form Um, the variety of forms are manifold Uh, jack matthews compares them to platonic dialogues. They play out the implications of a certain idea or set of events Very short fiction joys caro oates writes very short fiction are nearly always experimental exquisitely calibrated reminiscent of uh, robert frost's definition of a poem a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds like ice melting on a stove The form is sometimes mythical sometimes merely anecdotal But it ends with its final sentence sometimes with its final word Stephen might not more expansively roots the form in at least five different traditions number one true experiences sudden abrupt personal boom Uh, number two anecdotes like oh, henry classic or like richard broadigan contemporary Which are jokes when they surprise us into laughter parables when they deliver lessons and fables when they deal with animals and which are carefully crafted and structured three speculations Like bogeys john borth or bottle me where idea is everything Where character and plot becomes subservient to theme and where there's often no narrative buildup four dream stories Like kafka with a dark threatening mood Joyce caro oates her short dream accounts that monologue i read earlier or richard broadigan with a gentle light tone Where mood is stressed more than theme and intensity and vividness is all And five the poetic story rich in auditory effects alliteration assonance rhythms of syntax repetitions All the various things that we do consciously self-consciously when we're writing poems and more interested in imagery than in narrative structure Um An image can often be used to structure longer stories Of course as well as shorter stories, but especially in short fictions images can be heightened extended repeat it I don't know who teaches the workshop next door, but on the flip chart. There's a nice little Epistle about the boss image somebody here teaches that who teaches the boss house boss image and go look at that That's for it seems very enlightening and it also talks about objects You can use images and objects as a way of structuring and working through your short fiction um We as for reasons why the form is so pervasive these days um Any guesses why would you say it's so popular form? Certainly. Yeah, and you can actually read them on your phone instead of your kindle or computer any other reasons Some good some not so good some is tech technologically based Yep, that's one a lot of these theorists mentioned that we no longer have the attention spans we once had What was I talking about? So that would Oh, okay brevity and concision. Yeah, just got it got it got it very modern very postmodern Um, all of these things anybody else all these things. Yeah, um short attention spans editorial considerations We don't some writers some books some uh Journals don't have as much space or online editors figure. You don't want to read as much the pace of contemporary life new technologies Um Baxter is the most metaphorical and thus for me the most persuasive Charles Baxter It is this is it as it excuse me. It is as if A shift has occurred in these stories away from the imperial character of the 19th century Toward ritual Spontaneity humor and forgiveness all characteristics of reduced geographies What if very short stories are products of mass societies in which crowding is an inescapable part of life The novel is spatially like an estate The very short story is like an efficiency on the 23rd floor As it happens more people these days like to live in efficiencies and on the states So I don't know if you find that persuasive. It's elegant certainly. It's very elegant Um as for technique enclosure, there are a few things I want to get to and I'll have you do a final exercise before we run out of time um One way to write a short fiction is to write a traditional but short free tag pyramid story Uh popular mechanics is a good example One I have here that I've decided is a little too long to read given the The fact that we have 40 minutes Is um, I'm going to leave out but this it's in one of those anthologies. I mentioned it's called sunday in the park By bell calfman and it's a powerful story But I do have one I can read here and I like to read this too because it also It also emphasizes how you can find character through objects And would fit in very well with howlis's boss image that that she was talking about with with her workshop students This is called the beast watered by sam michelle Let me read this one to you and I may I may uh annotate it a little bit while I read it Notice how concision is so important here. Listen to the first six words And notice how much we're being shown without being told First we have the title the beast watered which becomes clear by the end This is one and a half pages typed probably three pages on the on the page Dan she said yes said harry Yes, got it. Know what's going on What are you what are you doing said to the girl putting on my shoes harry said God said the girl. What time is it? Don't know said harry two maybe three And this image even the time is going to become significant later because he repeats it to another woman, but he Somehow the clock has gone backwards as you'll see The girl raised herself up on her elbow. He saw her watching him as he buttoned his shirt He saw