Writing Prompt (for Collections): Paper Cut-Outs

The ordering in your collection of stories (or poems, or essays) matters. Here's why.

If you’ve read some of my other posts, then you know I’m currently in the process of getting my MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing.

I recently took a class called “Writing Your Collection” in which we discussed different collections and started writing our own. I—obviously—chose to write fiction, but a lot of my peers chose poetry. And that turned out to be a huge blessing.

Something I learned about poets is that they think about the ordering of their collections almost as much as they think about the poems themselves. As much as it pains me to admit, before this class it didn’t occur to me that the ordering of pieces in a collection had any meaning at all. I thought the pieces were placed where they were in the same way an apple is placed next to a lemon in the grocery store.

After that, a whole new world of artistic meaning opened up. I got to work with my own stories, mixing and matching them, thinking about where the stories could go so they would have the most meaning next to each other, flipping them from front to back to think about how the meaning would change if I did. It all got to be so exhilarating, but also a bit cumbersome after a while.

I realized I needed a method or exercise to help me think about how each piece was affecting the other pieces. This is that exercise.

The Exercise

Step 1:

Write the title of each of your pieces on little scraps of paper or maybe even sticky notes if you want to be fancy.

Step 2:

Arrange those sticky notes in the order your pieces are currently in. Write a sentence or short paragraph about what impression that ordering would give to a new reader. Think about themes and motifs, consider what each piece alone says, and then what it means to have those pieces sit back to back. Consider what mood your first piece evokes. Your last. What is your first evocative image in your first piece? What’s the last evocative image in your final piece?

Step 3:

Shuffle your papers. Place them in a new order blindly. Write another sentence/paragraph. Is there any difference? What?

Consider the overall goals for your collection. Does this ordering fit better? Why?

Step 4:

Repeat step three until you have at least four different orderings (depending on how many pieces you have, you could have way more). Compare them and think about how they give different impressions as a whole work of art.

Thanks so much again for reading and as always, happy writing!