Alumni Voices with Deborah Davis: Teen Inspiration

Every summer for the past six years I have taught five-day creative writing workshops for teenagers, eight to fourteen kids at a time. Most of the teens love to write: they'd craft stories, poems, and journal entries even if their parents didn't send them to writing camp. A few used to enjoy writing, until writing school assignments soured them on composing with words. My workshop aims to rekindle their interest in writing, help them discover or reconnect to a love of putting ideas into words, and build their confidence in both writing and reading their work aloud.

Working with teens is exhausting—but it’s also exhilarating. Planning exercises that are a match for their jet-propelled, angst-ridden energy and indomitable curiosity, and then writing with my students, I step out of my own comfort zones, reconnect to my own love of writing, and have a lot of fun.

Here are three things I do with my teen writers. I hope you use all three yourself—on your own, with your writers group, or with your own students, if you teach.

1. Adopt Jane’s Mantra

Thirty years ago free-writing instructor named Jane encouraged me to write whatever came into my own angst-ridden, yearning-to-write, 26-year-old brain—and then read my pages aloud to all the other workshop participants. If we tried to apologize before reading aloud, Jane would stop us. "Your writing isn't good or bad," she'd say in her Zen-like way. "It's just interesting." She taught us to examine our writing for their potential: what is interesting or compelling? What needs delving into? Which words are charged or dead or heavy on the page and need to be busted wide open--explored and expanded and developed?

I use Jane’s mantra with my teenage students. After saying it a time or two on Day 1 of the workshop, I rarely have to say it again. If anyone balks at reading or apologizes before they start, the other students chime in, encouraging the bashful, reluctant, or apologetic one: "Your writing isn't good or bad," they admonish each other gently. "It's just interesting!" The mantra makes us all fearless, gives us permission to trust every weird, slippery, or raucous idea that comes to us so that we can discover, when we read our work aloud or silently later, what intrigues us and what seems worth exploring.

2. Apply Pressure

Just as our characters need pressure to grow and change and take risks, so do we. One of my favorite workshop exercises is writing "minute poems." I give the group a word and then set a timer for one minute. In that minute, each writer writes a poem inspired by the given word. Any word works, and the resulting poems are often extraordinary. Like this one, by 17-year-old Emily:

Whoa,

that lemon just spoke.

I swear I'm not crazy

my mind might be hazy

and I know you won't check

'cause you're lazy.

But seriously,

that lemon is talking.

Writing minute poems is a great exercise by itself or as a way to warm up for other writing.

Apply pressure on yourself by setting a timer for other tasks as well. For instance, give yourself a specific assignment that pertains to your story—Write how Jean feels after seeing her brother die, or Summarize Bill's month in one paragraph, or Write the scene where Lulu discovers she's the lost princess of Aragondia—and set a timer for one minute, or five, or ten. See what you can do under pressure. You'll be amazed. And if you're not, well, set the timer and try again. And again. Watch your ideas pop like popcorn, fresh and fragrant and tantalizing.

3. Prop It Up!

Around Day 4 I ask everyone to bring in a wearable prop. They've brought, among other things, a feather boa, stunner glasses, spider gloves, a halo, cat ears, bunny ears, a martial arts sword, and a hamburger hat. Each of us chooses a prop and puts it on, and then we write, letting the prop influence or inspire us. A prop might enliven an ongoing story, or inspire a new action or character, or change the tone of a piece, or bump you out of your story so that you return to it refreshed.

Trying to write a sexy scene? Wear something sexy, or play music that feels sexy to you. Aiming for a humorous tone or creating a funny character? Wear something goofy. If it's danger you want to convey, place something potentially dangerous near you: a sharp knife, a bottle of pills, a container of bleach. Physical props--worn or kept at hand--stimulate our senses and our imagination.

By the time my teenage students leave at the end of the fifth day, I'm zonked, but I'm inspired. Like my students, I’ve generated pages of new writing and ideas, and I’ve laughed a lot.

So find that old feather boa, set the timer, tell yourself that your newest writing isn’t good or bad, it’s just interesting, and have some fun!

 

Deborah Davis is a 2012 graduate of the MFAC program and the author of several YA novels. She lives,writes and teaches in California. To learn more about her teaching and her books, check out her website.