her hair hanging down all on one side God she said and blinked and notice that one word god is used to express The experience the two of them have just shared He got his shirt tucked in he stood with his arms hanging at his sides Considering then bent down to the girl and put his face next to hers He lifted her hair up into his face He rubbed her hair against his face. He breathed the girl's hair up into his face Notice the use of repetition there. The girl made a sound He felt the bed heat of the girl from underneath the covers got to go. He said okay said the girl dan. She said Yes, said harry You'll call me. She said Sure, you bet said harry first chance I get Space break He walked fast crossing the tracks crossing the bridge trying to get things going and notice the ing This author sam michelle is very good at repetition at using not only The repetition of imagery but also the remit repetition of grammatical form So that they're undertones and subtexts and Echoes not only to the text but to the language His breath came out in big clouds his teeth shattered He hunched his shoulders and kept walking along one full block of shop windows. He watched himself walk At the end of the block he turned went past three doors and then went into the bar Hey harry said the bartender. What's shaking plenty said harry By now we know that harry is a man of few words He winked and rubbed his hands together the bartender grinned and shook his head The beer said the bartender. Nope said harry not tonight. I think I better have some of that whiskey you got Coming up said the bartender and a pack of something said harry. I don't know something menthol and matches The bartender screwed up his eyes as he poured the seagrams. You don't smoke. Do you he said not much said harry The bartender came over with the cigarettes and harry took a ten dollar bill and a keynote ticket from his wallet Now notice how this keynote ticket is going to be used Uh It's going to be repeated three times like in a fairy tale or like in the boss image that Hollis mentions next door and says each time it's mentioned it's got to be deeper and stronger and finally becomes symbolic Um on the back of the keynote ticket. There was a telephone number written whose number Well the next sentence harry studied the curves of the writing So we now know whose number it is. He lit a cigarette. He saw himself in the bar mirror lighting the cigarette He held the cigarette near his chest and the smoke curled around his shoulder and passed the side of his head He tried a smile in the mirror But did not like what he saw He crumpled the keynote ticket in his palm then he held the cigarette down near his knees Watching the smoke split itself around his leg. He kept moving the cigarette to different parts of his body First with his hand then with that hand to his lap to his neck his face He did not let go of the keynote ticket. He watched himself Hey harry said the bartender you're going to smoke that thing or not Harry looked at the bartender. He crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray. Guess not he said I don't know about I don't know about you said the bartender harry filled his mouth with whiskey and puffed out his Cheeks rinsing he moved his tongue over his teeth Then he put his nose to his shoulders and to his arms. He pulled his shirt front up to his nose He raised his knee to his nose He checked once more in the mirror then collected his change left a tip and kept the keynote ticket So what just happened there everybody knows? Okay, space break. We're almost done with the story. He took his shoes off in the hall and turned the key to the door The latch clicked. He held his breath pushed through the door then closed it quietly behind him He had nearly made it to the bathroom harry honey that you It's not the same girl right because she knows his name He stood where he was. Yeah, he said his voice sounded funny to him It's me. He said god said the woman. What time is it? I don't know remember what he said originally two maybe three. I don't know 12 maybe one He hated his voice not sure He emptied his pockets keeping the keynote ticket in his hand and started taking off his clothes outside the bathroom What have you been doing said the woman? Oh, you know at the bar He moved outside the bedroom door. He could see her in there propped on her elbow Coming to bed. She said no he said not unless you want to sleep with a saloon I think I'll get a shower pretty smoky in that place check these He tossed his trousers at his shirt on the bed and turned to go in the bathroom And then space break the last final scene in the bathroom He took one look at him one more look at himself and squeezed the keynote ticket into a tiny ball He got on his knees and dug through the bag under the sink He dug through tampons through disposable razors through hair and through wads of Kleenex before sticking the keynote ticket down at the bottom He shaved twice He turned on the shower and got the water very hot and waited in front of the mirror until the glass fogged He stepped into the shower bent his neck and felt the water wash down over his head He tried not to think not about the smell of the keynote ticket or the cigarettes or the girl's hair He let the water wash down over his head until he no longer needed to try not to think