Assignment

Here are the rules for the writing assignment I'm setting anyone who's interested in doing a writing assignment.

1/ You must obey the classical unities. These are: unity of action (you must only have one plot, no subplots and, importantly, the action must be whole); unity of place (the story must be set in one place and cannot be shifted geographically); unity of time (in a play, unity of time demands that the action does not cover a longer amount of time than the play does (originally, it was no longer than one day); you figure out for yourself what that means for a short story). If you're not clear on the classical unities, there's a typically intellectually underpowered Wikipedia article that you can read but if you want discussion of how the unities are employed in drama, and how they can shape a piece of fiction, you'll have to cast your net further¹.
2/ You must set your piece on a train.
3/ You can write fiction, faction, semifiction, nonfiction. I don't care which.
4/ You may not feature more than three characters but any character you do feature must be properly drawn. You will have to figure out what that means for yourself.

I'm willing to criticise and discuss anything submitted to me at drzen1 AT gmail DOT com or any other email addy you have for me. I intend to post pieces and critiques here, so if you don't want that, don't send me anything, or at least let me know so that I can keep your critique private. I'm hoping that we can have a discussion in the comments, and also that others might add their thoughts by email. I'll also post anything that is sent to me unless otherwise noted.

But besides that, I'm going to be looking for something either good or bad, but notably so either way, to write a post about. I intend for this to be a technical post, so for instance, I might talk about how a choice of tense was incorrect or how a writer had skilfully drawn his or her character. I'll also do the assignment myself but anyone with the temerity to criticise me knows what they're likely to get.

There's no deadline.

1 Why make you stick to the unities? Simple. A problem many writers have is that they are not disciplined and are unable to constrain their ideas to a suitable vehicle. They either try to force too much action into a story that conceptually will not bear it or do not sufficiently focus their ideas. So by using an artifical limit, you are setting the constraints that will help you focus. Return

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:49 pm