Transcript Twisted Fiction

TWISTED
FICTION
New ways to have fun with old fiction!
LET’S GET THE LANGUAGE STRAIGHT
BEFORE WE GET TWISTED!
 This game will allow us to review the jargon of literature.
 We’ll let’s start right there…what is jargon?
 Alright, now for the rules of the game:
 There are cards with terms on one side and definition on the other. They will be laid out, term-
side down on the table.
 Students will take turns trying to name the term based upon it’s definition. Once they’ve
guessed, they will pick up the card and privately check if they are correct. If so, they’ll keep the
card. If not, they’ll return the card to the table without alerting anyone to the correct term.
 Each card is worth one point. Plus, some cards also have a bonus opportunity on it, that’s worth
one point. If the person who earned the card does not get it, the rest of the players can attempt
it.
 The player with the most points at the end wins!
ONE MORE WARM-UP ACTIVITY…
 Even the best English students have some words that still cause
them to stumble.
 Today, we’ll review some of the biggest offenders that all begin
with the letter A.
 And, who better to teach us than our favorite grammar guru…
MIGNON FOGARTY!
Alright, now down to serious business…
TWISTED FICTION!
METAFICTION
 This is the real name for “twisted fiction.”
 Metafiction—Fiction in which the author self-consciously
alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by
parodying or departing from novelistic conventions and
traditional narrative techniques
 This might sound technical, but you’ve seen, heard, and read
examples of it all the time!
AN EASIER DEFINITION
Metafiction is fiction about fiction. It is a
novel, short story, film, play, etc…in which
the author knowingly draws attention to
the fact that it is being made up.
EXAMPLE #1: THE FLIP!
 Let’s read an excerpt from
Gregory Maguire’s 1999 book ,
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
 It tells the classic story of
Cinderella from the stepsister’s
point of view.
The wind being fierce and the tides un-obliging, the ship from
Harwich has a slow time of it. Timbers creak, sails snap as the vessel
lurches up the brown river to the quay. It arrives later than expected, the
bright finish to a cloudy afternoon. The travelers clamber out, eager for
water to freshen their mouths. Among them are a strict-stemmed woman
and two daughters.
The woman is bad-tempered because she's terrified. The last of
her coin has gone to pay the passage. For two days, only the charity of
fellow travelers has kept her and her girls from hunger. If you can call it
charity — a hard crust of bread, a rind of old cheese to gnaw. And then
brought back up as gorge, thanks to the heaving sea. The mother has had
to turn her face from it. Shame has a dreadful smell.
So mother and daughters stumble, taking a moment to find their
footing on the quay. The sun rolls westward, the light falls lengthwise, the
foreigners step into their shadows. The street is splotched with puddles
from an earlier cloudburst.
The younger girl leads the older one. They are timid and eager. Are they
stepping into a country of tales, wonders the younger girl. Is this new land a
place where magic really happens? Not in cloaks of darkness as in England, but in
light of day? How is this new world complicted?
"Don't gawk, Iris. Don't lose yourself in fancy. And keep up," says the
woman. "It won't do to arrive at Grandfather's house after dark. He might bar
himself against robbers and rogues, not daring to open the doors and shutters
till morning. Ruth, move your lazy limbs for once. Grandfather's house is beyond
the marketplace, that much I remember being told. We'll get nearer, we'll ask."
"Mama, Ruth is tired," says the younger daughter, "she hasn't eaten much
nor slept well. We're coming as fast as we can.
"Don't apologize, it wastes your breath. just mend your ways and watch
your tongue," says the mother. "Do you think I don't have enough on my mind?"
" Yes, of course," agrees the younger daughter, by rote, "it's just that
Ruth-"
"You're always gnawing the same bone. Let Ruth speak for herself if she
wants to complain." But Ruth won't speak for herself. So they move up the
street, along a shallow incline, between step-gabled brick houses. The small
windowpanes, still un-shuttered at this hour, pick up a late-afternoon shine. The
stoops are scrubbed, the streets swept of manure and leaves and dirt. A smell of
afternoon baking lifts from hidden kitchen yards. It awakens both hunger and
hope. "Pies grow on their roofs in this town," the mother says. "That'll mean a
welcome for us at Grandfather's. Surely. Surely. Now is the market this way? —
for beyond that we'll find his house — or that way?"
