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Take a book off the shelf and write down the opening line. Then substitute as many words as possible with your own words, keeping the syntax and parts of speech intact. Then keep writing. Performing this kind of literary "Mad Lib" often creates a useful starting place for a story, especially when the sentence contains an intersection of character, setting, and situation. Or try using these opening lines, from Faulkner, García Márquez, and Plath, respectively:
Through the [concrete noun], between the [adjective] [concrete noun], I could see them [verb ending in "ing"].
It was inevitable: the scent of [adjective] [plural noun] always reminded him of the [noun] of [adjective] [noun].
It was a [adjective], [adjective] [season], the [same season] they [transitive verb, past tense] the [family name, plural], and I didn't know what I was doing in [city].
This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Eleanor Henderson, whose first novel, Ten Thousand Saints, will be published by Ecco in June.
From director Cary Fukunaga comes a new vision of Charlotte Brontë's classic novel Jane Eyre. The movie, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, opened March 11.
The finalists for the Man Booker International Prize have been announced, but if one nominee's wishes were honored, the shortlist would have to be clipped further. Best-selling author John le Carré has refused his nomination for the prize honoring achievement in fiction, saying simply that, while flattered by the recognition, he does not compete for literary awards.
Despite le Carré's request to be removed from the list of contenders, he could still be given the honor, which is offered at the discretion of a judging panel. "Le Carré's name will, of course, remain on the list," says chair of the judges Rick Gekoski. "We are disappointed that he wants to withdraw from further consideration because we are great admirers of his work."
Unlike its sister award, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the International Prize does not accept outside nominations. The finalists and winner of the sixty-thousand-pound prize (approximately ninety-six thousand dollars) are determined by a closed judging process.
In addition to le Carré, the finalists for the seventh annual award are Wang Anyi and Su Tong of China; Juan Goytisolo of Spain; James Kelman and Philip Pullman of the United Kingdom; Amin Maalouf of Lebanon; David Malouf of Australia; Dacia Maraini of Italy; Rohinton Mistry of India and Canada; and U.S. authors Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth, and Anne Tyler. The winner will be announced on May 18 at the Sydney Writers' Festival in Australia.
In the video below, the Daily Beast's Tina Brown speaks with Roth about the future of the novel as a literary form.
On April 15 Little, Brown will publish The Pale King, David Foster Wallace's final, unfinished novel. In this BBC documentary, Geoff Ward discusses the life and works of the author who committed suicide in 2008, at the age of forty-six. Ward also talks to Wallace's editor, Michael Pietsch, about the difficult task of assembling Wallace's final fragments into The Pale King.
The Vilcek Foundation has selected poet Charles Simic and fiction writer Dinaw Mengestu as recipients of the sixth annual Vilcek Prizes honoring foreign-born writers, artists, and scientists now living in the United States. Former U.S. poet laureate and recent Robert Frost Medal–winner Simic, born in the former Yugoslavia, received the one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize for lifetime achievement, and Mengestu, born in Ethiopia, won the twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize for creative promise.
Author of twenty poetry collections, Simic's most recent work is Master of Disguises (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Mengestu is the author of the novels How to Read the Air (Riverhead Books, 2010) and the widely praised The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead Books, 2007), which won the Guardian First Book Award.
The finalists for the prize for emerging writers, each receiving five thousand dollars, are poet Ilya Kaminsky (born in the former Soviet Union) and fiction writers Simon Van Booy (born in England), Téa Obreht (born in Croatia), and Vu Tran (born in Vietnam).
The literature honorees will participate in a panel, The New Vernacular: Immigrant Authors in American Literature, at New York City's Housing Works Bookstore Café on April 5. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are appreciated.
In the video below, Mengestu discusses his latest novel.
In the third person, write a scene using three different modes of narrative distance. First, using an objective point of view, describe a woman boarding a bus. Use only actions, expressions, and dialogue; make no judgments about the scene or about her interior life. Then, using the omniscient point of view, describe the woman striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to her. You can still describe what you see on the "outside," but now, reveal something "inside" that only a privileged narrator would know. (Is she late for work? Is she worried about something? Is she bored by the conversation?) Finally, shift into stream of consciousness as the woman gets off the bus. Continue to access the woman's thoughts, feelings, and memories, but use the language of the character herself, revealing "the process as well as the content of the mind," as Janet Burroway says. This wide range of voices may be extreme, but it allows for a full portrait of a character's inner and outer life—and reminds us that no point of view is static. This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Eleanor Henderson, whose first novel, Ten Thousand Saints, will be published by Ecco in June.
