MFA Crash Course: Day Five

***If you are following me AND leave a comment in this thread by 5 PM PST Wednesday, 5/26, you will be entered to win a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card. Plus you will receive one entry each toward the query crit by my agent Laura Bradford and the ten-page crit by writer Eleanor Morse. Full details here.

Workshop: Met with the four writers in my workshop, led by Julie Brickman. Today we did a writing assignment in workshop to try out different POVs we’ve been discussing. I plan to post that and my workshop feedback, but I lack the energy to do it tonight since it is midnight and I still have homework. I promise to do it tomorrow. J

Student Readings: 3^rd and 4^th semester students read from their works or act out their plays. It’s a good opportunity to practice reading your work in front of a crowd. I’m up tomorrow!

Graduating Student Lecture: Killing Them Quickly: How Sudden Death Changes Everything
Jackie Gorman, Graduating Student
This lecture was about the benefit of killing off one of your main characters and what impact it can have based on when you do it in your novel.

• A character’s response to death reveals a lot about them.
• If you are going to have a character die, you need to do it responsibly. Gratuitous death does nothing for the reader. However, a death that is meaningful to your story and characters can push your characters into a new space.
• A quote I loved… “There is something bracing, almost exhilarating, about a catastrophe. Like a typhoon, it sweeps away all the small constraints of daily existence. It opens up the landscape to bold moves and rearrangements that would be unthinkable in normal times. (143) Mary Waters from The Favorites

Graduating Student Lecture: Raising Children and Writing Stories: Not Necessarily in That Order
Julie Stewart, Graduating Student
Like many writers, Julie is balancing parenting and her writing career. She examined how writers have dealt with this in order to benefit her own life. She believes that children can add a lot of magic to your writing. She also shared tips she’s gleened from other writers and her own life on striking a balance between a creative life and mothering.

Plenary Cross-Genre Guest Lecture: An Investigation into Theory and Practice: The Audience’s Participatory Experience in Specific Gravity Ensemble’s Elevator Plays”
Rand Harmon, Founder
Rand Harmon described the intent and theory behind elevator plays. These are 60-75 second plays that occur as you ride the elevator from the bottom floor to the top. The actors change costumed at the top floor and put on a different play on the way down. Four to five people cram in the elevator at a time to watch 1-3 actors. The idea is to break down the barrier between the audience and the actors. Our assignment is to write an elevator play that we will perform at the end of the week. That sound you hear is me shrieking in terror because I. Do. Not. Act. Or. Perform.

Mentor Assignments We each turn in a mentor preference form (due this AM). Based on those, we are assigned mentors at the end of the day with all of us crossing out fingers hoping we get the one we want. After all, we will be working with them one on one thru next January. I’m happy to say, I got Mary Waters – who reads a lot of YA. Tomorrow I get to have lunch with her to get to know her better one-on-one. I also love the other writers in my mentor group. You can’t see me right now, but I look very happy.

Elevator Plays: My group walked over to the Starkes Building and saw four elevator plays. The experience is so unexpected because we are trained to behave a certain way on elevators. In one of them, a business couple started making out while using merger lingo to speak dirty to one another. In another, the elevator would stop at certain floors and various characters from Hamlet would appear framed in the opening as Hamlet himself did his monologue for us. It was uncomfortable and completely entertaining.

*These tips are all my own paraphrases. This blog series is not sponsored by Spalding or its faculty.