"Oh, the market," says a croaky old dame, half hidden in the gloom of a
doorway, "what you can buy there, and what you can sell!" The younger daughter
screws herself around: Is this the voice of a wise woman, a fairy crone to help
them?
"Tell me the way," says the mother, peering.
"You tell your own way," says the dame, and disappears. Nothing there
but the shadow of her voice.
"Stingy with directions? Then stingy with charity too?" The mother
squares her shoulders. "There's a church steeple. The market must be nearby.
Come."
At the end of a lane the marketplace opens before them. The stalls are
nested on the edges of a broad square, a church looming over one end and a
government house opposite. Houses of prosperous people, shoulder to shoulder.
All the buildings stand up straight-not like the slumped timber-framed cottage
back in England, back home ...
-- the cottage now abandoned ... abandoned in a storm of poundings at
the shutters, of shouts: "A knife to your throat! You'll swallow my sharp blade.
Open up!". . . Abandoned, as mother and daughters scrambled through a side
window, a cudgel splintering the very door -Screeeee — an airborne alarm. Seagulls make arabesques near the front
of the church, being kept from the fish tables by a couple of tired, zealous dogs.
The public space is cold from the ocean wind, but it is lit rosy and golden, from
sun on brick and stone. Anything might happen here, thinks the younger girl.
Anything! Even, maybe, something good.
The market: near the end of its day. Smelling of tired vegetables, strong
fish, smoking embers, earth on the roots of parsnips and cabbages. The habit of
hunger is a hard one to master. The girls gasp. They are ravenous.
Fish laid to serry like roofing tiles, glinting in their own oils. Gourds and
marrows. Apples, golden, red, green. Tumbles of grapes, some already jellying in
their split skins. Cheeses coated with bone-hard wax, or caught in webbing and
dripping whitely-cats sprawl beneath like Ottoman pashas, open-mouthed. "Oh,"
says the younger sister when the older one has stopped to gape at the
abundance. "Mama, a throwaway scrap for us! There must be."
The mother's face draws even more closed than usual. I won't have us
seen to be begging on our first afternoon here," she hisses. "Iris, don' t show
such hunger in your eyes. Your greed betrays you."
"We haven't eaten a real pasty since England, Mama! When are we going
to eat again? Ever?"
"We saw few gestures of charity for us there, and I won't ask for charity
here," says the mother. "We are gone from England, Iris, escaped with our lives.
You're hungry? Eat the air, drink the light. Food will follow. Hold your chin high
and keep your pride."
But Iris's hunger — a new one for her-is for the look of things as much
as for the taste of them. Ever since the sudden flight from England ...
EXAMPLE #1: THE FLIP!
 After reading:
 Did your impression of or feelings for
the stepsisters change in any way?
If so, how? Why?
 Can you think of any other examples
of this type of metafiction?
 Using this example for clues,
what is “the flip” technique (a
term I entirely made up, by the
way) in metafiction?
EXAMPLE #2: SELF-CONSCIOUS-NESS
 Sometimes in a work of
literature, you are constantly
reminded that the work is
being written by someone.
 This prevents the
reader/viewer from being lost
in the work.
 But, if done correctly, it can
have a very comedic effect!
EXAMPLE #2: SELF-CONSCIOUS-NESS
 Can you think of any other
examples of plays, shows,
movies, books, etc… where you
are constantly aware that the
fiction is being created?
 Some take it a step further and
actually talk to the audience!
 Let’s look an excerpt from The
Princess Bride, a 1973 fantasy
novel by William Goldman.
THE PRINCESS BRIDE
Chapter One:The Bride
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French
scullery maid named Annette. The year Buttercup turned ten, the most beautiful woman lived in
Bengal, the daughter of a successful tea merchant. When Buttercup was fifteen, Adela Terrell, of
Sussex on the Thames, was easily the most beautiful creature.
Buttercup, of course, at fifteen, knew none of this. And if she had, would have found it
totally unfathomable. How could someone care if she were the most beautiful woman in the
world or not. What difference could it have made if you were only the third most beautiful. Or
the sixth. (Buttercup at this time was nowhere near that high, being barely in the top twenty, and
that primarily on potential, certainly not on any particular care she took of herself. She hated to
wash her face, she loathed the area behind her ears, she was sick of combing her hair and did so
as little as possible.) What she liked to do, preferred above all else really, was to ride her horse
and taunt the farm boy.
