University Press of America
Pages: 84
•
Trim: 6 x 9¼
978-0-7618-5276-6 • Paperback • September 2010 • $40.99 • (£35.00)
978-0-7618-5277-3 • eBook • September 2010 • $38.50 • (£30.00)
Rudolph H. Weingartner spent his adult life as a teacher of philosophy and an academic administrator. Although he has written several books and quite a few articles, this is his first effort in the realm of fiction. Isaias Zelkowicz has been playing the viola professionally for forty years, the last thirty-one of them with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He has been drawing even longer than that.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Cast of Characters Number One: Six Personages, New York City, the Present Time
Chapter 3 Cast of Characters Number Two: Five Personages, Siena, Italy, the Present Time
Chapter 4 Cast of Characters Number Three: Six Personages, Small Nebraska Town, the Present Time
Chapter 5 Cast of Characters Number Four: Four Personages, Small West Virginia Town, the Present Time
Chapter 6 Cast of Characters Number FIve: Six Personages, Chicago, the Present Time
Chapter 7 Cast of Characters Number Six: Six Personages, Pittsburgh, the Present TIme
Chapter 8 Cast of Characters Number Seven: Seven Personages, New York City, the Present Time
Chapter 9 Cast of Characters Number Eight: Four Personages, San Francisco, 1946
Chapter 10 Cast of Characters Number Nine: Four Personages, Chicago, the Present TIme
Chapter 11 Cast of Characters Number Ten: FIve Personages, College in New England, the Present Time
Chapter 12 Cast of Characters Number Eleven: Five Personages, Olean, New York, 1866
Chapter 13 Cast of Characters Number Twelve: Five Personages, Paris, c. 1950
Chapter 14 Cast of Characters Number Thirteen: Five Personages, Washington, DC and Texas, the Present Time
Chapter 15 Cast of Characters Number Fourteen: Five Personages, Long Island, the Present Time
Chapter 16 Cast of Characters Number Fifteen: Five Personages, an American College, Vietnam War Period
Chapter 17 Cast of Characters Number Sixteen: Four Personages, the Pacific Ocean, World War II
Chapter 18 Cast of Characters Number Seventeen: Five Personages, Mexico City, the Early Seventies
Chapter 19 Cast of Characters Number Eighteen: Five Personages, Heidelberg, Germany, 1936
Chapter 20 Cast of Characters Number Nineteen: Five Personages, New York City, the Present Time
Chapter 21 Cast of Characters Number Twenty: Five Personages, the Bay Area, c. 2001
Chapter 22 About the Author and About the Illustrator
In What's the Story? Rudolph Weingartner offers an original and intriguing approach to the teaching and learning of creative writing: he gives you the characters for different kinds of stories and urges you to mix and match them on your own. The book allows you to test what is often said, that the best fictional characters take on a life of their own. The illustrations are a hoot too!
— Gerald Graff, 2008 President of the Modern Language Association, Professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Weingartner offers the struggling fiction writer numerous possibilities to inspire the art of writing.
— Columbia College Today
The author gives readers a cast of characters and then asks them to invent a story. These casts can be used by an author, a teacher for the classroom, or as a game for writers' groups. Each cast is accompanied by an illustration to be used as a starting point and to stimulate the writer.
— Writers’ Journal
What's the Story is a creativity exercise of sorts, as Rudolph H. Weingartner gives a description of countless characters who he has created simple little profiles for. The exercise comes in creating stories surrounding these characters to help would be authors get a grasp on fiction writing. What's the Story is a fun and exciting way to practice the fiction writing process.
— Midwest Book Review