Advanced Fiction Steeplechase Method

S.C. Denton · Mar 26, 2011

Occasionally I'll run across a blog where the writer makes at least a vague reference to the Steeplechase method. I've tried several times to find out exactly what the steps are, to no avail. I realize they probably vary a bit from teacher to teacher (and school to school), but I've yet to find more than a few of the steps listed anywhere.

Some articles have claimed there were ten steps; some eleven; some twelve. So, I was hoping someone in the know would clue me in. What are they? and was there a certain order your teacher instructed you to follow?

Thanks for your time.

CaoPaux · Mar 26, 2011

From: http://blog.writersdigest.com/mfaconfidential/The+Scariest+Assignment.aspx

I’ll try to explain The Steeplechase in brief: You take a scene or story that’s kind of hit a dead end. Your first step is that dead-end scene, and then, with each successive “step” (or “leap”, as my professor, Randy, calls it), you must push the story forward in a new way. But what makes it unique is that each of the steps must employ a different technique. For example, if you originally started the scene in, say, first person, you must jump, after a couple pages, to third. Then after a couple more pages you jump again to a new angle, maybe by telling the scene from the point of view of an unlikely character, then again to a scene of pure dialogue, then a mode of reality shift, then a parody of a writer whose style is very different from your own, and on and on and on. At the end, you’ll have a total of eleven leaps, give or take. The order and the forms vary slightly depending on who is teaching the class, but the one requirement is that you cannot keep retelling the same scene; you must push the story forward with each new step.

Sounds like the technique of each step is determined by the instructor.

Advanced Fiction Steeplechase Method

S.C. Denton

CaoPaux

Mostly Harmless