We're approaching "dead week" at SHU, and in my fiction writing course students are doing end-of-term readings, where everyone gets their "fifteen minutes of fame" by presenting selections from their term's work out loud before an audience. It's graded lightly, but sharing is its own reward and it's a great way for the students to both express themselves with pride and look back selectively on what they've learned.

One student read a humorous piece from his journal that cracked up the class: "A Letter to Dr. Arnzen About His Beard" in which the narrator thanks the teacher profusely for all the knowledge he's gleaned in the course but begs for the teacher to explain why he grows such a wild and hairy beard. I can't quote it directly from memory, but I remember a line about how the sideburns seem strangely detached from the ears, like I wear an organically false beard or something bizarre like that. I don't remember the words exactly, because I was laughing pretty loudly at the time. It was a riot, and as he read the piece, students kept turning around in their chairs to look at me -- "Are you gonna let him get away with that?" they indicated with wide eyes and arched brows.

Of course, I just laughed along. It was a pretty funny piece, actually. And creative. And gutsy. A result of exactly what I want students to do -- to take artistic risks.

His piece was actually borne from an light in-class activity I invented called "Literary Truth or Dare." I created this exercise for a memoir writing course I taught a few years ago, and it worked so well I broke it out for fiction writing this term, as well. The students have a ball with it, because they're prompting each other to write some of their most creative work in the class, and it almost always generates humorous results. At first I worried that this might get out of hand, but the students generally stay within the bounds of decorum (perhaps because I ask them to "do unto others"). It goes a little something like this:

Bring a large stack of index cards to class and distribute six cards per student. Each student then must write down three "truth questions" (like those from The Book of Questions) and three "dares" (wild, taboo-challenging behaviors), just like they might actually do in a real game of Truth or Dare. I ask them to apply as much creativity to these things as possible, while still keeping their questions and challenges legal and do-able. So people turn in Truth cards that say "Have you ever thought about seriously killing someone? Who is it, and how would you do it?" or "What's the worst thing that ever happened to you on a date?" Dare questions might read "Eat something from the trashcan" or "Run naked through the campus chapel."

I collect all the cards (in separate piles) and then shuffle them. If there's time, I'll read a large sampling from the cards out loud to the whole class, and they love hearing the wild -- and sometimes embarassing things that people come up with. (Reading aloud first gives me a way to censor anything I don't think really belongs in a classroom, or something that might make someone very uncomfortable -- anything too sexual or too violent -- as well.). Then I deal the cards back to the students, asking them "Truth or Dare?" and giving them the requested card (optionally, I give them back three of each and let them pick on their own based on the random choices they've received). Then they must either write an honest short personal memoir that answers the "truth" question or else creatively write a scene where a character performs whatever the "dare" dared them to do. The former requires recalling the memory in rich imagery; the latter requires conjuring up a premise that would logically justify such an action (I typically say it >can't< be a "dare" per se, in the scene/story they produce).

Not to be creatively outdone by the questions, they dive into this assignment with much relish. And they love reading the results aloud.

Hence, the truth question: "What do you really think of Dr. Arnzen's beard?"

Hilarious.

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