A villanelle is a very structured poem made up of nineteen lines, with five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by one quatrain (four-line stanza). Additionally, many poets use iambic pentameter (which is when a line has five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each line then has a total of 10 total syllables).


LitCharts provides further information and an example:

“Jean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (I lost my turtledove)," [is] the first fixed-form villanelle ever written. The formal aspects of the villanelle are highlighted: the first line of the poem is repeated as a refrain at the end of the second and fourth tercets; the third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth tercets.”
 
For those that are more visually inclined, this is what the villanelle looks like (all the lines with A must rhyme, and all the lines with B must rhyme. Additionally, the first lines repeat as lines 6, 12, and 18 as noted by the asterisk below. Line 3 repeats and lines 9, 15, and 19 as noted by the caret below.):
 
A *
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
A ^
 
It’s literally the same two sounds happening over and over, and two lines that get repeated multiple times.

I learned of the villanelle poem and challenged myself to write a poem in that form (which is, in fact, pretty challenging). Although I did it, and am pretty happy with it (for what it's worth), I’m not the biggest fan of writing form poetry. I'm a free verse kind of woman. I do, however, love thinking about how to apply unique form to fiction. This led me to consider the villanelle’s use of repetition in my fiction writing.

I obviously wasn’t planning on rhyming or iambic pentameter-ing my story, but I could repeat an idea, or a line, instead.

This forced me to consider what kind of story would be best suited to include constant repetition.
Like I mention in my article “Stalking Women: Transgressive Fiction Topics” that I wrote last week, I stumbled across a docuseries on stalking that gave me an a-hah moment. Stalking is obsessive… and repetitive… this form would perfectly lend itself to the obsessive behavior a stalker has. Repeating ideas over and over and over.

So I did some research on stalkers – specifically female stalkers – and after better understand who my character might realistically be, I started to plan my own fictional villanelle.
 
This is the outline I came up with:
 
 Villanelle Form Outline
 
A* I used to live on the tenth floor – (of the Watterson towers).
B I saw you in class - you talked about the importance of words.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A My unfriendly roommate (roommate starts conversation about mom dying and boyfriend leaving).
B My window faced West.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A Last day of class.
B Thought about missing him -  'Part of me wishes I hadn't passed my test, because I would have got to spend more time with you'.
A^ I want to see you again - email him.
 
A Show boyfriend breaking up - spiral downward.
B It was small, but from the tower I could see your classroom across campus.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A You didn't answer your email that night, so sent another in the morning, two more that afternoon, and three more that night. Why are you not answering?
B I found your number on the internet - and so I called. Needed to hear your voice to fall asleep. Left a voicemail. Each night for seven days - didn't sleep for a week.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A Now I’m in my car - next to your building on campus - it's easier to see this way. It's west, but it was far.
B I showed up at your house first, and threw a rock at your window - but you weren't home. Window cracked.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor, but now I'm in a car waiting for you.
A^ I want to see you again.
 

Based on my research, my character was less likely to stalk a stranger, so it should be someone she knows. She was motivated by a desire to having a more intimate relationship with someone who is older. I decided to make the person she was stalking a professional who she desired being closer with after she experienced great loss in two areas of her life.

On any given day, whenever I come up with story ideas, I write them in a document (I will write about this on the blog soon.) One of my random line ideas I had in this document was “I used to live on the tenth floor” which, as I was looking through the document for inspiration, I decided would be a focal point for the narrator. I also decided that part of the repetition had to be from her obsession, so “I want to see you again” became the other chorus.

In traditional poetry, all the As would rhyme and Bs would rhyme. There’s nothing ‘rhyming’ about the other lines, but instead they are just scenes that help develop the story.

While a different kind of difficulty, this project definitely challenged me like when I was writing the villanelle poem. These very specific parameters to write this story under forced me to be very intentional about how I structured this plot.

If you're interested in working with this form for a fiction story specifically:

• Repetition needs to make sense. Does your plot lend itself well to obsession?
• Do you need to do research to develop your character? Your setting/location?
• Make sure that what happens in your plot lends itself to return to the chorus/repeated idea

"I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor" is the draft I ended up writing.


