The Plot Sickens: Free-write & Reflection

        Free-Write

       “It was Christmas Eve. Fog stuck to the tarmac at Lindbergh field.” as the county sheriff continued describing the sequence of events, each sentence seemed more and more apt to be written for a novel. “We lost all six souls aboard the flight,” while Richard Atkinson spoke, more and more heads began to turn slowly to the father who lost two loved ones.
       He was sitting there in a chair, just feet away from the podium where Atkinson was speaking. He was crying violently, trying to compose himself, but with no success. If a stranger were asked to guess what just happened, the idea that the man’s wife and newborn just died in a plane accident wouldn’t be farfetched.

       “I can’t imagine what he’s feeling right now,” said one lady sitting three rows behind him.

       “I called this press conference because as sheriff of this great county of Louisiana, it is my job to protect the public at large.” he then proceeded to glance at Mr. Asher, sitting there in the chair crying away. “And I wish to serve this county well. Today the designated NTSB crash investigators confirmed that the crash was the result of a deliberate action.”

       The room was filled - or rather emptied by gasps of air. The man crying had stopped. His eyes opened wide. He stormed out of the room.

       “Yup, yup, yup, I told you Frank, this would be too much for that poor Mr. Asher,” whispered Mrs. Ida into the ear of her husband of fifty years.

       He drove home. He went down into his basement. He scraped all the powder into the sink and washed it down the drain. He snatched the wires and cords and waited till night to throw them into the lake.

Reflection

      In "The Plot Sickens" by Fanny Howe, the author uses the culmination of her twenty-one year teaching career to explain a common trend among young writers today. When Howe gave her college students a similar prompt to the one Mr. Kefor gave his E block Creative Writing class, she found that the stories were usually violent and random. In fact, in the article she states, "“Of the 20 stories generated by this assignment, only 5 had endings that could qualify as “happy” – endings, that is, in which a problem was resolved. All the others concluded with extraordinary violence. Sometimes it was a psychological sort of violence, difficult to make out, a matter of alienation or bewilderment.”" I  feel as though my story deviates from the authors claim, in my story there are conflicts - a man has lost his wife and child and also that there was someone who deliberately acted upon the plane to make it crash. The conflict is somewhat resolved by the end of the short story where it is revealed that the man himself was the saboteur, however in no way is it a happy story. I do however agree that my story is violent, as there is a plane crash, and the ending is a sort of psychological violence, both inflicted on the reader and characters who believe the man's innocence, as stated by Howe. Another one of Howe's claims is that, “…it is the fact that violence enters the story without benefit of plot…”, on this point I feel again that my story deviates from these claims. Unlike arbitrarily adding violence, the violence in my story drives the plot to progress and give information to the reader without plainly saying it. The big point of the article is that in the stories of her students, "Randomness rules." and there is extreme senseless violence. While my story does have violence it isn't used all over the place - there are no ninjas that burst in while the press conference is happening. Another difference between Howe's classroom and Mr. Kefor's classroom was there was no mention of a word limit restraint in the article. If given the opportunity to expand upon our work then it wouldn't seem so nonsensical. Yet another claim by Howe is that it is the students subconscious making their stories the way they are - at first it was the "Establishment" which she explains is powerful affluent white men. She now claims it is the "Economy" - stressed with a capital letter e in order to realize that people can be made rich or poor in an instant on no grounds with no explanation. She claims that this use of arbitrary violence is attributed to the idea that what the "Economy" stands for, and is drilled into young students brains from an early age and influences their actions and decisions. While this is a very interesting idea, I'm not entirely sure if it's true. Either way, the ideas of the "Economy" cannot be found in my short story. All things considered, "The Plot Sickens" by Fanny Howe is a very interesting article, however I feel that my free-write product deviates from the claims made by the author.