The horse's name was "Horse" (Buttercup was never long on imagination) and it came
when she called it, went where she steered it, did what she told it. The farm boy did what she told
him too. Actually, he was more a young man now, but he had been a farm boy when, orphaned, he
had come to work for her father, and Buttercup referred to him that way still. "Farm Boy, fetch
me this"; "Get me that, Farm Boy—quickly, lazy thing, trot now or I'll tell Father."
"As you wish."
That was all he ever answered. "As you wish." Fetch that, Farm Boy. "As you
wish." Dry this, Farm Boy. "As you wish." He lived in a hovel out near the animals and,
according to Buttercup's mother, he kept it clean. He even read when he had candles.
"I'll leave the lad an acre in my will," Buttercup's father was fond of saying. (They
had acres then.)
"You'll spoil him," Buttercup's mother always answered.
"He's slaved for many years; hard work should be rewarded." Then, rather than
continue the argument (they had arguments then too), they would both turn on their
daughter.
"You didn't bathe," her father said.
"I did, I did" from Buttercup.
"Not with water," her father continued. "You reek like a stallion."
"I've been riding all day," Buttercup explained.
"You must bathe, Buttercup," her mother joined in. "The boys don't like their
girls to smell of stables."
"Oh, the boys!" Buttercup fairly exploded. "I do not care about 'the boys.' Horse
loves me and that is quite sufficient, thank you."
She said that speech loud, and she said it often.
But, like it or not, things were beginning to happen.
Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, Buttercup realized that it had now
been more than a month since any girl in the village had spoken to her. She had
never much been close to girls, so the change was nothing sharp, but at least before
there were head nods exchanged when she rode through the village or along the
cart tracks. But now, for no reason, there was nothing. A quick glance away as she
approached, that was all. Buttercup cornered Cornelia one morning at the
blacksmith's and asked about the silence. "I should think, after what you've done,
you'd have the courtesy not to pretend to ask" came from Cornelia. "And what have
I done?" "What? What?...You've stolen them." With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup
understood; she knew who "them" was.
The boys.
The village boys.
The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dim-domed noodlenoggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys.
How could anybody accuse her of stealing them? Why would anybody want
them anyway? What good were they? All they did was pester and vex and annoy.
"Can I brush your horse, Buttercup?" "Thank you, but the farm boy does that." "Can
I go riding with you, Buttercup?" "Thank you, but I really do enjoy myself alone." "You
think you're too good for anybody, don't you, Buttercup?" "No; no I don't. I just like
riding by myself, that's all."
But throughout her sixteenth year, even this kind of talk gave way to
stammering and flushing and, at the very best, questions about the weather. "Do you
think it's going to rain, Buttercup?" "I don't think so; the sky is blue." "Well, it might
rain." "Yes, I suppose it might." "You think you're too good for anybody, don't you,
Buttercup?" "No, I just don't think it's going to rain, that's all."
At night, more often than not, they would congregate in the dark beyond
her window and laugh about her. She ignored them. Usually the laughter would give
way to insult. She paid them no mind. If they grew too damaging, the farm boy
handled things, emerging silently from his hovel, thrashing a few of them, sending
them flying. She never failed to thank him when he did this. "As you wish" was all he
ever answered.
When she was almost seventeen, a man in a carriage came to town and
watched as she rode for provisions. He was still there on her return, peering out.
She paid him no mind and, indeed, by himself he was not important. But he marked a
turning point. Other men had gone out of their way to catch sight of her; other men
had even ridden twenty miles for the privilege, as this man had. The importance here
is that this was the first rich man who had bothered to do so, the first noble. And it
was this man, whose name is lost to antiquity, who mentioned Buttercup to the
Count.
EXAMPLE #2: SELF-CONSCIOUS-NESS
 Did you like being addressed
directly as a reader? Why or why
not?
 What would be the limitation to
this?
 When would it be advantageous?
EXAMPLE #3: THE TWIST
 Again, this is just my term for it.
 This method involves apply a
new style to an existing story.
