AFC Open Mic Night - Creative Event

For my second creative event, I went to the Auburn Christian Fellowship’s Open Mic Night on April 19. Again, I wasn’t inspired in the way that I am often inspired by good music or visually engaging artwork, but I was inspired for writing nonetheless. When I got to ACF, the first acts had already started and the whole close-knit community of ACF was there, along with many others. The small building was packed out with people sitting all over the place, on couches and chairs and standing in the back. I found some people I knew then started paying attention to the young girl on the piano performing through the loud, incessant talking and laughing drowning her out. It also didn’t help that she was very timid and was barely singing into the microphone, and when she was, it was impossible to make out the actual words, if it truly was words she was attempting. During her set, and many other times throughout the night, the super supportive people would share a collective “shh!” and things would quite down, though usually it lasted less than a minute. Regardless of who was paying attention or how many times the performer made a mistake, the applause when the set was over would be unanimous and excited, forcing a smile on the nervous person leaving the stage.

One performance that was especially eye opening was when two young men wearing bandanas performed a rap in which it was completely impossible to understand a word. They fumbled over their obviously unpracticed lines and were rarely in synch with the beat the entire song. The crowd, however, was on their feet and laughing and clapping with the beat, encouraging them with yells of approval. When it was finally over, the two guys left the stage beaming and I had to wait my turn to talk to them because so many people got to them first and told them how amazing they were. The performers actually smiled and took the compliments like they deserved them.

I realized that the whole night had very little to do with art or performance and a lot to do with community. No one cared about someone actually being able to sing or do magic or tell a funny joke, they were just proud of their friends for getting on the stage. I’m sure I’ll be able to use that theme in a story at some point and I was glad I went; It was a refreshing way to look at the arts. I learned that they didn’t have to be taken so seriously and that art is even more diverse than I thought it was. It can be used as a tool to simply bring people together.

Creative Event – Greek Sing 2013

I attended Greek Sing at the Auburn Arena on April 11, 2013. Greek Sing is an event put on by the Auburn University sororities in which they compete in a choreographed dances to mashups of music. Each sorority has a different theme and different music to fit the theme and they are rated by a panel of judges for one winner.

I’m working on a story right now to be written from a woman’s perspective and so lately I’ve been even more conscious than usual about women and how they act around and interact with different people groups.

Most of the dances sucked. I grew up with five sisters and they all danced in upper level competitive ballet and modern dance. One of my best friends danced professionally for the Atlanta Ballet for a couple years, and I even danced myself for a local dance company that needed an extra guy for a project. From what I inferred, it was a bunch of girls that might have danced a little in high school or just “wanted to give it a try” for the first time in college and it was obvious that they had been drinking too much beer and hadn’t been stretching. That being said, it made the impressive and creative routines that much more enjoyable, though they were few and far between.

I wasn’t surprised when my inspiration didn’t come from the movement of the dancers or thought provoking choreography. But each dance was introduced by a short video explaining why they chose their certain theme and what it meant to them as a group. In those interviews, the way that the speaker in the video carried herself was very interesting and telling of different female personalities. It was very obvious which groups just had a lot of fun with their dance and which ones took it seriously and wanted it to be perfect. Then my favorite were the ones that tried to pretend they just wanted to have a lot of fun but were obviously very serious about the whole thing.

I tended to like the groups that took it seriously, and it showed in their dance. One in particular that intrigued and impressed me was the “Nightmare on DG Street” themed dance. While most of the ones leading up to it were themes like “High School” or “Candy” or “Pirates” Delta Gamma came out with a very dark and scary dance with fierce movements and sometimes even ominous music. It wasn’t the most impressive dancing of the night, but I was impressed by their bold theme choice.

Overall I learned a little more about the competitive side of women and how passive it can be. Chi Omega won the competition but in my opinion Alpha Gamma Delta was far more impressive.

"Big Blue Eyes" by Morgan Shaffer

Morgan Shaffer’s story “Big Blue Eyes” was interesting and slightly disturbing. I had not known about the news story of Casey Anthony, so I was confused at parts. Having read it without knowing the story, it seemed that the daughter in question was still alive and just in the other room playing house and the “crime” that kept getting mentioned was unclear. If Anthony was convicted of a crime, then why was she not in custody? And if she wasn’t convicted then why does the interviewer keep referring to it as a crime?

