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Write a paragraph (50 to 100 words) containing one fact and three fictitious elements.

You can write about yourself, about your interests, about history – about anything you like. Then try the reverse – write a paragraph containing three facts and one fictitious element.

Then look at the posts from your fellow writers. Can you spot where the fictions are and where the facts are? Ask these questions:

• Is there anything that distinguishes the fictitious elements?
• Are there common elements that you and your fellow writers write about as ‘facts’?
• Do any of these passages suggest stories to you?

Submission

3 Facts / 1 Fiction

Final Version Submitted:

SHE GOES BACK.

The tortoise lays her eggs in the construction site’s sand, taking ten hours from start to finish. She goes back to her nest the next day. Tentatively, she sniffs the earth and feels the young budding life under her feet.

She goes back: working notes:

The tortoise lays her eggs in the building’s foundation soil. The whole process, from finding a suitable location to digging in and laying her eggs, takes ten hours. From my perspective, she is tired and hungry and spent after in the dark evening of six pm. The next day two hours are spent feeding early while eye-balling me. From my perspective again, she gives me the run-around and slip before she goes to her nest – to confirm her handiwork and to be near it (maybe), and to bask in the sun! Every day I go to her nest to check for any activity. The African sun beats down, the earth warms quickly daily – heating the eggs in Mother Earth’s womb. Seventy-two days from the day of egg-laying the rains come – torrential, day after day, and the earth grows cold.

The tortoise lays her eggs in the construction site’s sand, taking ten hours from start to finish. She does go back to her nest the next day, I am not sure the reason why. In the harsh beating african sun the dry earth slow cooks the little ones, and the torrential showers come too fast, too furious, and too late.

Final Version:

The Lolita surprise (explicit content):

Outside my window, the tortoises smile. Lolita, a youngling we found when still so small she fit in the palm of my hand, is busy worshipping the sun until she spots Jessica foraging. Immediate detour, Lolita mounts Jessica. Reality hits: Lolita is male!

Final Version Submitted:

3 Fictions / 1 Fact

Final Version Submitted

EARTHLINGS

On our earth spinning in our galaxy, all earthlings live and die. Human beings harvest rain water for their daily needs and share the excesses with other earthlings and Mother Earth herself, keeping the ground cool and manageable instead of letting it dry out and heat up.

Questions to think about

” Post your fact and fiction paragraph in the discussion below.

Then look at the posts from your fellow writers. Can you spot where the fictions are and where the facts are? Ask these questions:

• Is there anything that distinguishes the fictitious elements?
• Are there common elements that you and your fellow writers write about as ‘facts’?
• Do any of these passages suggest stories to you?

© The Open University “

Answers

Is there anything that distinguishes the fictitious elements?

When writing the fictitious elements, it feels like thinking up a lie and even an absurdity. When reading others work with both facts and fiction mixed, it is almost trying to deduce what is fact and what is fiction, trying to spot the abnormality , the item that sticks out, that doesn’t fit in, the lie. Distinguishing features would be; the extremes that visibly point out the fiction in the current examples, in my own writing the bits with imagination, assigning thought and feeling to a creature whose thoughts and feelings I would not be able to truly know those became the fiction written.

Are there common elements that you and your fellow writers write about as ‘facts’?

Yes – the common elements of known ‘facts’ would be items that a google away can confirm.

Do any of these passages suggest stories to you?

I suppose right now I’m thinking of what the difference is from a passage vs a story. Usually a passage is an excerpt of a story. Some of these examples written by my peers are complete stories on their own even though some are short and just over the fifty words mark like my own. Some do suggest that they could fit into larger, more elaborate stories.