Week 6: CHAPTERS VS. STORIES: PART 2

I am pursuing an M.A. in Creative Writing at Ball State University (BSU). This is my first semester at BSU and I have the pleasure of being in Cathy Day’s Fiction: Linked Stories class. Each week one student is responsible for covering the class for the class blog. This week I’m up! You can access our class blog at iamlinking.wordpress.com and follow our progress throughout the semester.

WHAT WE READ FOR CLASS:

Fiction: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Narrative Theory: “What Makes a Short Story Short” by Norman Friedman & “The Nightmare of Resonance: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried” by James Nagel.

LEARNING ACTIVITY:

This week the class was divided into two groups, and we continued our conversation on the difference between chapters and short stories. Group A’s job was to identify diptychs (complete narratives made up of two stories)…