Sharing Session

This is our meeting where we share our work with each other.

Anyone can attend, but those who want to share work and get feedback will need to bring $1 or be a dues-paying member.

Each reader gets up to 15 minutes of sharing time. There will be a signup list for sharing at the meeting, and you can sign up as soon as the meeting starts, which is right at 6:00 PM.

Below, you'll find the writing challenge for this meeting. Participation is optional. Those who want to share will get a minute and a half at the beginning of the meeting:

Exercise: Three by Three (from William Melvin Kelley)

The exercise starts out by describing the classic story description: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl. The point of this cliche three sentence, three word structure is, there's a basic story there right? There's a beginning, middle and end.

Here's two other examples:

Cinderella

Cinderella can't go.
She goes anyway.
Cinderella gets Prince.

Pied Piper

Man lures rats.
People won't pay.
Man takes children.

It's a simple story structure and it won't always work for more complicated stories. But often it does work and these "simple" stories can be very full.

The exercise:

"Break your story idea down into three sentences of three words each. That will give you a beginning, a middle and and end and help you understand the architecture of the work. By having to choose three verbs, you'll be forcing yourself to consider the three parts of the action."

The objective:

"To see if your story, like a good stool, has three legs to stand on."

See you on Monday!