Prompt #30
Pop Quiz!
Hello, my Monday people!
Today, we’re having a quiz. Are you ready? Here we go:
Relationship Quiz:
John and Sally are engaged. Even though it goes against their modern-day, who-gives-a-shit-what-the-plates-look-like, why-are-we-even-bothering grain, they finally acquiesce to convention and agree to register for kitchen items at Bloomingdale’s. A Saturday is put aside to accomplish this archaic task. Things grow difficult when they find they cannot agree on a pattern for their dishes. John wants something traditional, something reminiscent of the platters and plates his grandmother used to set out for family gatherings. Sally wishes for something with a contemporary look, is intrigued by the Asian-influenced plates that to John hardly resemble plates at all, but look more like giant square ashtrays. There, in the heart of the housewares department at Bloomingdale’s, they begin to bicker, Sally wondering when in the world it became the husband’s business what fucking pattern is picked for the registry, John replying that he had no idea his wife still considered such old-fashioned sexist notions palatable.
You advise the engaged couple to:
A. Break up immediately.
B. Agree on a pattern that neither of them particularly likes but that neither finds particularly objectionable either, with the knowledge that for the rest of their married lives together they will have to eat off the same unliked yet nonobjectionable plates every single day, and will thereby be constantly reminded of the ominous fight they once had in the housewares department of Bloomingdale’s, back when there was still time to call the whole thing off before they were stuck once and for all not only with the plates but with each other.
That’s a little story I wrote a long time ago. A story that is in the shape, obviously, of a quiz. I remember having such fun writing this one!
Writing a story in the shape of some other form of communication—in this case, a quiz—is called writing a “hermit crab” story. Hermit crab stories borrow structures and forms, the same way a hermit crab borrows a shell. By placing your story inside of a borrowed structure—a recipe, a resume, a letter to the editor, an invitation to a reunion, etc etc etc—your tale often has added resonance. Sometimes, the structure simply leads to playfulness or humor. Other times, the structure provides a way to deepen emotion. Either way, you’ve taken the soft, vulnerable core of your story (the little crab without a shell) and found a safe home for it inside of a steely structure.
Here's writer Brenda Miller, author with Suzanne Paola of Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, and the person who first came up with the moniker “hermit crab essay,” on this kind of writing:
“The form acts as a cover, a protection, for this material to move in the world… I anointed… the “hermit crab essay” as a way to explain, through metaphor, how a writer can play with form to deal with difficult material that might not be able to live in the world without its own borrowed “shell.”
Writing this way is another way of writing with constraints. How I love a good constraint when writing! By putting up walls and boundaries, by borrowing a shape on which we can hang our words, our minds focus in. We no longer need to think about what structure to use. We’ve got one already! In some ways, it’s like doing a (themed) crossword puzzle. You see the grid of squares on the page. Your job is to fill in the squares correctly. (In fact, some hermit crab stories have been written in the form of a crossword puzzle, among dozens upon dozens of others.)
Note: We wrote a hermit crab story a few weeks ago in when we wrote stories in the shape of letters. Remember? And we’ll be doing other hermit crab stories as the year progresses. But for today, we’re sticking with the form of a quiz!
Second Note: Hermit crab stories have become VERY popular in the last few years, probably because people love writing them! A couple of books full of hermit crab stories include Fakes, edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer, and The Shell Game, edited by Kim Adrian. But you can find hermit crab stories all over the web, simply by visiting one of your favorite literary journals.
A couple more examples of Quiz stories:
Here’s a story by Cheryl Pappas told as a multiple-choice quiz: LINK
Here’s a math quiz from The New Yorker (if you’re not a subscriber, you should still be able to access this unless you’ve used up your monthly limit of freebies): LINK
TODAY’S PROMPT:
Your prompt for this week is to write a story in the form of a quiz.
Possible ideas:
a math quiz
a multiple-choice exam
a true or false questionnaire
a psychology quiz
a personality test
one of those “what kind of girlfriend are you?” quizzes you used to find in women’s magazine
any other type of quiz you can think of
As always, you can write as much as you wish, but please keep anything you post in the comments to a maximum of 400 words. Thank you!