It was a fun exercise and I encourage you to try playing with this, or any form.
Are there any unique or experimental forms you have tried? Anything you’re interested in playing with?

Stalking: uncertainty over your privacy and safety, being watched at any given moment, continued harassment (sounds kind of like social media, eh?).

Stalking is considered abnormal, wrong, and bad by most people, unless they at first think of it as endearing or a form flattery, I guess. But most people think of it as bad. This alone makes it transgressive, but we’re going to up the transgression ante: female stalkers. (I will use genders described as male and female in this article just because that’s what’s referred to in the data I pulled).

The typical stalker is portrayed as a male. We might also imagine these male stalkers as being in their 30s or 40s, angry over a rejection, and maybe unhinged. This isn’t the only scenario though… women also stalk.

I was scrolling through my husband’s Netflix (which happens once a year — we don’t watch TV or movies more than that — he pays for it for his mom) and found the docuseries I Am a Stalker. I didn’t even end up watching it (ended up watching some other crime, murder, docuseries) but I was mulling over ideas for a new fiction piece at the time. I realized that a stalker story was perfect (because I was playing with a new fiction form based on a villanelle poem, where the structure is based on repetition; it would make complete sense that someone so focused on something, someone — stalking, would repeat things like I was going to have to do).

The story I ended up writing is called “I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor” and can be read here.

In order to write a story about a stalker, I did a little research that would support my character development. Below you can see some of the research I found (all sections are linked in the headers with where the information came from). Feel free to use it in your own transgressive writing.

The definitions of transgressive/transgression: involving a violation of moral or social boundaries. An act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense.

Stalking can be:
Violent
Scary
Uncomfortable
Always nonconsenting
Obviously it goes against social boundaries and the law.

This makes it a perfect topic to finagle and write into a transgressive story. I did the work so you don’t have to; here are the facts and statistics I gathered before I started writing my story so its plot would relatively reflect statistics accurately. I first give you stalking facts in general, and the source that I got them from, and then I provide statistics specific to female stalkers. Many of these links include more information that I’m not listing here, so I’d recommend checking them out if you’re interested.

Stalking: Define the Crime
Stalking is a repetitive pattern of unwanted, harassing or threatening behavior committed by one person against another. Acts include: telephone harassment, being followed, receiving unwanted gifts, and other similar forms of intrusive behavior. All states and the Federal Government have passed anti-stalking legislation. Definitions of stalking found in state anti-stalking statutes vary in their language, although most define stalking as “the willful, malicious, and repeated following and harassing of another person that threatens his or her safety” (1).

Stalking:
· Men commit stalking the most
· 4 out of 5 victims are women
· Stalking occurs most frequently between people who know one another
· Women are most likely to be stalked by someone they were/are intimate with
· Less than ¼ of women are stalked by strangers
· Less than 1/3 of men are stalked by strangers
· The majority of women stalked by intimate partners report having been physically assaulted by them (1/3 also report having been sexually assaulted by them)
· Most stalkers are not psychotic (but often suffer from other mental health conditions including depression, substance use, and personality disorder)

And from Safe Horizon:
· 7.5 million people are stalked every year
· About 1/6 women have experienced stalking at some point
· About 1/17 men have experienced stalking at some point

While female stalkers occur less, statistics do provide trends for them. Statistics show differences between who they stalk and how they do it compared to their male counterparts (although many characteristics are similar among both).

Female Stalkers are:
· Less likely to have criminal offenses or substance abuse diagnoses
· Less likely to stalk a stranger
· More likely to pursue a prior profession conflict
· Often motivated by a “desire to establish a close and loving intimacy with the victim”
· Females are less likely to threaten and then assault
· Slightly less likely than males to assault (just 1 out of 5 female stalkers attacked their victim)
· Ages vary from teens to above middle age
· Many female stalkers seem to be single women in their mid-30s (comparable to male stalkers)
· Education and IQ appear to be higher in female stalkers than female criminals in general
· Females are less likely to follow their victims
· Female stalkers threaten their victims at about the same rate as males (50–75%)
· Violent female stalkers target males 67% of the time
· On average, female’s victims were men at least a decade older than the female victims of male stalkers
· Women are more likely than men to engage in same-sex stalking

Because this research is one study and less than fifty people, I don’t plan to generalize here other details the researchers discuss, but I do suggest reading it. It includes data on 33 female stalkers, including their mental health, sexuality, who they stalked, motivations for stalking, criminal history, pursuit, threats, violence/deaths, escalation, and victims’ demographics. The researchers include data from their study, as well as data from other studies in their discussion.

