Story #7: 1-4 page anti-story story.

Story #7: 1-4 page anti-story story. Read Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” in Doubletakes and think about how he has structured his story in an unusual way–through rhetorical repetition and variation, instead of through traditional storytelling plot. This is more usual in poetry, especially poetry influenced by the Bible, like that of Walt Whitman. Now read Clarice Lispector’s “The Fifth Story” in handout and notice how her story is a story that is written against plot. It tells one different event in 5 different ways, so that there is no one plot, no one meaning to take from the story. The story remains open, because the plot vacillates and shifts. Now you do something similar: take a conventional element of fiction (plot, voice, setting, character, the suspension of disbelief, etc.) and warp it, break it, break the rules with which one is suppose to treat it. In this sort of story, a good trick is to deny traditional narrative pleasures while at the same time gesturing towards them. The tension that is created by suggesting traditional narration and then withdrawing it creates this pleasure.