then he raised his head And let the water hit him in the chest He got out of the shower, but he didn't get a towel Instead he dropped to his knees pulled the bag from under the sink and began going through the tampons the hair The Kleenex the shit He felt his heart beating his ears filled with the sound of his heart beating He dumped the bag on the floor and spread the stuff out his eyes moving over everything His fingers testing everything He tried to remember the girl's face. He tried to remember her voice He tried to remember anything she had said or what she had felt like when he had felt her But there was only a funny smell. He kept pawing p a w i n g on his knees And that word pawing of course takes us back to the title the beast watered So it's going to be a cyclical process And that's harry's story So that's a traditional story very powerful very poetic using imagery and objects to tie everything together Um The other story I mentioned sunday in the park has a kind of oh henry twist at the end, but it doesn't cheat And the twist is psychological Um another way to end a story a short fiction is to bring the work full circle This is the first of four methods of closure mentioned by maxine kuhlman in her essay closing the door In which she says that in every poem There should be if not the slam of the door then at least the click of the boat in the jam She uses the poem provide provide by robert frost as an example Um the same thing of course in the beast watered Uh that sudden fiction by sam michel which is from his collection by the way under the light Uh the technique works that way as well every word counts and at the end Via the protagonist's action pawing we're back at the title the beast uh Watered here's provide provide the robert frost poem and watch how it The last two words repeat the title and what where we've gotten to by then The witch that came the withered hag To wash the steps with pale and rag was once the beauty apeshag The picture pride of hollywood too many fall from great and good for you to doubt the likelihood Die early and avoid the fate Or if predestined to die late make up your mind to die in state Make the whole stock make the whole stock exchange your own if need be occupy a throne When nobody can call you crone Some have relied on what they knew others on simply being true What worked for them might work for you No memory of having starred atones for later disregard Or keeps the end from being hawed Better to go down dignified with bottom friendship at your side than none at all provide provide powerful repetition at the end Uh that makes that point work and you can use that same powerful repetition in a in a prose a prose a short form a short prose form another way to end End in an understatement that staddles and arouses The death of the ball turd gunner by a rondo rendle girel a very short poem Is an example Here it is From my mother's sleep. I fell into the state And I hunched in its belly to my wet fur froze Six miles from earth loosed from its stream of life I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose Powerful poem powerful last line has changed some people's line some people's lives my friend, uh Clint mccown a novelist short story writer Said that he was destined to go to west point and become uh Uh an officer a military officer and he read that poem and decided the military was not for him And he dropped out and became a hippie All because of that poem probably some other things too, but that poem was uh significant The third way to end a short fiction or or poem as well is to end with a prophetic or apocalyptic statement By the way the understatement that staddles or arouses that Story I read by rake harvard popular mechanics in this manner the issue was decided certainly Ends in a in an understatement that staddles us or arouses us because it leaves us imagining The baby being ripped in half but without saying so Which would have undercut his effect So if you want to end with a prophetic or apocalyptic statement, um Here's an example of that. This is uh the famous great poem by william butler yates the second coming In which he's foreseeing the end of an historical cycle And lamenting the passing of a better world Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer things fall apart The center cannot hold mere anarchy is loosed upon the world The blood dim tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction while the worst or full of passionate intensity Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the second coming is at hand the second coming Hardly all those words out when a vast image out of spiritus mundi troubles my sight A waste of desert sand a shape with lion body and the head of a man A gaze blink and pitiless as the sun is moving its slow thighs Why all all about it when shadows of the indignant desert birds The darkness drops again But now I know the 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle And what rough beast its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born So you can end with a prophetic or apocalyptic statement and then the last suggestion that Maxine Kuman makes About closing the door in a poem and it's equally useful for closing the door in a short fiction is to end with an aggressive shift of balance So that the shift totally reverses the meaning