PLEASE WRITE YOUR NAME ONLY ON THE BACK OF THIS TEST PACKET.

Creative Writing Spring 2003

Barbara Daniels Fiction Exam

How well you write affects your grade on this test, so plan and proofread carefully. Crossouts and corrections are fine; don’t take the time to copy anything over. In your answers show off what you’ve learned from the text and from our classes. Don’t repeat yourself; use different kinds of knowledge in different parts of the test.

I. IDENTIFICATIONS

Choose FIVE of the terms from the list below and define them briefly. You may include

examples to illustrate your definitions if you wish. (4 points each for a total of 20 points;

use 1/5 of your time for this part.)

setting conflict first person point of view scene

scene plot characterization

foreshadowing unreliable narrator chronological order

II. ESSAYS

Choose FOUR of the essay questions below. Be specific; aim to write at least three

quarters of a page for each one; more is better. (20 points for each essay)

1. Discuss four specific kinds of revisions writers can make to improve their stories. Refer to

stories we’ve workshopped in class or to your own stories to illustrate the types of revisions

you believe are most useful. Be sure to include ideas from What If? (by Anne Bernays and

Pamela Painter).

2. Explain the ways What If? influenced your writing. Refer to exercises you tried, concepts and strategies you learned, and a story or two that changed your thinking about writing fiction. Be specific about what you learned from the book.

3. Assume you are the leader of a short story workshop. Explain the guidelines you would establish and tell how you would run the group so that everyone benefits from it.

4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using first and third person point of view. Refer to specific stories (stories written by class members, stories included in What If? or stories from other sources) to illustrate your ideas.

5. Pick ANY THREE of the elements below and weave them into ONE SCENE. Take about fifteen minutes to write this. Use this as an opportunity to show off how well you can write. Add a title.

Write a story about personal ads. Write a story about a musical instrument.

Write a story about enemies. Write a story about cutting down a tree.

Write a story about a wrong number. Write a story about shyness.

Write a story about baby fat. Write a story about boiled eggs.

6. Choose one of the openings from the list below and take ten to fifteen minutes to add to it,

writing one SCENE of a story. Use this as an opportunity to show off how well you can

write. Add a title.

My father came across the field carrying the body of the boy who had been drowned.

Rosa Lublin, a madwoman and a scavenger, gave up her store—she smashed it up herself—and moved to Miami.

I steal.

Joel hates November. As far as he’s concerned they could drop it down the chute and he wouldn’t complain. Drizzle and chill, everyone depressed, and then the winter to go through afterwards.

Since Dr. Wayland was late and there were no recent news magazines in the waiting room, I turned to the other patient and said, “As a concerned person, and as your brother, I ask you, without meaning to offend, how did you get that scar on the side of your face?”

7. What is accomplished (from a writer’s viewpoint) in the opening of Elizabeth Talent’s “No One’s a Mystery’? Provide specific comments on what you believe this opening paragraph achieves, using terms and concepts covered in this class.

For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a little key, light as a dime. I was sitting beside him scratching at the lock, which didn’t seem to want to work, when he thought he saw his wife’s Cadillac in the distance, coming toward us. He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes in the dashboard ashtray and sang along with Rosanne Cash on the tape deck. We’d been drinking tequila and the bottle was between his legs, resting up against his crotch, where the seam of his Levi’s was bleached linen-white, though the Levi’s were nearly new. I don’t know why his Levi’s always bleached like that, along the seams and at the knees. In a curve of cloth his zipper glinted, gold.

8. Discuss the differences between short short stories and longer short stories, referring specifically to examples from What If? as well as to stories from other sources. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of story from a writer’s viewpoint?

9. Explain what using an unreliable narrator contributes to a story and discuss the difficulties this strategy poses for a writer.