Will Hochman

Fall 2002

English 101

Paired fiction writing is an in-class activity that can enable composition students to transform some basic acts of writing and reading into narrative fun. It requires some class space where students are simply playing at being writers and readers of some pretty sudden and admittedly contrived stories. However, this playing may directly establish students’ trust and respect for each other and each other's texts.

The real goal of paired fiction writing is to establish relationships among writers and readers, and to introduce the composition class to an environment of close, textual focussing. One of the best indicators of attaining a better sense of writing community is that students will often laugh when writing and reading their texts. Students (at all grade levels) often claim that they have lost their sense of time because they were so absorbed in their stories. In other words, class time speeds up because the fun and focus of paired fiction writing removes participants from their daily routines. Paired fiction writing allows students to creatively explore some important elements of their writing community. Paulo Freire claims that "liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it" (354). In its own way, paired fiction writing quickly encourages creative action that transforms typically isolated and static student roles into active and collaborative roles as readers and writers.

Beyond creating a positive class climate, paired fiction writing can also be understood as an exercise where critical reading and writing strategies begin. Most writing teachers would probably agree that students need to learn to read and criticize other students’ work; this is a process that is integral to learning to write. Although paired fiction writing seems like creative writing, it can be used as an exercise that taps inherent creativity to initiate quick composition and develop powerful textual transactions. Peer criticism is typically an essential element of composition classes because it helps students grow as both generators and receivers of thinking about writing. Paired fiction writing can help to achieve both a cooperative class spirit and a sense of textual intimacy which will clearly enable future, critical dialogues about texts. In "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," Adrienne Rich asserts that when writing "a certain freedom of the mind is needed–freedom to press on, to enter the currents of your thought like a glider pilot, knowing that your motion can be sustained, that the buoyancy of your attention will not be suddenly snatched away" (610). If students first learn to playfully and creatively move in and out of each other’s texts with paired fiction writing, then when they learn to criticize each other, their critiques are more likely to be constructive and collaborative, and they will already sense that they can help each other sustain the motion of their minds.

Paired fiction writing should be done early in a term because it allows teachers and students to be in each other's writing without feeling threatened or being too critical. Not only is paired fiction writing a confidence builder among students, but it helps beginning writers establish themselves. The writing is spontaneous, but unlike freewriting, paired fiction writing is channeled into a form and content produced by a series of timed prompts. With only a few simple constraints, most students are able to write fairly fluid stories. Composition students may begin to feel comfortable with writing pressure, especially when they see that their writing partners accept their ideas and further them with the spontaneous writing responses which result from paired fiction writing.

A typical "paired fiction" writing class begins with students being paired. Instructors should participate as writers whenever possible, but primarily instructors will lead students through some basic story writing steps. The teacher’s initial instruction lets students know that in this particular class they will write short stories, and that each writer will be writing and reading two texts. The instructor should then let the students know that what they will write need not be great fiction, but that it should just make sense--that each sentence follow the preceding one. The instructor is simply trying to encourage causality and imagination in the writing activity, and should employ the following freewriting guidelines: the writing will be ungraded, everyone should keep their pens or keyboards writing as much and as fast as possible, and no talking (but laughing is permitted).

Each pair writes two co-authored stories by switching texts with his or her partner, back and forth at the instructor's prompting. The writing and reading time is divided with prompts designed toward writing "parts" of a story. The instructor’s prompts, in effect, structure the students’ stylization of possible narratives. It’s usually necessary to stress legible writing, unless the students are writing with computers--then it’s easy to simply switch computers or use networking. In any case, instructors will want to emphasize playful writing attitudes and the freedom to employ wild creativity.

One of the most effective structures for paired fiction writing is to suggest switching at the five classic elements of narrative structure; 1) creating settings, 2) creating characters 3) creating incidents and complications, 4) bringing story elements to a crisis, and 5) bringing story elements to a resolution. Or, more character-centered narratives could be created with prompts like; setting, main character(s), character dialog, complications, villains, unexpected twists, and resolution. Narrative elements can also be developed by prompting students to write with particular points of view, tones, or even using specific words. Utilizing themes already discussed in previous classes can easily tap a wealth of background data in each student writer and can be set up as part of the stories’ preconditions. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the actual structure and texture of the story construction can be customized to achieve a variety of literacy goals.

