The Story Workshop Method: Writing from Start to Finish
1977; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/375765
ISSN2161-8178
Autores Tópico(s)Theatre and Performance Studies
Resumoexercises bridge from the to the specific, just as the Story Workshop expository steps usually bridge from reading to oral telling to writing. (The latter require a separate, full discussion.) toilet monster lives in the drain under the toilet of a gas station. When he expands against the sides of the pipe, he stops it up and the toilet overflows. director coaches: How does he expand? Howv does he stop it up? it and tell it so we can see (The teller gives a vivid gesture of m7oving his shoulders to tell how the monster expands to fill the pipe rigidly and how, whenl he laughs, he can't help it, he contracts and the water slips past him down the pipe in spite of himzself.) See the monster at work! the director coaches. See him getting somebody! In monster and other imaginative tellings that proceed from abstract or general suggestion, perceptions of common naturalistic and realistic relationships of all kinds become vivid and precise. A father and two boys come into the restroom. When you press the faucet, it's one of the spring-snap self-closing faucets, you can't get your hands underneath it fast enough to get water on them and the water comes with such force that it splashes all over your pants. nine year old boy tries to work the faucet and jumps away from its violent splashing, while the four year old takes down his pants and sits on the can. telling becomes vague, so the director coaches: See what the monster sees! it from his point of view! What happens next? In the drain the monster looks up at the little boy's buttocks on the seat. (The teller and the others in the workshop laugh because they all see it.) monster expands his shoulders to fill the drain rigidly. water rises and rises toward the little boy's buttocks. It touches him. boy screams as the toilet overflows through his legs. ... director's coachings enabled the teller to get into the point of view and to see it so that the audience could see and respond to it. Other monster tellings of similar quality and vividness occurred in the same session: the fishing lure monster, the sidewalk monster, the garbage monster. Most of the students also wrote strongly during that session. Later the teller of the toilet monster wrote the telling. He went back in time to explain how the gas station owner got there and how the monster got there, instead of letting the central, catalytic image generate the movement of the imaginative event. In his writing of the telling, the piece came alive when it reached the material of the original telling but then did not go beyond it. A common error is to spend the writing effort in trying to explain how the image came about, its prior history, rather than to go with the energy and movement. There are exceptions to this nearly rule. (See The Stalk of the Wisconsin Squonk in Story TVorkshop Reader for a story where the ending image was the one told orally in a Story Workshop class.) This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Thu, 30 Jun 2016 05:23:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 426 (COLLEG(E ENGLISH THE IN-CLASS WRI1TING Directly after the oral telling period, the director can lead the group into an in-class writing exercise, but perhaps you read-and have a few partipicants read-a strong passage or story first, particularly in a beginning class, to accomplish the connection of oral telling to reading and writing. This reading gives an immediate experience of an imaginative event where all principles of seeing and telling come together. in-class writing may also be done toward the end of class after the longer reading period. If done directly after the oral telling period in the middle of the class, more time may be devoted to reading some of the writings aloud. reading aloud of the in-class writing to the immediate audience frequently carries the students dynatnically into the full writing process. A specific telling exercise may be used for, or may lead into, the in-class writing, or a specific reading may be explored for suggested writing possibilities. Dreams, events, or memories may be specifically assigned. Or the director may suggest that the students take something that started in the word exercises or in the oral tellings, or perhaps sonlething the students didn't get a chance to tell that still feels strong to them. director can put a time limit on it, Five minutes! or let the writing go for a longer period. Over the period of the semester the director may begin extending the in-class writing and read-back period, because in this exercise everything discovered in the class moves readily into writing. director usually coaches the in-class writing in ways similar to the coaching of oral telling. See it and tell it to the paper. Get the sense of telling it to someone right at the beginning. your pencil be an extension of your voice, an extension of your seeing. Listen to your voice, for your voice. See the imaginative event. Let it happen. not knowing necessarily what's going to happen next. Write knowing some of what happens next but not necessarily all or any of Tell it as fast as you can, as clearly as you can, as fully as you can. We'll read some of them here in the You change your instructions to meet just about any contingency or point of writing concentration. You seek to gain and enforce a focus of concentration without proscribing any possibility. You may coach participants to change points of view from first to third person or third to first, or to switch from one character's to another's point of view; to perceive catalogues or sequences of objects or actions; to change tenses; to change forms, etc. You may coach for just about any principle essential to the form or address or development of almost any kind of writing. You may coach them to keep on writing when they try to stop. Often students will come to write readily and capably in the in-class period while they still resist writing alone outside the class. state of imaginative seeing, an integrated readiness of voice and movement and seeing, makes the inclass wvriting more accessible to the student. This habit of welcome and readiness begins to develop alongside and to penetrate and break up the habit of resistance. This welcome/resistance attitude toxvard the activity of writing may pique the interest of certain researchers. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Thu, 30 Jun 2016 05:23:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Story Workshop Mlethodl: TTWriting from Start to Finish 427 tasks that one perceives, sets, accepts, discovers for one's self bring about the greatest realization of one's abilities. Story Vorkshop method should facilitate and provide a context for such choices. In the in-class writings, many minority students first test their vernacular, their cultural voices, their cultural content and attitudes. It may be an account of people waiting in an unemployment office, and the only white faces are among the employees behind the counters. In an in-class writing big and growing feet afflict a black man named Dave, so big they're splitting his shoes as a matter of fact. A friend of Dave's named Mud-Bowl in New Orleans seeks the help of a Voodoo lady to see if she will consent to make Dave's feet smaller. Dave shows up at night at the door of the Voodoo lady's cabin to get help. writer later told the director that he looked around the semicircle and in his mind's eye and ear tested persons in it for their reactions to certain words and phrasing. Because of the heightened concentration of the Story Workshop period, and because of the director's coachings and the anticipation of immediate audience response, the in-class writing most frequently shows perceptual and linguistic discovery before the writing that the student does outside of class and hands in weekly to the director. When these in-class writings are read aloud in class, the effectiveness of the Story Workshop audience reveals itself, contributing a thrust to the group's and the individual's progress. Here the students discover, and the director makes explicit, the connections between the work performed in the oral exercises, the reading aloud, the in-class writing, and the wrriting done outside the class. Usually students accomplish their first breakthroughs in the oral telling exercises, next in the in-class writing exercises, next in the writing done outside of the Story Workshop class. THE IN-CLASS ORAL READING director devotes fully one-fourth to one-third of the class period of four hours to reading aloud, coaching the students toward a clear reading experience. In the reading chosen for this period, and in the assigned reading, the director keeps before the students a wide spectrum of writing possibilities and forms, of different voices and kinds of seeing-stories, poems, factual pieces, novels, scientific observations, etc. You select readings that demonstrate that nothing human is alien to writing. You select readings that guide a particular development of the class, theme, or goal. Few students know that the reading aloud experience can be tremendously stimulating, enjoyable, instructive, replete with discovery possibilities. director's own reading aloud to the workshop communicates strongly every level of his/her appreciation, excitements, and perceptions. students also read aloud, coached by the director, and if possible, particularly in beginning classes, each student reads aloud each session. In the oral reading students hear their voices join the many voices of the common English language. Probably the student initially reads aloud too fast, and the quality of the This content downloaded from 207.46.13.129 on Thu, 30 Jun 2016 05:23:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
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