 In the example we’re going to
read, a classic fable by Aesop is
retold as a political news
story…
THE DISENCHANTED FOREST
Honorable animals of the forest council, Secretary Otter and Chairman
Skunk, I'm sorry, but I must interrupt. I know that time is of the essence. So I will keep
my remarks brief. I stand before you not an arrogant hare, nor a flashy hare as some
of you would have it, but merely a hare who cares about this forest and all of its
creatures.
I've not come here to cast dispersions on the tortoise. This is not a time for
partisanship. Whether you be a hare man or a tortoise man, we must all work
together. But to save the forest from its impending doom, it's important you know the
truth about the race known as Tortoise versus Hare.
Look, I know how this makes me look. The hare is a poor loser, you say. The
hare has a problem with tortoises. Well, I'm going to stop you right there. Let the
record show that I have nothing against turtles of any kind. The snapping turtle is
godfather to twenty-seven of my kids, for crying out loud.
But if you think there is any chance that tortoise beat me fair and square,
you are deluding yourselves. Tortoises don't have a reputation for being slow. They are
slow. Everyone knows this. It's not a question. It's not debatable. It just is.
So imagine my surprise when, one morning, I wake up to discover the
entire forest is talking about how I challenged the tortoise to a race. Think about it.
Why would a hare challenge a tortoise to a race? It doesn't make any sense. What
would it prove? If I win, I'm an jerk. If I lose, I'm an embarrassment to my species.
Oh, how I was vilified after that race. In the picture they ran on the cover
of The Forest Post, I'm pulling my whiskers out, stomping on my top hat and yelling at
a judging official. There I was, the arrogant buck-toothed hare that everyone loves
to hate finally receiving his comeuppance. And the lies that were told about the race
itself-- why would I stop just shy of the finish line and eat a large turkey dinner with
all of the trimmings? Or why would I pull out a beach chair and take a sun tanning
break? First of all, I burn easily. And second, what am I, an idiot?
In the days after the race when I put forth my multiple tortoises in multiple
forest nooks theory, I was labeled a paranoid, a conspiracy nut, not to mention a
specie-ist for suggesting that tortoises all look the same. But I knew then as I know
now that there was a network of them, tortoises, all working in cahoots, stationed
behind trees, hiding in briar patches all along the racing route. Nonetheless, the
tortoise was awarded the title of fastest in the forest. And I'd no choice but to
shake his wrinkled, little, green hand and congratulate him.
But dear fellow forest dwellers, back to the business at hand of this
emergency meeting. As Smokey Bear alerted us this morning, the forest is burning.
Time is of the essence.
With all due respect to the authority of this council, sending the tortoise as
messenger to alert the creatures of these woods that there's a fire raging and they
must run for their lives? Not the best choice in the world. The tortoise left three
hours ago. But if you rise up onto your toes, you can still see him creeping along
down there at the bottom of the hill.
So he cheated. And normally, I would let this go. Who among us has not
cheated at one time or another? Opossum has cheated at checkers. Fox has
cheated on his taxes. And I'm the first to admit that because of my own arrogance
I've cheated myself out of your friendship.
But the point is we can no longer let this tortoise charade go on. If we
don't do something now, lives will be lost. So just give me the OK to get running
and as soon as I pick up my top hat at the blockers, fill my jogging pipe with
tobacco, eat a light dinner of sprouts and Tam Tam crackers and get my retainer
inserted, I'll be on my way. All in favor, say "aye." For the love of this forest and all
that is good, please say "aye."
THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR
 Unreliable Narrator—a




narrator whose credibility has
been seriously compromised
How has the hare been
compromised as a narrator?
Why might the author chose to
have an unreliable narrator?
Twist ending often involve
finding that a narrator is
unreliable at the end. Why?
What does it do to the reader
emotionally?
A GREAT EXAMPLE OF AN
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR!
FOR NEXT TIME…
Unreliable Narrator
Exercise:
 Choose a character (from a
movie/book/song/play that you
like) that is generally trustworthy
or reliable and write a part of
their story from their point of
view.
 But, turn them into an unreliable
narrator by using what quirks and
motivations they might have to
mold their own stories to suit
their own purposes.
The Flip Exercise:
 Choose a classic tale, that is
generally known, but tell the
story from the antagonist’s
point of view.