Imagined Realities: Short Story Writing with Middle and High School Students

Imagined Realities: Short Story Writing with Middle and High School Students

Amanda Smith

As a college student earning my B.A. in Creative Writing, I spent several years fussing over characters I created like they were immediate family members, wondering what they would wear to work, why they would choose that tie. I lived the characters. I shared my characters, chapters, and short stories with peers during workshops as we sat around a table in a windowless room, never truly thinking about how I was learning to develop skills as a writer. Flash forward to the present, and I am desperately trying to crack my cranium to understand what I did when I wrote, wondering how on earth I could explain it to middle and high school students. Novelist Anne Bernays expresses a similar stupefaction: “Nothing I had done before—editing a magazine, publishing five novels—prepared me for trying to explain how I’d done it or, more daunting still, to translate what I worked at every day into curriculum” (23).

Embarking upon research, I secretly hoped I would discover some sort of recipe that I could distribute to students about how to write fiction. Two cups plot, one cup character, three tablespoons dialogue, a dash of detail, bake until golden brown. But, of course, there is no such recipe. And even if I had one in my back pocket to copy and distribute on 3 x 5 cards to students, no formula could capture the essence of what makes fiction tick. Teaching fiction writing is nowhere near an exact science, but there are things we can do to make the experience exciting and worthwhile to students. Short stories provide the perfect medium for students to learn and explore fiction writing. Heather Lattimer, teacher and author of Thinking Through Genre, points out that, “because [short stories] are short, they are often more focused on a single main character and a single conflict [than a novel is]” (159); this makes them ideal for students to read and write.

Playing Around: Why Students Need to Write Short Stories

As I suggest teaching fiction writing to secondary students, I am aware that I will inevitably come nose to nose with skeptics who consider it to be nothing more than fun and games. They will ask, why teach students to write stories when we can be instructing them in more useful, more sophisticated forms like the argumentative essay or perhaps the research paper? How on earth will writing fiction prepare students for the Regents exam? For college? I will push the skeptics aside for a moment to allow you to look closely at what fiction writing has to offer. You will see that it is far from “frilly and unrigorous playtime.” As Randy Bomer notes in his book, Time for Meaning, it provides students with “a hard rehearsal of valuable habits of mind” (137).

To quell the concerns of critics, I will begin by examining the academic values tied to fiction writing. In “The Gold Standard: Defending Creative Writing in the Classroom,” practicing teacher Christopher Hood explores how fiction writing “teaches contextual thinking” (27). When students write short stories, they utilize many of the skills they will continue to develop in more traditional writing assignments. Fiction writers tap into “grammar, syntax, [and] vocabulary” skills in the process of “finding a voice and communicating to a reader” (Hood 27). Consider the skills necessary to write a “critical lens” essay on the Regents exam. To earn a top score on a Regents essay, a student must develop her ideas fully and clearly, use precise and engaging language, maintain focus and direction, and show control of spelling and grammar conventions. Good fiction also includes fully developed ideas, language that captures and maintains the interest of readers, a sense of direction, and demonstrates understanding of conventions. If fiction writing can help students develop and practice the same important skills they need to write in other genres, why not teach it?

Teachers often struggle to justify the value of writing to students. Since many young people prefer watching television to picking up a pen, it is no surprise that writing does not matter to them. But when you ask them to write short stories, you invite them to write about something that matters. The characters they bring to life on the page, the authentic conflicts they explore, the ways their characters respond to these conflicts—all of these basic short story elements allow students to bring their own purposes and meanings to what they write. Students can create characters that have concerns and face conflicts similar to those they experience, making characters seem more real. When students relate closely to their characters, they will invest in what happens to them; this will help them write an engaging story that readers will also be invested in.

The ideas, issues, and discussions that spring forth from the short stories students write are valuable to every member of the class. Relationships, the pressure to fit in, violence, substance abuse, self-image, and the future are some of the concerns that weigh heavily on the minds of many students. Fiction writing provides them with the freedom to explore these topics, among others, and express their feelings and opinions about them. Since most students have similar concerns about these topics, short stories that address these concerns give students a medium with which to communicate to each other. Sharing their fiction allows them to discuss, negotiate, and debate issues that matter to them. In “Telling Stories Is True Writing,” high school English teacher Michael McClure suggests that “letting [these issues] emerge from the class response to a student’s story” allows both “writer and audience [to] feel more greatly invested in the meanings so discovered; the issues become theirs instead of merely an agenda I impose on them” (94). Short story writing fosters a sense of ownership in students; the act of writing is no longer just an assignment but a way for students to communicate about issues that matter in their lives with passion and purpose.

Short story writing can help students express their own concerns and relate to each other, but it also helps them see the world through perspectives different from their own. It gives them a chance to connect to and understand new realities and possibilities. When imagining a character, a fiction writer steps outside of herself and sees the world from that character’s perspective. Even if a writer can sympathize with or understand the character’s problems or conflicts, she must discover the unique ways the character responds to obstacles. Creating a fictional character gives young people, who often look no further than their own problems and concerns, the opportunity to open their minds to new ways of thinking and seeing life. Put simply, creating characters helps students build character personally. As Bomer suggests, “If [students] imagine a world through the eyes of someone who is not themselves in constructing a story, there’s a chance they may be a little less likely to see other human beings as objects or stereotypes” (137). When we encourage students to imagine new perspectives through fiction writing, we foster a kind of growth that transcends mere academics. We challenge them to become considerate, open-minded adults.

