This workshop is now CLOSED. *batousaijin is reading the entries and will comment on them on August 10. Meanwhile, do offer some critique of your own:

The Katana by ~ElijahSnow
City by ~EvenAfterTwelve
Call of the Wild workshop by =inspiredimperfection
The 7.15 to London Bridge by *kittyfantastic24
False God by ~lambs2ndseal
The Green Canopy by *PunknEra
Lisa's First by ~theAnti-Bambie

July 27, 2008

*batousaijin's unusual username comes from a joke about how his Japanese grandmother pronounces his last name (and from Rurouni Kenshin, 'cause there's a little otaku in all of us online lurkers). When he's not writing devious poetry or flexing his newfound prosaic muscles (or reading silly books about the magical power of puns), he's working for a small publishing company in Utah, editing and typesetting books of religious non-fiction, while also taking care of his wife and two-year-old son. His B.A. is in English with a minor in editing, and he worked on the staff of his university's creative writing journal, Inscape, for two years. He will probably keep using deviantART until the day he dies, when there will be much rejoicing by the lit community at large (there might even be a ceremony where his body is dragged through the figurative streets of dA, burned, and hung from a tree).

*batousaijin has been an active and regular participant of our workshops and it is fitting that he host a workshop with us. This one is a prose challenge.

:

Your task for this workshop, should you choose to accept it, will be to write a story inspired by the salient themes of the Naturalist literary movement. Webster's definition gives some great insight into how you will go about accomplishing this. You can either
(1) Tell a story where characters evolve away from or devolve into being creatures of pure, physical instinct.
(2) Tell a story where science or logic triumphs (tragically, or heroically if you so desire) over religion or belief in some other supernatural system.
(3) Tell a story that emphasizes scientific observation of life and includes elements of determinism.

Jack London's To Build a Fire is probably the best Naturalist short story ever written. At its core is the fatalistic story of a man who meets his doom because his species had long-since forgotten how to heed the instinctual warnings of the animal within. Vance Bourjaily's The Amish Farmer is a more recent story that contains some Naturalistic themes within the framework of a teacher telling his class a story to illustrate a point (e.g., the Amish farmer betraying his faith and his way of life because of a passionate obsession with another man's wife, all this during one of the harshest winters of the American midwest).

The most important aspect of Naturalism is to replicate a believable, everyday reality, as opposed to Romanticism or Surrealism, where subjects may be treated idealistically or symbolically. Show us the wild side of humans, or perhaps the human side of animals. They can be victims of fate, or they can change their natures and forge a new path for themselves. Whatever direction you take it, though:
(1) keep it real,
(2) keep it pessimistic (at least part of it should have the "victim of fate" motif, although it can have a happy ending),
(3) keep it natural.

More resources

Naturalism on Wikipedia.
Naturalism in American Literature, an essay

Remember

This workshop is for prose only. Please do not submit more than one entry.

How to submit

Submit your entry as a new deviation or scrap and send us a link to it in a note. The subject line of the note should be "CALL OF THE WILD". Entries must come in on or before midnight (GMT/UTC), August 6. *batousaijin will respond to the entries on August 10.

How to accept critique

Always thank the critic. This gratitude must be as sincere as possible, even if you did not like the critique given, because the critic has taken time to offer his/her opinion of the piece.
If you do not like the critique, it is not necessary to mention so. Simply thank the critic and move on. You can always ignore their suggestions, while not making a scene of it.
If you are unsure of what the critique means, feel free to ask the critic what s/he meant. Building rapport with your critic is one of the best ways to survive in a workshop and to learn. If you want examples, ask. Similarly, if you like the suggestions given, mention it. Critic's have feelings too.
In the unlikely case that a critic offers rude/sexist/racist/etc comments, feel free to contact *Writers-Workshop in a note and we will try to help you. A decision regarding the rudeness of the critique will be taken, and if we're not sure ourselves, we will consult with one of the GDs or anyone else high up on deviantART.

It would be fantastic if you also...

our news article!

We would like to welcome =GaioumonBatou and *batousaijin to our admin team. Trevor and Mike have been exemplary participants of our workshops and have always shown enthusiasm for the work we do. So when Becca and I read their application forms, we were very excited.

The four of us will be working together on this cycle of workshops, after which I (^lovetodeviate) will be on my way.

Congratulations you two! I hope you have a great time working at *Writers-Workshop.