Alumni Voices: Deborah Davis

On March 27^th, Mandy Davis wrote a lovely, truthful piece for “The Storyteller’s Inkpot” about the surprising delights we may encounter—in travel, in writing, in life—when our plans don’t go as expected. That prompted me to think about surprises I’ve encountered when my teaching plans don’t go as expected. Or, as in the case I’m about to describe, when my lack of planning leads to some pleasant—and useful—surprises.

I teach a semi-private middle grade and young adult novel workshop that “meets” online every two weeks. My two adult students are writing first novels, and they are terrific students: motivated, smart, eager to try whatever I throw at them, and—best of all—not afraid to disagree with me. All of which means we have lots of lively discussion.

Our 90-minute Google Hangout sessions begin at 9:30 am. Such a reasonable hour, you might think. But, no, 9:30 am is not all that reasonable, because I am a night owl who isn’t fully awake until…well, never mind. But strong coffee is involved.

Last week, after a particularly owlish night (nothing exciting, folks: just conference prep and a bad habit of reading good novels till the wee hours), I woke, drank something highly caffeinated, pulled out the workshop plan I’d written up two days earlier—and realized it was a bit, well, skimpy. My plan went like this:

1. Read page 122 in Cheryl Klein’s book, Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, & Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults, the part about “Conflict, Mystery, Lack,” where Klein asks, “Which model is your central plot and each of your subplots? Are all the narrative requirements of those plots set up at the beginning (e.g. a clear antagonist, a defined mystery, a hole of some kind in the protagonist’s life), developed through the middle (escalating antagonism, clues, the filling of the hole), and satisfactory at the end (a clear victory for one side and/or reconciliation, an answer to the mystery, emotional wholeness at last)?”
2. Discuss.
3. Critique new pages.

My critiques were ready. My discussion plans were not.

Part of me became anxious. Another part sat back (in my mind, that is), smiling, reassuring: Just show them the page. See what happens.

I’d chosen Klein’s passage for discussion because my students’ wonderfully complex stories at times feel unfocused. One student is writing a mystery with several subplots, and one of those subplots threatens to overwhelm the mystery plot. The other student is writing a fantasy with dual protagonists, alternating points of view, and sub-plots in each protagonist’s arena. As a reader, I can’t always tell what exactly each student wants to emphasize. How could I teach my students to know what to emphasize and what to focus on?

9:30 arrived. We read Klein’s paragraph. My mystery writer had considered only her main plot model prior to this exercise. My fantasy writer hadn’t considered any of this. Each of us wrote for five minutes, jotting down the model for her main plot and subplots. As I wrote, I realized that in my own writing I’d been trying to meld two plot models—lack and conflict—into one, and that I needed to make one model primary. Surprise #1: I needed this lesson as much as my students did.

This exercise energized all of us. We felt as though it had burned off a layer of fog that kept us from seeing and understanding our complex stories clearly.

Fully awake now—and I want to believe the exercise more than the coffee was the reason—I asked my students to consider each plot and subplot model on their list and write down each significant character’s burning question. We’d talked about the MC’s burning desire before, but we hadn’t talked about each secondary character’s burning desire. Phrasing each desire as a question—the question that would drive the plot—brought out useful information. For me—Surprise #2—it was that one secondary character’s burning question was too similar to my MC’s, signaling that I didn’t know my secondary character well enough yet and needed to distinguish him further.

The fantasy writer also discovered something useful: her MC #2’s burning question didn’t have nearly the gravitas as MC#1’s question—or even as some of the secondary characters’ questions. This exercise clarified for all of us why we’d been having trouble connecting to MC #2.

Surprise #3: Once we clarified via her burning question why MC #2 seemed so shallow, we were able to discover this character’s deeper, weightier and more intriguing desire. “How can I gain power and respect from the Queen?” became “How can I gain the power and respect I need to transform the realm into a more inclusive, egalitarian society?

I ended this discussion after an hour so that we’d have time to talk about their new pages. It was gratifying to see how a little planning, trust in the creative teaching process, and some motivated students—plus, perhaps, a dose of caffeine—can go a long and surprising way.

***

Deborah Davis is a 2012 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives, writes, and teaches in California. Visit her website to learn about her online and in-person classes and manuscript consultation services.