I liked the set up of the story and even not knowing the story it stood alone well as a completely different story where a mother loses her child for a month somehow and is an all around horrible person.

Having now read the original news story, I think it would be beneficial to change the name of Anthony and then make the story very obvious as to what it is about. A fictionalized story about a woman who kills he child then gets away without despite insurmountable evidence would be a great read. I didn’t know that T.C. Boyle’s story was a fictionalized news story until after I had read it, and standing alone and having not known that news story either, it was still a great story and an interesting read.

One more thing for improvement would be to include more characters. By developing just one more person, like the grandmother or the boyfriend, Shaffer could take control of the story by fictionalizing that character far more than she would have been able to fictionalize Casey. Another character and more story dynamics would help the story be more rounded off and full, instead of feeling like it is just a different approach to the same news story.

"Driver's License" by Sky Acton

Sky Acton’s story “Driver’s License” has room for improvement. I liked the complex idea that Acton tried to get across on the page but I think that she assumed that the reader knew more that he or she did. I would gravitate to the side of trusting the reader usually, but in a story so bizarre I think it would help to know more about sex changes and transvestites and to go about the story in a more educational, informative way.

Foreshadowing in the paper was too strong at times. On Page 3 Anthony is saying goodnight to his daughter he said, “And the door clicked shut and hid away my remainder of what would soon be my past.” Letting the reader know that a change will occur later is far less enjoyable for the reader than to just experience the change for himself or herself. Foreshadowing can be used to allude to more specific details or something small that is going to happen, but to dramatically imply the rest of the story in one sentence is frustrating to the reader and poor form.

Another cop out to avoid would be having Anthony describe himself in the mirror. Granted, it’s hard to have a character describe themselves in the first person but in my opinion it is far worse to just have the character stare at themselves and talk about what they see. If the character has a defining feature, you could bring that up in the story – I liked what you did with the driver’s license, very sneaky – or you could have other characters comment on it or have the character in question simply talk realistically about something they like or hate about their appearance.

If this story is moved around a bit for clarification I think it could be even more interesting than it already is.

"Stutter" by Taylor Siebert

Taylor Siebert’s story “Stutter” was very interesting and creative. The characters were well thought out and known thoroughly by Siebert which made them come across on the page almost flawlessly. The story had a good balance of pushing the envelope of what is possible in fiction while still keeping the story grounded in reality.

I didn’t understand the importance of the blonde girl and Levi. She is never mentioned again and it seems to be little more than a message against racism that doesn’t add to the story.

The stuttering, which is the name of the story and carries a great importance throughout the descriptions, doesn’t seem to carry much weight once Roman starts talking. Besides in summary, he is never faced with a awkward or difficult situation in the present because of his stuttering and seems to just enjoy being quiet but then talk nearly flawlessly when he wants to.

For the POV shift, I really liked the idea of three different points of view telling the same story and I think I’m going to do that in my next story. If Siebert wants to do that in this story I think it needs to be done more blatant and obviously because where it stands now it looks like it was almost an accident. Also with the three points of view the blonde girl could stay because maybe that part of the story was important to Levi while Roman and Sawyer wouldn’t have that in their versions at all.

The ending didn’t work in my opinion. Everything happened too fast and without enough emotion involved. Levi needs to have just learned of something that may kill him or have some kind of threat other than the fact that he just thinks he is dying. And if Levi is Roman’s only friend I think he needs to be more affected by the fact that Levi is dying.

"Smoke Rings" by Caroline Barr

Caroline Barr’s story, “Smoke Rings” was well written and contained the necessary elements of story and plot. It began with a girl that was unsure about a lot of things and trying to figure out her place and what she was going to do at college. When she was entranced by the mysterious smoking girl in her sorority she never thought that she would have a chance to meet her and just kept her distance in admiration. When she got stuck in a bathroom with her and they were both forced to learn a little be it about each other, the result was an interesting dynamic.

Clara, the mysterious smoking girl, was a great character but I think she could have been rounded off a little more. I always think characters can have more rounding off because in real life people are constantly surprising me and making me hit myself for making them so simple in my head. Just a couple instances of Clara doing something out of character, like wearing a sorority shirt or looking like she’s enjoying something that her character typically wouldn’t enjoy. I mean she did willfully enter the sorority and someone has to pay a lot of money to stay there so she can’t be completely miserable.