Typically, students write between five and ten minutes before switching texts; however, the timing for writing and reading through the prompts can easily be adjusted to available class time. The instructor is also the timekeeper and will need to give warnings when the writing time for the particular prompt is running out. In the last few seconds before the next switch and prompt, the teacher should request that each student finish the sentence he or she is writing and stop.

The fact that story creating is a flexible process, allows K-16 instructors to create a sense of community in their particular classes by developing their own imaginative and powerful prompts. For example, one instructor who is experiencing a class of students who aren’t certain they want to be in school might prompt students to "create a school setting that you wish you could really have," "describe our principal as a hero (or villain)," "describe teachers and students who would be part of this school," "suggest a fair alternative to going to school," "develop the learning situation in or out of school" and "resolve the learning situation."

Another instructor might want to set up a reading or discussion of Lord of the Flies by using paired fiction writing with such customized prompts as "describe an island," "introduce yourself and some other classmates as the island’s only inhabitants," "explain what it’s like to live without adults," "imagine what possible conflicts arise," "imagine a particular crisis" and "imagine a possible resolution to your island situation."

Instructors don’t have to be experts in fiction writing. Building on such basic elements of fiction writing as setting, character, conflict, crisis and resolution will guarantee the success of this in-class activity because story telling is a form of thinking most people learn to understand at a very young age. Additionally, narrative is increasingly an element in our best essays and this exercise may be used as a rhetorical lesson about how to compose narrative writing.

Paired fiction writing is really a flexible pattern--divided writing parts can be created from an endless variety of prompts and time constraints, and can be focused on particular learning goals. For example, students can practice cohesion and coherence by being prompted to switch after each sentence or paragraph. With sentence switching, students will learn to concentrate on each sentence and anticipate what may come next. With paragraph switching, students will learn to think about linking ideas with possible transitions. In all variations, students become more acutely attuned to notions of audience. There are an incredible amount of learning possibilities for teachers using paired fiction because students’ innate sense of narrative almost always makes this writing and reading activity feel natural and easy. As an initial step into the writing-intensive atmosphere of a first-year composition class, paired fiction writing colors some of the most difficult writing and reading activities with fun and creativity.

The results of this activity are surprising. Students understand that there is no time for writer’s block, and usually write quickly without being told that they must write. Writing in pairs makes students want to participate with their own ideas, and then to "answer" their partner's "answer" to the writing challenge. In addition to the increased confidence, trust and fun in the writing atmosphere, the stories produced are rarely without interest and amusement. If there is enough class time, each pair can usually be coaxed into reading at least one of their texts out loud. Most students in a paired fiction writing class really enjoy listening to each other’s stories and often laugh and clap. Because students know the stories were produced under artificial and sudden conditions, their expectations of what they write are usually surpassed by the actual results. In many cases the stories sound as if they were written by one writer, not two. In terms of Rich’s idea of writing as a process of "Re-Visioning," "the act of looking back, of seeing [their stories] with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction" (604) is experienced when students realize they have written two, possibly interesting stories in a very short time. Students also experience "writing beyond the assignment" during paired fiction writing. Usually, the Instructor’s prompts are fairly general and can not be fully actualized unless student writers answer the writing challenge. When students experience a thinking and writing process that encourages them to go beyond the direction of their instructor, they begin to learn that each writer must independently follow his or her own thinking to make writing work. Fiction writing challenges have such a broad variety of possible answers that most students will find something unprompted and unexpectedly good in their work

Few pairs fail to complete a story because one partner is almost always able to seek and build a story from the other student’s writing. A typical student comment after paired fiction writing is: "When I began I didn’t know what I was doing, but when my partner entered the text, it took form and substance and I knew where to go with it." One thing most students agree on is that their sense of time passing is removed. They can’t avoid concentrating on their writing and amazingly complain that the class is over far too quickly. Most efforts in this class do yield writing that can be considered works-in-progress fiction and can be the foundation for a collaborative writing assignment, but the real point of the activity is that learning space for writing and reading acts has been established in a fashion that is collaborative, easy and fun. Making writing feel playful is a key progression toward enabling first year composition students to gain confidence as academic writers and readers.

