Worksheets and the Modern Imagination

Yesterday I wrote this blog post about creating a worksheet about creating your own gothic story (or a spooky story or a haunted story).  We're about to read Flannery O'Connor and "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"  and Edgar Allen Poe and "A Rose for Emily."  I thought it would be fun for students to think about what they would write, if they wrote this kind of story.

I like the worksheet idea because it required them to start with characters, not with something gory, a mistake that so many haunted movies seems to make.  I say, "seem," because I don't go to see scary movies anymore--they're just too gory.

Here are the questions about character.

1. Create the strange character.  What mannerisms make the character strange?  How does the character look?  What clothes does the character wear? Does the character have an obsession?

2. Create a character to contrast with the strange character.  Describe it in the same terms as the strange character.  What makes the contrast character seem normal?  Is the contrast character normal?

3. Which character will be the main character?  Which character (one of the above or someone else) will tell the story, meaning the readers will see the world through the eyes of that character?

The other questions, about setting and plot and symbols, weren't terribly unusual.  Regardless of the type of story you're writing, I'll always ask you about the conflict, and I'll always try to help a writer see the different types of conflict that are/could be at work.

Yesterday I created the worksheet before going to work, and then off I went to teach my 102 classes.  We read the sections of O'Connor's essays and letters that are part of the textbook.  We talked about what O'Connor sees herself doing.  Later we will look at her stories and see if we think she was successful.

I then had them fill in the worksheets.  Later they might develop the ideas into a story, but even if they don't, I think they'll learn something by thinking through a planning process.

I gave them a good chunk of time to do it, in part because there wasn't as much to discuss with O'Connor's essays and letters as I thought.  They settled into it, and for most of them, the task absorbed them.  It was great to watch them hard at work, not looking at their phones, not looking longingly at the door, not shuffling off to go to the bathroom.

I read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" while they wrote.  Memory washed over me, the memory of discovering this story for the first time, the memory of wanting to do something similar myself.  I remember the first time I wrote a story that I thought worked; in fact I wrote it on this very desk, when this desk was at my grandmother's house.

I feel a bit envious of these students, all so young, most about to discover Flannery O'Connor for the first time.  I am happy that I can give them a worksheet, and they'll settle in to work.  And I imagine that some of them will actually write a short story and feel thrilled about it--ah, the joys of a liberal arts education!