The change in the narrator was good but I think it came before it was encouraged by Clara. By the time they were in the bathroom the narrator had already stolen the glass coaster. Why did the narrator suddenly decide to change her life and be a thief? It would make more sense if she was encouraged and inspired by Clara and did something like that afterward, but before seems slightly forced for the stories sake.

I liked the flower, and I didn’t say this in class but maybe Clara draws a flower but then the narrator comes back and draws a different, more badass mark next to it to outdo Clara.

Analysis of "Emergency" and "Escort"

Voice was very apparent in Denis Johnson’s story “Emergency” and Chuck Palahniuk’s story “Escort.” Though both stories were very short, they captured and took on their weight and presence through the use of well-established voices. Both Johnson and Palahniuk were established writers when they published these stories and had spent a long time developing and sharpening their voices in order to produce such potent short stories.

In Johnson’s story, the voice came through in the strange and overt dialogue. An example is when Georgie takes the knife out of the patient’s eye: “‘Where,’ the doctor finally asked, ‘did you get that?’ Nobody said one thing more, not for quite a long time. But after a while, one of the ICU nurses said, ‘Your shoelace is untied.’ Georgie laid the knife on a chart and bent down to fix his shoe.” The scene that Johnson created was very much done through his use of voice and the way that he presented the scene without any gaps but still created something interesting and memorable.

Voice also came though in Johnson’s story in his characters. He made people in his story act in ways that came as a sort of slight shock but not so much that they seemed unbelievable. The voice carried the story past any ideas or worries about inconsistency and I was left completely believing that the characters existed somewhere in the world.

Palahniuk’s story was not driven with dialogue but instead with an insane amount of knowledge and detail about an interesting and obscure scenario. Palahniuk is known for his absurd stories and I think one of the main reasons that they are so successful is because he spends the majority of his time on a story doing research and experimenting and investigating the topics very thoroughly before he writes. Another thing Palahniuk succeeded in with driving the story was making the character do weird things. He goes to church with someone he doesn’t really know then actually takes a note off the little tree and actually does what it says and that is what makes it a story. One of my biggest pet peeves is when everyone gets so set on why. If we knew all the why’s of any given story it would fail to be a story anymore. “Why?” is a valid question but should not be investigated too hard, it should be skimmed like the extra foam off of a class of beer then forgotten about as the reader lets the story quench their thirst. Palahniuk does that well by giving just enough information: “I was desperate enough to go.” But doesn’t give the reader too much and lets them fill in the blanks themselves.

For both of the writers, confidence is what voice is boiled down and refined to. A voice comes from knowing a story or a character or a place so well that it creates itself. If a writer finds out about a story as they write it, great things can come about, but often the voice can waver and there will be a lot of editing. Voice also knows when to break rules and when to follow them, all of it being rooted in knowing the story so well that no one could find fault in it.

Analysis of "Some Terpsichore" by Elizabeth McCracken

“Some Terpsichore” by Elizabeth McCracken was incredible and made me want to quit writing because I don’t see how I could ever be that good. McCracken had such a grasp of her voice and used it confidently and consistently throughout the whole story. I enjoyed the use of the saw throughout, how McCracken used it at the beginning as a hook before I knew the importance of it, then made comparison’s using the saw and her voice and even explained the love story as between the saw and her voice. Then, again, the saw was used as the very thing that drove her away from the relationship in the end.

McCracken also did a great job with progression. The slow build of the love story was perfectly believable and easy enough to follow but then just as I started to settle in to it, it begins to change. Change is really the strength of this story. The initial change is dramatic: the main character decides to move away with a man she’d just met and start singing with him, but because it was the very beginning of the story and the reader had very little stock in the characters, this change was not the most important. The most important change was the one from love to out of love. The characters fall in love within the story in a complex way, then fall out of love in an equally complex way. The fact that it all took place within such a short story is what really impressed me with McCracken’s skill. There were no large gaps and I never felt like McCracken left something out of the story that should have been there.

In the end the details really make the writer, to me, and besides her grasp of techniques and plot, her details about the little things are what kept me reading and what made the story, in my opinion, successful.

