Arts & Entertainment, Writing
Story Study: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Lesson time 15:47 min
Joyce reveals what inspired—and how she wrote—her most well-known and reprinted story, including how she chose the main character’s perspective and how adjusting perspective can be helpful for your own story.
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Topics include: Choosing a Point of View · When Connie’s Two Selves Collide · Excerpt: The End of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” · End When You’ve Said Enough · Assignment: Switch Perspective
Teaches the Art of the Short Story
Literary legend Joyce Carol Oates teaches you how to write short stories by developing your voice and exploring classic works of fiction.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - My story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is the most reprinted of any story of mine, so I'm asked questions about it. Like every day in my life, I get questions about that story. So it is very interesting genesis to me, because the first title of the story was "Death and the Maiden," and that seems to signal a kind of fairy tale, like death in the old-- the medieval woodcuts, death is imagined as this-- this figure like a skull, and he may have a scythe in his hand. And he's standing behind a pretty girl with her hair is kind of loose, and she's primping in front of a mirror. And death is standing back here, and you see death in the mirror. She doesn't see death, because we see death in the mirror. She sees herself, but we see death in the mirror. So if you look upon the story that I have written, you see that the fairy tale elements are always there, but they're sort of submerged. Death comes riding in on his horse. The girl is walking in the woods. She's a young girl, but she's all alone in the woods, and she should not be alone in the woods. So it's a cautionary tale. Death comes riding in on his horse. Sometimes he's a knight. He's-- he's got armor. His face is hidden, but he's death. And he-- he asks her to climb up on his horse, and he doesn't grab her and put her on a horse. He asks her if she wants to come and ride with him. So she is the one who goes on the horse. It's very important that the maiden is volitional. She goes on the horse with this man she doesn't know, a stranger, and they ride off, and she rides off to her death. And so my story is a replica of that-- that sort of fairy tale situation. [MUSIC PLAYING] The story is based also upon something that really happened. So most writing has a number of influences. Something really happened in the southwest. I read about it in "Life" magazine, and there was a two-page photographic spread of these terrible killings, the Pied Piper of Tucson, Arizona. And there was a man, who is about 30. He pretended to be a teenager. He dyed his hair. He was quite short. He wore cowboy boots with newspapers stuck in the boots, so he would look taller. And he dressed like a teenager, and he tried to pretend to be a teenager. He hung out around shopping malls, and he befriended these girls who would become strolling along. And one by one, he-- he was murdering girls. But what interested me about the story was this appalling and terrifying fact that some of the teenagers knew that he was murdering girls, and they didn't tell anybody. So they would go home to their parents, and they didn't tell. They protected him. Like, why-- I thought, why would they protect this horrible person, who he's like Charles Manson, maybe that type of charismatic man preying upon adolescents, teenagers. So he seduced them in some way, but then even as he was murdering them, they-- they-- they defended him. Finally, it all came out, and he was arrested. But I didn't w...
About the Instructor
The author of some of the most enduring fiction of our time, Joyce Carol Oates has published 58 novels and thousands of short stories, essays, and articles. Now the award-winning author and Princeton University creative writing professor teaches you how to tap into your storytelling instincts. Find ideas from your own experiences and perceptions, experiment with structure, and improve your craft, one sentence at a time.
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Joyce Carol Oates
Literary legend Joyce Carol Oates teaches you how to write short stories by developing your voice and exploring classic works of fiction.
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