Guidelines:
- Write a 1-2 page, single-spaced short story (perhaps one brief scene from a larger piece) that serves as a creative homage to a writer you admire (or don’t!). In other words, you are writing an imitation of a famous, published writer.
- You can imitate a playwright we’ve read, or with teacher’s permission, a writer you’ve read and feel you understand what craftsmanship they are known for.
- Imitate/parody the author’s writing style – the literary device(s) that make them famous (plots, characters, language – dialect, syntax, word choice, dialogue –, theme, symbolism, tone, suspense, allegory, etc.)
- At the top, on left-hand side, head your paper with:
• Your name
• Mimicking _______ (insert their name)
• ID what in their play you’re mimicking (Plot, Language, Characterization, etc.)
Writerly Inspirations:
- Re-create one of the scenes from the play, only update plot, character, etc.
- Before OR after. Imagine the characters as they lived prior to when play starts, or take off with where play ends.
- Tom Stoppard’s famous play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an example of writers doing this. He imagined the two characters interaction in the moments they were offstage in Hamlet!
- Ever heard of “fan fiction”?
- These are supporting characters in one play, made MCs in the new!
- Another way to play with the play: go the absurd route – Jane Austen must be flattered from the grave, as not only do people still write about the imagined married life of Elizabeth Bennett…Darcy, but there are also people who have completely taken over two of her famous novels to write Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.
- Steal their themes. Feminism, the American Dream.
- Turn a tragedy into a comedy (which is another way of saying “go the absurd route”!)
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