Getting students to open their minds to new perspectives may sound like hard work—it is. But, in the midst of such hard work, students may (gasp) find short story writing to be fun. Keep in mind that if students are having fun writing, they just might work even harder and be more invested in writing. McClure acknowledges the value of fun in the classroom, citing the theories of Vygotsky that link play to hard work. He suggests that “Stories can often be play for students—not only in the act of writing, but in response group work, in class presentations, in publication, and in discussion of imbedded meanings and implications” (95). Teachers who introduce and explore the craft of fiction writing with their students might uncover one of the most effective ways to encourage students to become enthusiastic writers.

It’s a Story That’s Short…Right?

Before teaching short story writing, we need to be sure of what we mean when we refer to the form. Certainly, we have read short stories, but can we give students a quick and easy definition of short story that they can record in their trusty notebooks? A glance at the entry for short story in NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms shows us that we might not find a convenient, thrifty definition. The entry evokes a sense of ambiguity, noting that “the tremendous diversity of the short story prevents a strict, universally applicable description of the genre” (202). Take, for instance, the issue of length; the range identified by the dictionary as characteristic of short story is “from about 500 words (a “short short story”) to about 15,000 words” (201).

Are there any characteristics unique to the genre? Though the dictionary emphasizes the lack of uniformity across the genre, it points to several general characteristics, namely the inclusion of “a very few characters, a single setting, and a single incident” (201). But these elements are not required criteria. In an attempt to distinguish the short story from its longer sibling, the novel, the NTC dictionary notes that the two forms “share most of the same elements and techniques, but the short story reveals character, usually by means of a single central and representative incident, whereas the novel traces the development of character through a series of incidents over a span of time” (202). So, a major distinction of short stories is their narrow focus on one character and one major conflict.

The historical origins of the short story are as broad and inclusive as the characteristics of the genre. The NTC Dictionary identifies the following historical roots of short story:

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, storytelling took the forms of beast fables, exempla, folktales, and chivalric romances… It was not, however, until the nineteenth century that the modern short story emerged as a distinct genre in the works of such writers as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe, Prosper Merimee, Honore de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, E.T.A. Hoffman, and Sarah Orne Jewett. During the twentieth century, the form has greatly varied, refined, and extended by such modern masters as O. Henry, Katherine Mansfield, Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, and John Cheever, among many others. (201)

If we turn to a published writer of fiction for more clarification, we find even more questions. Novelist, critic, and essayist Francine Prose explores the ambiguities of the short story form in her essay, “What Makes a Short Story?” and offers a piece of advice: instead of trying to define the short story, read extensively, thoroughly, and frequently. She says that, “by reading many and varied examples, we develop an almost instinctive sense of what a short story is, so that when we read one we recognize it, just as we recognize our own instincts and emotions” (12). Reading is the stepping stone to introducing students to short story writing.

Reading to Write

You cannot expect your students to write engaging, complex, and creative short stories if you have not introduced them to engaging, complex, and creative short stories. Reading—and rereading—short stories is the first step students must take to begin thinking like writers. Without this experience, students are left to draw what they write and how they write from the genres with which they are already acquainted: television, movies, and video games. As Karen Jorgensen points out, the short stories students produce directly reflect their knowledge of these genres, often resulting in action-driven narratives with one-dimensional characters built on stereotypes (5). Put simply, these stories are far from anything we would like to read.

Begin the study of short stories by exposing students to examples of the genre. In her groundbreaking book, In the Middle, Nancie Atwell suggests reading stories aloud so students can “hear how writers used the short form” (396). Bomer advocates selecting several high-interest “touchstone” short stories for the class to read together to develop a collective understanding of the “values and craft” found in good fiction (138). You need not be stifled by time constraints because most short stories are just that, short. In a class period, students can read the touchstone short stories as cohesive texts and reread them to uncover embedded layers of meaning that they may have overlooked or did not fully understand the first time they read them.

When selecting the short stories, choose texts that will benefit fledgling short story writers. Alleen Pace Nilsen, a professor of English and former co-editor of English Journal, supports the use of Young Adult (YA) short stories as springboards for reading workshops. Nielsen notes that, because “the problems in the books are likely to be ones that readers or their friends have experienced or thought about” and “most YA authors write in a succinct and straight-forward style,” among other reasons, YA short stories “can provide teens with inspiration and models to follow” (81). Since many published YA short stories resemble short stories that your students may produce, they make great models that students can refer to throughout the writing process. The characters in YA short stories are usually adolescents with traits, interests, and concerns similar to students’: basketball players who are trying to make the varsity team, eager sixteen year-olds yearning to pass driving tests and get first cars, high school seniors trying to reconcile their own hopes for the future with the hopes their parents have for them. A student might write a short story inspired by a time he considered telling a lie to get something he wanted after reading Gary Soto’s “The No-Guitar Blues,” a YA short story in which the main character, Fausto, tells a lie and lets the guilt he feels motivate him to make a change. When students read about characters with which they can identify in YA short stories, they see that the experience and knowledge they have as people can help them write interesting, meaningful fiction. See Appendix A for a list of suggested YA short story collections will serve as models and touchstone texts.