"My excuse for looking like this? I'm a writer," declares Eddie Spinola in Limitless, the film adaptation of Alan Glynn's second novel starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, in theaters now.
For the third time in the prize's short history, the Man Asian Literary Prize has been given to an author from China.
On Thursday Bi Feiyu received the thirty-thousand-dollar honor for his novel Three Sisters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), set during China's Cultural Revolution of the late sixties. The book's translators, Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, each received five thousand dollars.
"Picking a winner from the selection of novels as rich and varied as those before us has made for an embarrassment of riches," said judge and literary critic Homi K. Bhahba during a speech at the award ceremony in Hong Kong. "For the house of fiction, as the novelist Henry James once called it, is a wondrous thing. Each window looks out on a different view. Each room provides an alternative way of living. Each door opens onto another country."
The Man Asian Literary Prize, which had for the past three years been given for a book of fiction not yet published in English and written by a citizen of one of twenty-seven Asian countries or territories, is now given for a volume already published in English. Past winners are Miguel Syjuco (Ilustrado) of the Philippines and Su Tong (The Boat to Redemption) and Jiang Rong (Wolf Totem), both of China.
Yesterday the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the finalists for its twenty-third annual "Lammy" literary awards. Books are considered on the basis of their being authored by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers or depicting LGBT characters.
Below are the contenders for prizes in poetry, fiction, and debut fiction, selected from a record pool of entries: 520 titles submitted by 230 publishers. The full lists of finalists in the additional Lammy categories, including biography, anthology, and erotica, are available on the Lambda Literary Foundation Web site.
Gay Poetry darkacre by Greg Hewett (Coffee House Press) then, we were still living by Michael Klein (GenPop Books) Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Pleasure by Brian Teare (Ahsahta Press) The Salt Ecstasies: Poems by James L. White (Graywolf Press)
Lesbian Poetry Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth J. Colen (Steel Toe Books) The Inquisition Yours by Jen Currin (Coach House Books) The Sensual World Re-emerges by Eleanor Lerman (Sarabande Books) White Shirt by Laurie MacFayden (Frontenac House) The Nights Also by Anna Swanson (Tightrope Books)
Gay Debut Fiction XOXO Hayden by Chris Corkum (P. D. Publishing) Probation by Tom Mendicino (Kensington Publishing) Bob the Book by David Pratt (Chelsea Station Editions) The Palisades by Tom Schabarum (Cascadia Publishing) Passes Through by Rob Stephenson (University of Alabama Press)
Lesbian Debut Fiction Alcestis by Katharine Beutner (Soho Press) Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp Press) Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press) The More I Owe You by Michael Sledge (Counterpoint Press) One More Stop by Lois Walden (Arcadia Books)
Bisexual Fiction Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press) If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (Harper Perennial) Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press) The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes (Harper Perennial) Pride/Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers by Ann Herendeen (Harper Paperbacks)
Gay Fiction By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer (Soft Skull) Consolation by Jonathan Strong (Pressed Wafer) The Silver Hearted by David McConnell (Alyson Books) Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (Doubleday)
Lesbian Fiction Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe (University of Wisconsin Press) Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle by Zelda Lockhart (LaVenson Press) Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall (House of Anansi), also a finalist in the transgender fiction category Homeschooling by Carol Guess (PS Publishing) Inferno by Eileen Myles (OR Books)
The winners will be honored at a gala held at the School of Visual Arts in New York City on May 26.
In the video below, Lesbian Fiction finalist Eileen Myles discusses her nominated book.
Find a story you admire, one with a tight, linear structure. Stories by Flannery O'Connor or Tobias Wolff would be good choices. Read the story slowly and thoroughly five times, so that you are emotionally detached from the narrative, so that you are able to recognize every sentence as a moving part that contributes to the overall design. Then read it again, for a sixth time, with a notebook next to you. Chart the architecture of the story. Indicate a new paragraph with a dotted line running across the page. Separate every instance of white space with a bold line. Track each paragraph, noting every relevant element. Example: Opens with a description of setting that clues us in to the mood of despair. Character A introduced with a line of dialogue that reveals his selfishness. And so on. When you finish, write your own story that bears no resemblance to the original except in its design. Paste new flesh on an old skeleton. For canonical examples of this, compare "Mexico" by Rick Bass to "The Prophet From Jupiter" by Tony Early or "The Lady With the Pet Dog" by Anton Chekhov to "The Man With the Lapdog" by Beth Lordan. This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Benjamin Percy, whose most recent novel, The Wilding, was published in September 2010.
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