week 6

This week our main focus was short stories. Short story vocabulary was brought to our class's attention both Monday and Wednesday, most of which were review, while others I actually did learn more about. Besides reading and learning more about short stories for homework, the class divided into four different groups on Wednesday and did a fun activity. The teacher assigned us all a short story, even though my group's was somewhat poetic too, and with the vocabulary words discussed in class, we were to describe what each one is in our specific story. I really enjoyed this activity; it was a great way to better understand each term and not only what it means, but also how to break down a story in those terms.
I thought this week was a great change in direction. Going from poems to short stories seemed less stressful to me, and I always enjoy a change every now and then. It was also interesting to me, to read short stories that also had a poetry side to it too! I realized this week that not only are short stories way more than what we learned about them in grade school, but also more challenging to write than expected. Right now, I am working on writing my short story in the theory provided, and also catching up with some of the readings out of our new book. I'm excited for this chapter in the semester to not only learn more about short stories, but to write some of my own short shorts.
After some of the readings this week, I realized that artistic process plays a major role in short stories. There are a lot of different key concepts to play into a short story, and also keeping on track and using specific terms throughout the story. Not only is it difficult for the author to use those terms, but it can also be difficult on placing them in the correct place in the story. For example In Media Res is typically describing a character in the middle of the story, so the author needs to make sure that is where that term is being played. Besides artistic process, creativity most definitely plays into it. Just as in poems, short stories should be creative, and not boring for the reader. Creativity can play as small or big of a role as one desire, but in my opinion, being creative throughout your writings is critical!