Them’s Fighting Words

This morning, we had the pleasure of experiencing Dublin’s literary education non-profit Fighting Words firsthand. Education Coordinator, Jean, walked us through Fighting Words’ mission (based on Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia project), and a raucous sample exercise, in which students improvised a brief scene, collectively composed its main dialogue and action, and then individually revised and expanded this scene into distinct–yet oddly connected–stories. The scenario: a woman boards a train, only to find a man sitting in her seat. Raymond Williams once said (our paraphrase:) that good fiction is possible when someone wants something they can’t have, or has something they can’t keep; here, our writers ran with a scene that can do both.

Big thanks to Jean and Reba at Fighting Words for letting us in on this fabulous, ongoing piece of Irish literary culture!