See you next Monday!
Danielle sat on an uncomfortable chair in a room painted white with pretty photos on all four walls. In her left hand, she held a clipboard with a questionnaire on it. In her right, a pencil with a large eraser. She didn’t like waiting. She forced herself to read and try to answer the questions in front of her.
1—Do you eat in secret?
Danielle wrote No. Then she thought about why she was here and decided to tell the truth. Well maybe not the whole truth but some of it. She tried to erase the No but made a huge grey smudge on the paper. So much for hiding your lies.
“Sometimes I do.” She wrote.
2—Do you go off and on diets repeatedly?
Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t, thought Danielle. What kind of quiz is this?
Of course I do. I’ve been dieting my entire life. Why don’t you ask me if any of them have been successful?
3—Do you restrict certain foods sometimes but binge on them at other times?
Danielle pondered the question. She wasn’t sure she understood what they were asking her. When she dieted, she would try to fast all day, eat nothing, and then most days would binge in the evening. Did they want to know that? Would she be sitting here, five foot five and two hundred pounds if she didn’t have a problem with her weight? Why weren’t they asking her about her weight or weighing her in like they did at Weight Watchers. Maybe she’d made a mistake by coming here.
4—Do you obsessively read health and fitness magazines and diet books?
Oh come on, she thought. What kind of question is this? Everyone needs to know about nutrition. You might get cancer if you don’t. I just have a weight problem. I’m going to give them one more chance.
5—Do you steal, hide or hoard food?
I am an honest person, Danielle told herself as there was no one else in the room to tell. I would never steal food. I take food out of friends’ refrigerators but I’m sure they don’t mind. And man, when I used to babysit, I’d eat whatever I could find. But that was part of the payment. Everyone knows that. Hiding? Hoarding? They must get some real sick people here at this eating disorders place. I mean everyone buys things when they are on sale and puts them away for later. It’s the American thing to do. I’m putting No to all three.
6—Do you eat when you are not hungry?
I don’t know. I’m always hungry. Should I write that? Danielle bit into the eraser of the pencil
Q1: Your children need help with their homework, their math homework, issued by the new teacher at the Downingtown Academy, where you have them enrolled because that's where all the parents from the Downingtown Country Club send their kids. In response you:
A) Compliment them for all the answers they have gotten correct so far and you help them discover the rest of them by asking helpful questions, since you haven't done algebra in years and know you can't solve the problems but you do remember it had something to do with moving a variable around into different positions, until the answer presented itself.
B) Tell them you're busy and tell them to go back to their room to try harder, since the world is cruel and heartless and will not heed their call whenever they are in need or unable to find an easy answer to their problems, and that school is supposed to teach them grit.
C) Reminisce about the math teacher you slept with in high school when you were under age.
D) Pretend you did not hear the question and go ride your horse for a few hours, then return to have scotch and water on the back porch.
Q2: You are on the back porch drinking a scotch and water when your spouse arrives home from work, exhausted, and asks if you want to go out for dinner. In response you:
A) Smile and give them a hug and say yes of course, let's do something together this evening and maybe we can get a sitter for the kids - that one who is really good at math.
B) Tell them you are exhausted too and ask why they didn't just bring home some salads from that place that makes those giant ones with peanut sauce.
C) Reminisce about the time you were doing it with your own assistant from your office and got them out of the house just in time, before your spouse came home.
D) Pretend you did not hear the question and go feed the horses.
Q3: You are in the barn feeding the horses when a bale of hay from the loft falls on you and pins you to the floor boards. You call for help and hope that your family in the house can hear you. In response they:
A) Come running to the barn, free you from the hay bale and help you back into the house.
B) Believe they are too busy, pretend they didn't hear, and decide that one of the others will probably help you.
C) Wonder if it was really you or just that 'stable hand' you hang out with so much.
D) Look up for a brief moment, then at each other, then go back to eating their Thai salads and working through the algebra problems.