of the poem I'll give you an example of that. This is the Edward Edwin Allington Robinson poem Richard Corey Wherever Richard Corey went downtown we people on the pavement looked at him He was a gentleman from soul to crown clean favored and imperially slim And he was always quietly arrayed and he was always human when he talked But still he flooded pulses when he said good morning and he glittered when he walked And he was rich. Yes richer than a king and admirably schooled in every grace In fine. We thought that he was everything to make us wish that we were in his place So on we worked and waited for the light and went without the meat and cursed the bread And Richard Corey one calm summer night went whom and put a bullet through his head So an aggressive shift of balance Boom is what makes the poem memorable if Richard Corey was just this admirable fellow that walked through town and everybody wanted to be associated with him in some way That poem would no longer be read aloud at a seminar like this. It would be gone. So the ending does everything that matters The townspeople articulate their business and envy of Corey. He's handsome wealthy confident And then boom he's gone Lethal that dramatic monologue by oats I think does much of the same thing in the last line it shifts You want to make me fight for my life? Is that it? And suddenly we realized we're in the presence of a homicidal Psychopath it's a terrifying line. It's also about as conclusive as it can be, isn't it? Such endings help to depersonalize a poem so that emotion can turn into ought The poet needs to step outside and the fiction writer as well outside of the poem and close the door on it Okay final exercise This is a little more All you can or you can do two ways You can write a poem and then end it in one of those four ways We just talked about or you can take something you've already written and try to find an alternative ending for it The exercise is to write either a compressed slice of life or a dream fiction or fable In the spirit of kafko or borehace that's suggestive and metaphorical or to take something you've already written here today And end it with either a an aggressive shift of balance Be a prophetic or apocalyptic statement See an understatement that stottles or arouses D a statement that brings the story full circle So you might try revising something you've already written or you can try something new with this last exercise Oh Wow, very good very rhythmical. I love the cadence there You tell me every day because we've got the gallery How do you know I haven't You finish your lips with polish and tuck the fly away threads of tear behind your ears with expensive shellac You slip your feet into painful planted fields and clack down the hallway to the kitchen How do you know the gallery is in polished too That the louis the 14th chair is he on his own platform the gill planting under new falls And not teetering in a corner chipped and scraped and hanging on to a 50s linoleum kitchen table with one claw Say it again. I dare you. Oh rhythmical cadence powerful more over here I am in love with you The way your hair gleams under light The rise of your breath while you inhale your gentle cries and dreams What we have is forever Your wide eyes hold mine till midnight under the stone roof by candle lights to keep water in a cup in my hand Your learned to fill us away the same I swear it and then I'll remove the chain from your ankle Wow nice ending More My mind lands on the land mines you were commanded to avoid And I wonder if when asked where else you go if you can go elsewhere You remember the blue wallpaper and the water for crystal glasses my mom had given us The finger that now rests on the trigger and used to rest on the rim of the eighth glass Proust shards had long been plucked out of my shoulder Good Did you hand up Scratch Oh nice being scratched chickens by scattering dreams Okay the others One more daddy rolled towards mommy with his fists Like lightly with a thunderbolt stumble fell dead drunk on his face at a peak Oh good good Okay Some final quotes Paul Theroux the writer who's mostly writes long books novels and travel books writes of sudden fiction It is pro's fiction of a certain length about four pages. I guess it should not be mistaken for an anecdote It is highly calculated its effects its timing in most cases. It contains a novel Hemingway and death of the in the afternoon States his famous iceberg theory if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about He may omit things that will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above water A good writer does not need to reveal every detail of a character or action And I think probably that's a good place to end my conclusion is Take chances make mistakes and learn in the process And it's much easier to have that point of view if you're only writing a 50 word or 100 word Story as opposed to a 300 word manuscript if you write a 300 word manuscript and think oh hell This didn't go the way I wanted That's a little different than writing a hundred word story and saying well I can put this one in the back burner in the trunk as as uh, was it Breonna said in workshop today and uh Try another one. So take chances make mistakes learn in the process. It's why you're here, but it's also why we write Thank you