Fundamental to all K-16 literacy is that students trust that their writing will be read, appreciated and responded to. Paired fiction writing is a quick, fun way to make students feel confident that they can trust other readers and that they can produce writing that will amuse and interest their peers. This exercise can easily emphasize the fact that the composition class community is a place where writing is welcomed, fluid, and able to be scrutinized in creative as well as critical ways.

An underlying assumption that insures active and enthusiastic student participation can be explained by Nelson Goodman in Ways Of Worldmaking. In his discussion on "The Significance of Style," he says, "What we find, or succeed in making, is heavily dependent on how and what we seek" (39) and concludes the chapter by saying:

In paired fiction writing, "seeking" combines with another person’s reading and writing. The writing becomes seamless because the two participants seem to easily guess or imagine each other’s "seeking" by constructing it in the next narrative step. At the end of a paired fiction writing class, the two writers in the pair often describe their amazement at being able to follow and even anticipate what each partner thought was the other’s intention, though there is also a good deal of laughter about the confusion and twists which their writing "dialogue" creates. Nonetheless, real communication is focused in their writing and reading acts.

An important value of this activity is that it requires a student to share his or her own text and participate in another writer's text. This type of dialogue is a primary goal in most composition classes. Fiction writing lends itself to writing concentration because it isn’t typically about the work of school so much as the pleasure of life. Students sense this environmental and emotional shift. All writers and readers have intuitive sensibilities (what Wolfgang Iser describes in The Act of Reading as "horizons of expectations" ) which easily allow stories to surface. Beyond being about creative writing, paired fiction writing stimulates quick composition and close reading acts that generally create an atmosphere that is charged with the type of consciousness that makes composition classes effective. Not only do students learn to concentrate their thinking on another person's writing, but they also learn to see where their own thinking can lead others.

Concentration is easily induced because students experience immediate responses and create immediate responses to their texts. This interaction helps students learn to trust their readers, whether their anticipated ideas are realized or new horizons of possibilities occur. They learn how to be playful with each other's thinking while actually experiencing transactional writing and reading structures.

Most of the claims about paired fiction writing are based on observing the process and results of the activity for more than fifteen years of teaching. However, the rationale for paired fiction writing is based on Louise M. Rosenblatt’s transactional theory.

Paired fiction writing is able to create a positive learning transaction within the community of the class not only because the participants can easily perform the necessary tasks, but also because it allows students to immediately experience their writing and reading acts as enjoyable events. The event or learning transaction that occurs during paired fiction writing is, in Rosenblatt’s words, a "transaction with the environment precisely because it permits such self-aware acts of consciousness" (173). Whether we use terms like "self-aware acts of consciousness" or "Re-Visioning," it’s clear that this writing activity is charged with reflective possibilities.

In Composition Studies as a Creative Art, Lynn Z. Bloom discusses the nexus of composition and creativity in great detail and from a variety of perspectives. Bloom reminds us that "[i]n the process of teaching the subject, composition, we are also composing the students (31). There are not yet enough ways to effectively help students sense the value and immediacy of creativity in academic discourse. Bloom's work has clearly shown that creativity needs to be more actively inserted into our composition classes and paired fiction writing is one such way to being achieving her goals. Drawing from the work of such leaders as Bloom and Wendy Bishop, the field of composition is beginning to embrace the value of using creativity to teach composition. The practice of paired fiction writing offers compositionists an easy, writing-intensive way to fuse creative energy with an emphasis on writing, reading, collaboration and community.

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University Press, l998.

Friere, Paulo. "The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education." Ways of Reading, Fifth

Edition. eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1999. 348-359.

Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,

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Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1978

Rich, Adrienne. "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision." Ways of Reading, Fifth

Edition. eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1999. 603-616.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem. Carbondale: Southern Illinois

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