Writing Fiction with Hemingway

There’s no time for fiction in English classes these days. Argument and argumentative essays were all the rage last year, and I don’t see that movement slowing down. Did you notice the nonfiction teacher books and resources being passed around your school and the new ones just made available on Amazon? Some of these are great as they support teachers and students, but I am worried about the turn away from fiction writing.

While many ELA teachers still read poetry with their students last year, writing poetry in middle and high school is view as “extra,” in the service of reading, or an appropriate post-PARCC activity.

Fiction writing, however, is on the fringe. Certainly we read fiction, but do we write fiction with our students? There is research on benefits of  reading fiction, but what about writing fiction? Ought we to write fiction in schools?  I’d like to make an argument that indeed we ought to write fiction by sharing my experience with eighth graders last year.

I am not a published fiction author, and before writing with students, I had never written an imaginative story in my life. But you see, I discovered, because of them, that I like exercising my imagination and I like thinking about what could be. I think students do, too, but if the joy of writing fiction isn’t enough of an ethical argument, let’s consider why pulling fiction out of the fringes of ELA might just be a worthwhile endeavor.

First, fiction and nonfiction have a lot in common. They are stories with a beginning, middle, and end. Of course, not every story — fiction or non — necessarily follows that order, nor should it. Sometimes we have to start in the middle to engage a reader or start at the end to then help readers see just how something like “that” could happen, so writing fiction involves logic, intention, perspective, and care for its audience.Fiction, like nonfiction, requires an writer’s attention to language, word choice, and conventions. 

Fiction, however, does something that, by definition, nonfiction should not, which is to imagine the story (not that some nonfiction isn’t imaginative). In imagining the story, a writer must create the situation, anticipate outcomes, find the words to express tension, and then the words to resolve it. Writing fiction exercises and releases our potential as human beings to imagine. And isn’t our world in need of some innovative solutions?

And so, while I did spend a bit of February exploring, alongside students, how to read the PARCC test to assuage anxiety and remind them that they are, well, “more than a score,” we also wrote fiction. I called it flash fiction because there is such a thing, and it sounds fabulous, but if that scares you, just call it short fiction.

The New York Times has some great resources for teachers. I found a lesson plan that got me started with flash fiction that was easy to follow and allowed me to make it my own. Here is the warm-up, which begins with a story by Ernest Hemingway:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

When students enter, ask them to copy the story and consider whether or not they think it is a story. Once students have had time to record their ideas, come together as a class to discuss the following:

• What does a story need in order to be a story?
• What questions does this story leave you with?
• What do you think is happening beneath the surface of these six words?
• Is the amount of what’s left unsaid unsettling? Interesting? Annoying?
• Do you think it’s harder to write a short short story like this one or a longer work, like a novel? Why?

The day we started thinking about writing fiction, I had stations going, so I did the above activity with my station while the others worked on other writing, conferencing, or blogging. It was great to have a small group chat about Hemingway’s story and listen to students pushing questions into the fissures among the words. Why are the shoes for sale? Why weren’t they ever worn? What happened to the baby? Where are they for sale?  Who is selling them? Who will buy them? What will happen once they are sold?

It became clear to us all that there is, in fact, a story within these six words, and that a story like this respects the reader, trusts the reader to do some of the work of authoring the story and capturing humanity.

We spent a little more time talking about what “flash fiction” is and how we can follow and shape this genre for our writing community. This definition from Grant Faulkner  is helpful and pushed our conversation further:

Flash fiction, which is defined as being a story under 1,000 words, goes by the names of “short shorts,” “miniatures,” “sudden fiction” and “postcard fiction,” among many others. Flash communicates via caesuras and crevices. There is no asking more, no premise of comprehensiveness, because flash fiction is a form that privileges excision over agglomeration, adhering more than any other narrative form to Hemingway’s famous iceberg dictum: only show the top 10 percent of your story, and leave the other 90 percent below water to be conjured.

