Creative writing - NGSession 2

Writing game 4 - Exquisite Corpse

• Rules: In groups of 5, take turns writing a word or a sentence without knowing the preceding bit(s)

• Follow this sentence structure: "The/My/His/Her/Your adjective noun (adverb) verb the/his/her/your adjective noun“, i.e. for instance: “My cool karma always runs over your stale dogma”

Exquisite Corpse 2• Choose one word each for the first sentence – do this

simultaneously without consulting the others1. Article/pronoun + adjective (My green)2. Noun (friend)3. Adverb (if you want/need one) + verb (usually makes)4. Article/pronoun + Second adjective (the best)5. Second noun (Sunday)• “My green friend makes the best Sunday”

Ex. Corpse 3

• Everyone then gets to know the whole sentence.

• Next, each member writes a whole sentence in continuation

• The last word only is revealed to the next writer…

Ex. Corpse 4

• Go through 2 more rounds of corpse, then read the whole mess.

• Edit, if absolutely necessary, for comprehension

• Read aloud in class

Last week’s genres

• Poems

• Flow writing, therapy

• Short story

• Blog posts

Today’s genres

• Travel writing – one of many forms of creative non-fiction…

Ways of categorising creative non-fiction

• By form: memoirs, the personal essay, literary journalism

• By content/subject: nature writing, literary travel, the science essay, creative cultural criticism

• ‘The art of the particular’

Literary travel

• Database categories for the general term ‘travel writing’:

• ‘description and travel’

• ‘social life and customs’

Who writes travel writing?

• Journalists

• Fiction writers • ‘Non-literary travel writing’ and

• ‘Literary travel writing’?

Reader expectations• The journalists have a strong interest in

maintaining their credibility• The fiction writers have more creative freedom

(?)• Yet they must still confirm some kind of credibility

(they must have some personal experience with the place the describe)

Examples of ‘literary travel writing’

• The Writer and the City series

• Peter Carey, 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account (2001)

Elizabeth Bishop

• American poet and writer (1911-1979) Won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1956)

• From her poem ‘Questions of Travel’:

• ‘Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?’

Reading protocols (fiction writer)

• The writer should have a personal relationship to the place he/she describes

• We expect the account to rely on the writers experience and memory

• We expect some literal truthfulness (not necessarily expected in fiction by the same author)

Reading protocols (The journalist)

• The writer will try to be neutral and objective• This is about something important, not (just)

about the writer• The sources will be made clear and their

reliability will be assessed• The reader can disagree, but there really is no

point in doing so

Bruce Chatwin• English novelist and traveller• 1972: worked for the Sunday Times Magazine

as an advisor on art and architecture• Went to Petagonia in 1974 (South America), later

travelled to the West African state of Benin, Australia

• Died in 1989 in France (of AIDS)

Bruce Chatwin • Style:• A story-teller• Has been criticised for his fictional anecdotes of real people, places

and events• Chatwin did not claim his portrayals to be faithful representations• “He tells not a half truth, but a truth and a half” (Nicholas

Shakespeare, Chatwin’s biographer, a British journalist and writer (1999) )

The Chinese Geomancer

• Published in What am I doing Here? (1989)

geomancer -- an expert in geomancy

geomancy -- noun

the belief that arranging your home, house, office etc in a particular way will bring you good or bad luck [ feng shui]↪

RP for Geomancer• Speaks as a visitor to Hong Kong (he is British but not as British as

the ‘old China hand’)• Self-other construction• Distance to what he narrates• Uses irony (when referring to Russian architecture)• Informs the reader (about feng-shui)• Reflects on China history and contemporary Chinese politics• Light entertainment• Post-colonialism?

Five strands of Travel Writing• Five broad and overlapping strands that can be detected

within travel writing of the last 25 years:

1. The comical

2. The analytical

3. The wilderness

4. The spiritual

5. The experimental

1. The comic– For example parodies

2. The analytical– Mixture of personal reportage and socio-political analysis (often a

component in travel writing)

3. The wilderness– The jungle of Amazon and New Guinea – ‘the wilderness’ now often as ecological as indigenous: Siberia,

Alaska, the poles

4. The spiritual– the inner journey merging with memoir– The spiritual dimension of travel

5. The experimental– Pushes the genre into a variety of new directions

– Hybridisation (which has periodically reinvigorated travel writing through its history)

– ‘extreme travel’ writing

– intertextuality

– Sometimes the journey is subordinate

– Travel writing as cultural history

– Travel writing meets investigative reporting

Writing games• Writing game 5 – pair work. • Compare your lists of words and merge them into one list.• Choose a title for your piece• Write a piece of travel writing of no more than 300 words that

incorporates all the data in your list• Revise this writing until the use of this data seems completely

inevitable, and neither random nor forced• Post on blog.

Data-ingredients for next week• 1 overheard conversation• 3 species of birds• 2 brand names for food• Text from 4 signs• The name of a planet or a star• The name of a lipstick• 1 time of day• The title of a book• The title of a painting• The name of a dead politician• 2 types of vegetables• 3 items from a hardware store• A make of gun