We began our first lesson with a brainstorming session about big fights and little fights. I wrote the word fighting on the whiteboard and asked the group of thirteen writers to call out different ways fighting can appear in life--and in stories. We came up with dozens of ways. Everything from jihads and riots to hate mail and stony silences. We also explored the subtler kinds of fighting that happen inside a character or narrator in a story--or even a reader trying out a new idea by reading a nonfiction book. What does a person have to give up to grow? And how does this internal resistance to surrender cause conflict in their outer lives?
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