%title Generative workshops

## Syntax

1. Rapid fire images (start writing/break through a block by just putting ten images down in ten minutes; we address the universal too much).
    1. Dust on electronics, untouched by clean cloth, disturbed only by unread mail; a mute accusation.
    2. Cloud-dulled sunlight found its way through the tiniest of cracks in the styrofoam sheet standing in for real blinds.
    3. Something---dog fur? My own hair?---touches my face too lightly.
    4. The way the world dims when the neutral-density filter is turned.
    5. Tweezers, tips never quite touching, cozy up with nail-clippers.
    6. Brand new hair-ties sit, ignored, beneath a few scrunchies.
    7. Chopped and screwed phonk clips even in headphones at half volume.
    8. The tan side of an emery board blends in with the desktop.
    9. The pill caddy, an accusation of missed meds, sits askew.
    10. The "mango" lip balm only ever smells of papayas.
2. Write a cumulative sentence together: "Arriving late, ... to sit down at my desk ..." --- *Arriving late, after forgetting my coffee---now cold a fridge unplugged---in the rush of guilt from forgotten alarms, my clothes still damp having quickly grabbed them from the still-turning drying, I was desperate to escape the stifling conversation, prattling and monotone, of my dull-eyed coworkers, which was focused on weekend plans, how many inches of rain were expected, and the circuitous detail of their underdeveloped dreams about toe fungus.* --- have fun and be ridiculous to hunt for opportunities, then go back and revise, overwrite and pare down.
3. Notes on simile: 
    * simile has emotional and physical register
    * more than a physical comparison.
        * Bad: "his legs were thick like tree-trunks"
        * Good: imbue with something much larger. "His legs were thick like he had dedicated himself to becoming a statue, some solid object people admired and pointed toward"
    * gets more to the essence
    * transcends the expected:
        * Bad: "Her hair was matted like the dog's fur"
        * Good: "Her hair was matted like it was full of the past week's interruptions" --- more abstract, gives interiority/inner life
    * Helps avoid just describing a character's body
    * Emotional register:
        * Bad: "My father looked like a beat up, salt-rusted jalopy" --- unexpected in a bad way
        * Good: "My father looked like a long year that has gone in the direction of sorrow" --- shifts literal image to figurative
        * "Her hair, falling into your lap, shining like metal, a color that when you think of it, you cannot name"
    * Metaphors require more suspension of disbelief, so much more that can go wrong
4. Flash simile exercise --- abstract to concrete, then concrete to abstract (or unexpected concrete) --- take risks
    1. *Waves unfurled like* too many onrushing thoughts
    2. *The child trembled like* urgent supplications to any and all saints
    3. *The memories came back to him* like it fucken wimdy (I forgot to write this one down whoops)
    4. *After the snowstorm, the neighborhood looked like* it had been tucked in for a quiet nap after a tantrum
    5. *August was as hot as* unyielding need.
    6. *To her, happiness was suspicious like* a dog confronted by a rubber snake.
    7. *Jealousy is a rock, he said. It feels like* some pebble in your shoe, gnawing at your heel.
    8. *The days dragged on like* a dog's lolling tongue on a sleepy summer's day.
    9. *The cold was heavy and oppressive. It felt like* handcuffs or a cloth gag or perhaps a bandit's rope binding you to a broken chair.
5. Writing prompt: write a long paragraph describing a place or a landscape, or a scene from childhood. Using some of the techniques we've studied together and executed together. Maybe take your own work, identify spots where you can vary the syntax, and fill it out.
    * Reed scuffed his heel against the pavement of the street. New Year’s Eve, and everyone was still inside. Bars: full. Restaurants: packed. There were a few scattered couples or groups around, but they were all walking with purpose. Champagne called. Canapes. Crudites.
    * Reed scuffed his heel against the pavement of the street, *rough and coarse like a hungover tongue*. New Year’s Eve, and everyone was still inside. <s>Bars: full. Restaurants: packed.</s> *The bars were full and the restaurants were packed and the bodies pressed in close around the heat-lamps and the voices were loud and the feet were tired.* There were a few scattered couples or groups around, *little knots of friends tangling up sidewalks, finding awkward routes around trees and bollards,* but they were all walking with purpose. Champagne called. Canapes. Crudites.
    