How do we do this? How do we start? Isn’t starting the hardest part with writing. I hate a blank page.  Students brainstormed some ideas based on research they did for TED talks earlier in the school year. I offered suggestions that anyone can find on websites for creative writing,  but many students had ideas of their own as if there was a story inside them just waiting to get out (imagine that). A few, like me, wanted to write with Hemingway — their own “for sale” story.

We drafted and started over until we cared enough about a story to take it through the writing process. Once we had some drafts, we developed a checklist or guide so that we could ask questions or give suggestions during conferences and revisions. Here is what we came up with:

• consider topics that puzzle you or about which you have passion (poverty, family, racism, forgiveness, technology, women’s rights, video games)
• think about the theme you might work toward with the characters but accept this will change as you write; the story may feel like an argument in this way, but you can imagine something beyond the cliche lesson; what would an ambiguous ending do for the character, the theme, your reader
• start in the middle (try it — or start at the end)
• make the lead dramatic, unexpected; build curiosity about the character, setting, or conflict
• keep the characters to a minimum
• consider a flaw, quirk, or brilliance for your main character that might take you to the theme
• think “removal” to leave blanks for the character to fill in (peer conferences will help us monitor if the gaps are too big)
• avoid cliché — has it been done before in teen movies and books; trust your reader to see it and give your reader something better with irony or something unexpected
• let the last line ring making the reader slightly puzzled yet satisfied because he/she can wonder
• (What would you add?)

And so we workshopped the flashes of fiction.

We conferenced using the criteria above — mostly asking questions.

We revised.

We tried working in some techniques like anaphora, allusion, metaphor, and personification.  We tried simple sentences for punctuated activity in the story and complex sentences for more complex places in the plot. We tried out different transitions for sequence and flow. We workshopped dialogue to evoke the character’s imagined way of being.

We revised some more always circling back to our intentions or what aspects of humanity we wanted to capture or critique.

What we wrote was creative (and short), compelling, and revealing of human nature.

And then we published on our blogs. Here are two “for sale” pieces inspired by Hemingway. The first is mine, and the second belongs to a former eighth grader, who clearly has a gift.

For Sale: New Cleats, Never Worn

“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice boomed.

I looked up at her with puzzling eye; she was a giant, and I was caught.

***

As I got off the school bus, I saw the garage sale sign and decided to take a look. Right away, I saw the “new cleats, never worn” sign next to the size 6 soccer cleats on the counter with a sticker that said $5. I did not have $5, but I had my backpack from school, so I looked around. I saw the giant in the corner with her back turned to me, so I thought it would be a good time to put those cleats into my backpack.

Zipping up my pack, I felt a claw snap down on my arm. Her long fingers wrapped around my wrist twice. She pulled me into the corner and lifted me on the chair. I was so afraid, but I never tremble. My feet dangled not in fear but because they didn’t reach the ground.

“You sit here until I figure out what to do with you. I’ve got customers,” the giant said.

And so I sat there with my arms folded staring at the new cleats that we’re back on the table with their sign “never worn,” waiting for someone else to buy them. Of course, I wondered why a brand new pair of cleats was in this yard sale, but that was the least of my concerns. I needed those shoes.

And as I waited for my punishment, I looked around the room and saw empty picture frames, little girl dresses some with tags (also never worn), Barbie dolls, and trucks. I know I’m little, but I’m not stupid. I began to put things together. All these clothes, the shoes, thepicture frames: they belonged to a girl, someone older than me, and I am seven. Why were they being sold? And why weren’t some of them worn?

The giant came back my way; she knelt so that she could look me in the eye,  and then she asked me why I needed the cleats so badly that I would steal them? Clearly, they were not for me. They are about twice the size of my feet.

All I could do was stare at her bright blue eyes and shrug my shoulders like I did with my teachers. I had no answers, at least none I could explain to a giant.

“So you’re not going to speak, huh? I knew someone just like you: stubborn, smart, beautiful. That’s who all these belong to, but she was older than you,” she said, and as she turned, I saw a tear slide down the lady’s cheek. I knew that move.