Commentary on "Days of Reckoning" by Amanda Redfoot

Amanda Redfoot’s story, “Days of Reckoning,” was well thought out and well written. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on and who was the protagonist, but I eventually caught on and it worked. But if the whole story is taking place in a courtroom, I think it needs to be brought back to the courtroom scene a few times during the course of the story. It’s hard to imagine the description and dialogue of the story Mr. Boham tells taking place in a courtroom. Maybe a simple introduction to the narrative part of the story like, “I told the Jury the best I could about the following events:” or something along those lines that would let the reader know that what he told the courtroom was not verbatim of what they were reading.

Surprisingly, I think Redfoot did a good job writing from a male perspective. The character was round enough with his devotion to his religion but still remained very dislikable which was Redfoot’s goal. Still I think just a little more specific of a personal detail about Boham would do a lot for his characterization. Maybe just a small detail about something good he did for his wife or daughter that isn’t sickening, or even just something for anyone in the community.

The dialogue was done well and captured a lot of the story. It gave the story an older feeling, which was cultish and helped to characterize and creepify the story even more.

One of the major things to work on in the story is some change in the character, but because he is telling the story and starts and ends still in the courtroom it doesn’t give much room for the character to change. If the story just started at the narrative part and the courtroom was eliminated, it could start even earlier and really show an arch in the character.

Analysis of "Once in a Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, “Once in a Lifetime” is well written and a great, simple story. I spent two months in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and I really enjoyed the Indian details and imagery. Also I the depiction of the struggle for Indian-American’s balance of cultures was done very well; deciding what is betraying of your roots and what is simply progressing with the rest of the world is a struggle that a great many Indians all over the world struggle with.

As for the narrative arch of the story, it was definitely present and successful. The speaker, Hema, goes through change and maturity as she learns to live with the family that comes to stay in her home.

I also enjoyed the characterization of everyone in the story. As the visiting family gets more and more dislikable, there are subtle ways that Lahiri keeps them from getting too unlikeable and in the end the characters are completely turned around leaving the reader feeling that the way that they acted was excusable. The way that Kaushik is characterized as a rebellious and selfish teen is also rounded off when he shows Hema the gravestones and tells her the truth about his mother. It makes the long periods of time Kaushik spent alone carry much more weight, and it explains the attitude he seemed to have toward everyone else.

One of my favorite aspects of this story is the fact that it is not very complicated or complex. An Indian family has another Indian family over for a little while, which then turns into over a month, and the mother of the family has cancer. These are about the only major things that happen, but the story is still gripping and interesting throughout though Lahiri’s subtle use of dialogue and wonderful grasp of the art of details.

Commentary on "Tutti Fucking Frutti" by Meryll Hall

“Tutti Fucking Frutti” by Meryll Hall was definitely a story for a select audience. With the crude bitchyness and choppy sentences and endless outside referneces, it was the kind of story that would be great for the people it would be great for but leave everyone else in the dust.

I liked the underlying theme of lonliness told through the unreliable narrator but I think it could be played up even more. With Andrea walking around downtown and then only getting absently invited by text last minute to a distant acquaintance’s house was a great way to start the desperate characterization.

As a story, I didn’t see any arch or any change in the character. She started as a bitch full of allusions of popularity awesomeness and ended the same way. In order for the story to be worth reading, even to the specific audience that would be interested in it, there needs to be a story.

Some of the details were pretty good, with the flask falling out of her purse and the wilted flowers and the separated liquors, but it seemed that the details were too exaggerated and I still didn’t feel like I ever knew where I was in the story.

The fact that only one side of Andrea is ever seen is also a problem. I finished the story impressed that Hall could think someone up so awful but was so disgusted with Andrea that I barely remembered what happened in the story. Even if she is going to remain awful and self obsessed, she needs just a tiny bit of humanity shown within the story. Maybe she loves animals or she takes care of her sick dad or anything that forces the reader to not want her chopped up and left in a black trash bag in the woods.

I liked the underlying theme of lonliness told through the unreliable narrator but I think it could be played up even more. With Andrea walking around downtown and then only getting absently invited by text last minute to a distant acquaintance’s house was a great way to start the desperate characterization.