## Near-Future Sci-fi

* few years to few decades
* feels a bit broad, but scifi can take place in other times
* Can be a warning
    * reflects present moment
    * can be terrifying, but can also be hopeful
* When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis:
    * Familiar things up front to anchor the location
    * Concrete similes to provide imagery
    * How nefarious is this robot? Does it know that it's programmed to avoid calling it surveillance?
    * From the Robot's POV?
* Mika Model:
    * Language extrapolation
    * Lack of lying and things that make engagement difficult
    * In media res, not just mid conversation but mid-conflict
    * Not quite infodump, but a lot of exposition. Sneaky backstory.

1. Create a list of things that make you anxious about our present day moment, and things that make you excited or hopeful. Aim for 5--10 entries in each list. Consider tech, medicine, politics, religion, education, environment, economy, literature/arts:
    1. Anxious
        1. Economic collapse, especially in housing and food
        2. Supply-chain collapse
        3. Identity flattening/homogenization (race, gender, etc, but also any transgressive art/culture)
        4. Global shift far right/fascist
        5. Empowering (even arming) those with everyday hatreds
        6. Rise of YRR/American civil religion/evangelicalism/dispensationalism
        7. AI-generated art building negative attitudes towards artists and cynicism towards art
    2. Hopeful
        1. Similar empowerment (though maybe not arming) of minority identity
        2. Underground transgressive art still going strong
        3. Deconstruction/exvangelical trend leading to thoughtful engagement with religion
        4. Widespread social resistance to further empowerment of fascism/recognition of such
        5. Some capitalist comeuppance.
2. Choose a few entries and convert them to *what if?* questions that can be used to drive a sci-fi story
    1. What if growth of evangelicalism leads to a grand schism?
    2. What if AI-generated art leads to a negative view of 'traditional' art to the point of taboo?
    3. What if the left gets their shit together enough to actually engage in common praxis, what does that power structure look like?
3. Write the opening paragraphs to a near-future sci-fi story that explores one of the *what if?* scenarios. Introduce a character, suggest what's being explore, indicate time and place.

    Bells had long ago fallen by the wayside. First, there were electronic beeps, then perhaps a simulated chime, or a buzz on everyone's phone. All these I'd only ever heard about from parents, friends of my dad and mom kvetching about memories, saying little facts out loud so that they could all nod knowingly to each other or perhaps shake their heads and click their tongues in disdain. 
  
    Me, all I'd ever known was Fr. Blaine calling us to prayer: a brief murmur of the name of this prayer or that, a little factoid of his own about which we would all nod knowingly or shake our heads and click our tongues in disdain in the hallways on the way to the next class. Sure, we weren't supposed to---God, the pastor, the teacher, the father, the mother, the kids, right?---but there's always a little bit of leeway built into any system, and those above were always willing to overlook a little transgression here and there. Except God, I've been promised, mom gently chiding me for something that probably warranted a much larger punishment, I don't remember what.
  
    But, even after I tucked my tablet under my arm, after I shook my head and clicked my tongue with classmates at Fr. Blaine yet again choosing Aquinas's prayer for students---"does he always have to be so on-the-nose?"---after I wound my way through the whine and hum of so many busses running on so many aging batteries, even then I tried to picture what a bell to end class would feel like. No quiet murmur into the silence, no hint of speaker saturation to go with a synthesized chime or rude beep, no buzz of phone, but a raucous clamor of hammer against hollow bell. Could such a noise possibly bring relief? I'd heard them in vids, of course, watched over at grandma's on her dim and yellowed flatscreen. How could so loud a sound bring anything other than anxiety?
  
    *Maybe it's me,* I thought for the hundred thousandth time. *Maybe it's my situation. A piercing yell of a red-painted bell yet another sign to go home to yet more yelling. Skirting around arguments and maybe-fights. Walking quietly past angry sweeping and dreading the whisper of dad's cart, the click of the magnetic plug against its side.*
  
    "You're too stuck up in your head," mom chided for the hundred thousandth time. "Take off your shoes or, so help me God, I'll tell your father, Father-forgive-me."