Just then, another giant called over to my lady and said, “Hey, are you sure these are five dollars? I’ll pay three buck. My daughter already has a pair, but these can be her back up for the tryouts coming up.”

And then I had to do the move, wiping away a tear from my cheek.

My lady looked back at me, and as she answered the giant, “Those aren’t for sale anymore, but thank you for your offer.”

She said that last part with sass as she grabbed the cleats by the shoe laces that tied them together. The size sixes looked like ears flopping over her hands. She came my way and knelt down again, but this time she opened my backpack, put in the cleats, and zipped up my pack. She  lifted me from the chair with her gentle giant hands. My feet touched the ground. With my pack and the “cleats, never worn,” I slowly walked out of the garage sale.

***

“What’s this are these new cleats for me? Daddy, did you get me cleats after all? Does this mean I can play? OMG, I love you so much thank you,” my sister said running over to dad who was sitting on his recliner watching ESPN with a beer in hand.

“Huh? What’s that?” he said as my sister ran over and tackled him with a big hug, tears streaming down her face.

My dad looked over his over her shoulder at me. I shrugged, winked, and did the move.

 

For sale: Baby Shoes, Unworn by G.

I disappoint myself sometimes, as now I staple a piece of paper to a wooden pole sitting on a corner of a busy street, the paper flaps fly in the cold, crisp air. Forgetting is my only objective. All I want is this out of my mind, then maybe I’ll be happy. Peoples eyes burn into my back as they past, like laser guns in Star Wars. I’m in my own little world until the antidote of footsteps breaks me as they approach from behind. She is a swan, so delicate and beautiful.

Embed from Getty Images

“Why are you selling them?”

The rain pitter patters, and the wind sighs and whistles around.Suddenly my feet are the most interesting thing in the world, so I look at them. And there we stand in silence for a short eternity, the world whizzing past us, as if it were a movie.  The water leaving the small pinpricks in my eyes, rolling down the small hills on my face and diving to the pavement.

Then suddenly I feel it. Her eyes burning in my neck, but in a kind way. And I hear a voice in my head.

“I’m sorry.”

It doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve never had consolation for this. The shock is so much. Pulling my head up seems like such a tedious task. It seems like the whole world hangs on my neck, looped into a thousand pound chain.  However, my eyes meet hers, catching a silver glimmer along the way. They’re icy blue, hers, eyes as beautiful as winter flakes falling. Cold, like a cruel kindness, but gentle as a patch of blue sky after a rain.

Her hand gently grasps behind her and the soft, metal chain drops down from its resting palace on her thin collar bone. It seems like it could break, just from the pressure of the small, shiny accent. Then I feel the cool metal take its place, sitting on me where it once sat on her. Except my bone is not as thin, nor as frail.

The clasps connect behind me and I look down at the small charm that hangs from it. I’m frozen, like a spell cast upon me. I’m frozen, stuck in a blizzard with no way out. I’m frozen, the busy world whizzing around me. This is the most kindness I’ve ever seen, especially from a stranger. I come back to reality and she’s gone, and a number is written in my hand.

Good news, I have to tell her.

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“Congratulations.”

“I hope.”

I haven’t seen her in what seems like centuries. The bundle that lays against my chest moves and coos, causing a smile to be painted on my face. Looking around, I see her familiar face. The booth approaches me, and I take a seat across from her. With awe in her eyes, I move the bundle so she’s can see. With awe in her eyes, she smiles. With awe in her eyes, it feels like it’s a dream. Looking down, she gently beams as she looks at the small metal chain with the tiny charm hanging around the neck of a small, pink face.

Stories, research shows, can “stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” In fact, “the brain does not make a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life.”  So why not write fiction so as to imagine a life beyond what is towards what might be? Fiction writing is access to unavailable experiences; it asks writers to imagine what one might say or do and its outcome. Why can’t students practice negotiating their worlds in fiction, and why not invite our students to be the authority on what will happen next?

We’d love to hear about your fiction writing experiences in  the comments or a guest post; check out our Guest Blogger Guide.