Commentary on "She Doesn't Deserve My Sandwich" by Melissa Darce

Melissa Darce’s story “She Doesn’t Deserve My Sandwich” was funny and full of fresh ideas. I liked the idea of a nosey fast food employee talking through the microphone to someone in the drive through and trying to give life advice. I liked even more that the protagonist took the advice and tried to save the relationship. Though the ideas were fresh and funny, the delivery was lacking.

The Wendell Berry trend of writing from the opposite sex’s point of view is getting old and I have still yet to have seen it done well. Berry and other authors that have tackled the job of writing for the opposite sex did a lot of work and research with that sex before putting there stories out, and it showed in the details. In Darce’s story, there was nothing to point to the fact that the speaker was a boy until Darce mentioned it, and beyond that it was just an angry flat character that had woman problems.

The dialogue wasn’t very believable and again was very angry and straightforward the whole time coming from the speaker. The dialect infused in the spelling of the words was also distracting and the flatness and racism of the Asian character was insulting.

The main issue with the story was the flatness of the characters. In order for the characters to be believable and likeable or genuinely dislikeable they need to show characteristics of both sides of the coin. If Lisa is supposed to be an annoying horrible girlfriend, she needs to show at least some side of kindness and humanity. The Asian and black characters can have thick accents if that’s what Darce wants, but by making the Asian a stereotypical idiot it takes away from the believability of the character and makes takes away from the story.

Commentary on "Love Thy Enemy" by Taylor Seibert

Taylor Seibert’s story “Love Thy Enemy” is about a young woman that gets abducted in the middle of the night and taken to a remote cabin where she is calmly and very disturbingly tormented for weeks. The writing was as good as it gets in this class and what I think everyone expected from Seibert. Her control of scene and setting and eye-popping descriptions and details drove the story almost flawlessly through to the end.

Something I learned from the story was a great way to pass the time. On page five Isabel lays down next to the fire; in the following paragraph she is still laying next to the fire but eighteen days have passed. The connection of the same image made the eighteen days a smooth and easy transition and was something that I’ve never thought about as an idea to pass time, especially monotonous time.

The only problem I had with the story was the plot, it worked in a structural sense, but I tried and I just couldn’t believe it. The only action that wasn’t completely robotic was the light punch when Isabel was first going in to the house. But almost three weeks of being pantsless in a one-room cabin in the woods didn’t lead to anything else? How was nothing else concerning or going on in Isabel’s head?

Too much emphasis was put on the message and not enough on the story. For a message to be successful, the story must stand alone without it. The greatest fables and parables are first stories; no matter the absurdity of the stories, they always have a fullness in plot and detail which makes the message believable and relatable.

Not enough can be said about the craft of the story, it felt natural coming off the page which is a good indication that it very naturally went onto the page. And it was very extremely and totally successful at making me feel quite uncomfortable. I checked over my shoulder multiple times. 

Commentary on "Renewed" by Whitney Pugh

Whitney Pugh’s story “Renewed” is about a man named Gerard who is interviewing a religious extremist who is incarcerated for an unknown reason. The story was very successful in its short length; it accomplished a full story arch in a short amount of time and didn’t leave the reader with too much left out.

What is lacking is description and setting and imagery. “Fully dressed in water” is an image that I enjoyed on the first page and anticipated more of, but as the story progressed then ended there are very few additional images. I was lost and not firmly placed in any setting for most of the story as I found out the protagonist was a man and that Daniel was in prison.

A minor detail that I noticed because I am constantly struggling with it is the inconsistency in tense. It bounces from past to present a few times and took me out of the story.

The dialogue in the story works in the beginning because of the unique interview setting, but the casual dialogue still feels like and interview and not like home life.

Another thing that can be improved is the passing of time. On page three, between the conversation on the couch and interviewing Daniel the next day, there is no feeling of passed time. A good way to pass the time and show that hours of sleep and night and morning routines had passed is to document the transit of the protagonist. That gives the writer a place to describe scene and setting and also a way someone travels is very telling about their character.

One of the details that I couldn’t really believe was that Gerard had a horrible home life. He may have been internally frustrated with the way his wife did and didn’t treat him, but the way it shows up on the page is not horrible at all.

Great as flash fiction, as a whole, the piece works.