NOTE: Most classes you will have the opportunity to workshop 10-15 pages of work of your choice. These can be homework pages and/or scenes you are working on outside of class. Please bring enough copies of your scene for members of the class to read each character and stage directions.

April 7

• Building on our in class exercise, take 10 minutes to write about one of the stories we shared today (someone else's or your own) but to filter it through a different "window" in order to arrive at a different truth. If you weren't in class, you should start by writing about something that you find yourself thinking about or doing that you don't completely understand. Write for 10 minutes about it. Then boil it down to its essence for you, something about the true meaning of the story you could shout across a room in one line and someone would understand. Then do today's exercise. Imagine another version of that essential truth, using the same story elements, but telling the story with a different interpretation, that would equally true if you were a different character, but stands in opposition to the way the previous story interpreted the events.

• Now write a scene between two characters in which the truth of what a story means comes into dispute. You can use the story you've already examined or another. Bring enough copies of this scene to class next Monday for it to be read aloud (with class members playing the characters and reading the stage directions)
  
  
• OPTIONAL: Read THE SHADOW by Hans Christian Anderson. Think about what is true in the story for you, or other stories that come up for you as you read it. Boil it whatever this is down to the essence for you, and prepare to tell your version of the story (a modernized version, an inspired version, a piece of the story that fascinates you, or the story as originally written) through the window of connects you to it. Within that structure you should seek the story of a character who changes, and the big steps of that change. Bring this with you to the next class. Because we're looking for the essence, the entire story you tell should be 3 minutes or less.