Beth Schmidt
Narrative Reflection on our Fiction Unit
Fiction has definitely been an interesting journey, and I have learned quite a bit. Originally, before I actually got into the unit, fiction loomed over me. I actually feared it. I questioned whether or not my imagination was strong enough to make up false stories that were of interest to others, and I worried more importantly, how I was ever going to make them seem real. With our first few fiction activities, I definitely struggled with the whole idea overall. In my Kafka-like re-appropriation, I don’t really tell a story—I set an image, a scene. I forgot what actually constitutes a story for a bit, but soon realized that although yes, it must have an action, this action does not have to be great. The action can be as basic and as simple as they come! Realizing this was quite a relief for me, and it made me much more bold to jump into fiction.
Even in my “wildly fantastic scene,” I limit the exact idea of fiction. I jumped into that story focusing on the word “wild”, and really made the story more of a fantasy dream world than anything else. But, this assignment compared to the “newspaper” story, made me realize that fiction can be both fictional and factual. It can be flowery and fairy like, full of imagination, and it can be something very real!
I really enjoyed each of the assignments given for this section of the fiction unit, as each one really taught me something about my writing, and about writing in general. Each assignment really stretched me in a different way. For example, the dramatic monologue really forced me to get outside of myself, and to really become a character for once. That writing assignment showed me how to be the character: to feel what they are feeling, know what they do, and really crawl around inside of them. It is not so easy to become someone else!
Then, there was my short story, which highlighted a number of things for me as well. First of all, it again highlighted the fact that a story can be about something simple. It does not have to be a whole background of information along with an event. Instead, in this piece, although there is more history than could fit into a small novel, I picked one single moment to focus on, trying to utilize a bit of Hemingway’s “iceberg effect,” telling as little as possible. I really wanted to have the reader evoke his/her own opinions and emotions about this, rather than actually coming out and saying “she feels this way about this situation.” I played with a lot of things in this piece, such as narrative distance, for instance. I thought about the role that the narrator should play, and how close I really wanted the narrator to be involved. I also played with character descriptions—limiting them extremely. I did not even name my characters in this piece because I didn’t want that to be the focus.
My final short story piece really made me face fiction square in the eyes, and I really feel like I finally began to understand fiction overall and also a lot of techniques that accompany it. I actually cheated, and involved some non-fiction elements into this fiction work, but that’s what made it so real for me and so much easier to put on a page, adding the fictional elements as I went along. I think that good fiction happens when an author knows his/her characters completely, and by my cheating a bit and actually really knowing these characters personally, it made me be able to know their reactions, know how they might express something, and be able to really feel their emotions. I guess that is what makes fiction so challenging—you really have to sit with your characters awhile until you know them better than yourself even.
Also in this final piece, I faced my biggest fear of writing: dialogue. I have never been one to add dialogue into my pieces because I have never found that it has worked for me. It has always come off sounding too fabricated, too fictional. But, in this final piece I challenged myself and decided to do all dialogue. I really went out on a limb here, because in the back of my mind I felt like I might be starting from scratch after heading out on this endeavor, but I kept it simple and tried to make it sound as real as possible. I tried to think about how it would sound if I were actually having this conversation with someone—what would I say, how would I respond? Overall, I found that dialogue worked well for this scene, and I tried to balance it with some action to keep the story going.
I have definitely enjoyed this fiction unit and have enjoyed both the similarities and the differences that it has offered me from non-fiction. I am amazed by how much the little things can change a story—from sentence structure to dialogue to “the iceberg effect.” All of these methods really can create a whole new tone to a story—these elements make it or break it. It’s amazing what a little tweaking can do…