Because my flash fiction collection, 100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories, was getting some attention from creative writing teachers -- and because I know some folks were teaching selected excerpts to various classes -- my publisher and I thought it might be worthwhile to produce a free teacher's guide/reader's guide to accompany it.

I finished writing the guide this summer and you can now download it free as an

.rtf file (MS Word ~500k)
or
.pdf file (Adobe ~100k)

You might find it useful, whether you'd like to teach the whole book, a few selected stories, or just borrow from the literary discussion questions and creative writing prompts.

Instructional guides are an interesting genre. The authors of such books are generally underappreciated and ignored, while the textbook author is often lauded for their work. Yet the teacher's guide is often the unspoken teaching assistant for many classrooms around the country. Different guidebooks take different approaches: some provide "workbooks" with problems and exercises and vocabulary drills that instructors can integrate into their courses; others just list discussion/homework questions, alternate ways of clustering chapters or parts of the book, or recommended activities that teachers can use to try to teach the material. I usually don't rely on them for my classes very much -- because I strongly resist being "told what to do" as the teacher (i.e., I refuse to take a passive role of just repeating information) -- but I always try to get my hands on a copy of any supplemental guides if the publisher offers them...I'm always on the look-out for ideas that I can use, whether with the book they were intended to accompany or not. They're infinitely useful documents.

Whenever I've had a stock book that didn't include a supplemental guide, I've wondered what it would take to compose one myself. I've even been invited to do this by publishers themselves, who I assume are desparate for such materials (but probably unwilling to pay for them...I'm not sure). But I've always imagined that I could create one relatively easily, building on what I already use to teach the book in my classes.

Of course, 100 Jolts was never intended to be a textbook and though I've read from it to my students and even had them analyze a few stories, I never really thought of it as a teaching tool until I worked on the instructional guide. Because of its dark content, the book is unlikely to be appropriate for many classrooms, but a lot of teen readers have been buying it at signings, so maybe it's not as 'dark' as I imagine. In any case, I felt writing a teaching guide could only help other teachers who are trying, like I am, to spread the cause of flash fiction and who find it useful as a way to teach the elements of fiction and writing techniques. The fact is that most creative writing classes only have time for short-shorts -- that many of their exercises have students write "flash" stories. So I used this as an opportunity to try writing a teaching guide, half of which is discussion questions (as might be used in a literature course) and the other half which is strictly creative writing prompts. For a hundred stories, this took a lot more work than I expected!

But overall, composing this guide was a helpful exercise. It helped me clarify my thoughts about some of the stories, and gave me a TON of writing prompts I might be able to use in future classes, regardless of whether I use any of my stories in the classroom or not (and I rarely do). It also might come in handy for readings or seminars, like the workshop I'm getting ready to lead with a creative writing group in Morgantown, WV, next month. I don't get paid for writing this guide, but perhaps it'll sell a few extra books...and maybe teach someone something they might not otherwise have learned. It was definitely worthwhile to write, and if I'm between creative projects I might try my hand at writing another one for another literature or creative writing textbook I teach.

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