While females do stalk females, they also stalk males. In addition to female stalkers being less common and therefore less heard of, men being stalked is equally cut from the social narrative. It does happen though. This article offers a great personal account of a man’s experience, which helps provide story to the female stalker statistics.

The short story (“I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor”) inspired by this research ended up being about a woman stalking her professor.

Other ideas for people a woman might stalk:
· Her counselor
· Her best friend
· A former coworker or boss she wants revenge on
· A former lover
· Previous maid/nanny
· Physical trainer/coach
· Lawyer
· Family doctor

For more information on female stalkers, check out The American Journal of Psychology’s “A Study of Women who Stalk”.

This behavior has a wide-reaching deep dive you could jump into if you’re interested. The information I collected here helped me develop my character for the story I wrote. Like I mentioned, I was using a form that required repetition, and so having a character focused on a man allowed me to explore that. Next post, I’ll be talking about the form I used for this story (and how I really enjoy playing with different narrative forms in my prose).

I used to live on the tenth floor. It isn’t the highest floor of the Watterson Towers because the building is actually twenty-eight stories high, but it’s still pretty high. High enough. It overlooks a lot of campus, but I didn’t realize how important that was until recently when I lost everything.

The first time I saw you was the first day of class, Intro to Psych. You had a terrific laugh. You had slick hair, round glasses, and a suit coat that fit you like it was a tailored Armani. Man, do I like tailored suits.

You said to us that psychology was important, even if we never became doctors, because it explained people, and why people do the things they do. People are interesting. You paced the floors, talked with your hands.

I sat in the fifth row of the lecture hall and that was the last time I sat that far back.

You talked about words. We each speak thousands of words a day and many of us slip. Our words spill, they bend, they are messy. We say things we don’t mean. We grab words, and we have to do it so quickly that sometimes we grab the words right next to the correct one. We say things we think. We say things we don’t mean to say. One experiment showed that people who had first read the phrase “damp rifle” later said “wet gun” instead of “get one.”

I watched your shoulders slump, your throat sigh. I watched the corners of your lips reach up.

I wanted to see you again.

My roommate stole my book last week. She stole it once before, but I found it. Underneath clothes of mine that she also took and threw on her closet floor. She thought she could take them since I’d flagged them as a soon-to-be thrift store donation. So she took them. The book though, there was no excuse, and then she took it a second time. I know this because it wasn’t sitting on my desk where I left it.

I asked her for it back.

“You’re only acting this way because your mom died.”

Seriously, she said that.

Then she said that I could try being a little friendlier, she didn’t mean anything by taking my stuff. She thought I didn’t want it. Was this because my boyfriend broke up with me right after my mom died.

I told her I just wanted my book.

And when she left the room she told me that I misunderstimate, which doesn’t even make any sense but it made me think about your lecture on slips.

I still had no book. I sat down at my desk and I, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I guess I want you to know that I cried.

I come from a poor family, and we were always getting sick. We got sick, sick like dogs, sick like those on welfare, sick like people with broken hearts. The sickness hurts, but what are you going to do? So I left. I started college, I moved East and left mom in Nevada. She loved me like her daughter, but I left her like a son. I went to school and she knew nothing about school and I started dating Spencer who definitely wasn’t dating me for my looks, but then she died. And he left.

I lived in that room for the last four years and by the time she was done stealing my stuff I didn’t have much left besides my bed, desk, and some of my books. My desk sat in front of a window that faces West which mostly matters because I used to live on the tenth floor.

It was the last day of class. Mom would never get to see it, me walking, the whole thing, but I would be graduating. I tapped my pencil. I tapped my pencil once, twice, three times, and then I tapped it to a four-four time signature. You came over to me and tap tap tapped my desk with your soft finger. You whispered to me to shh. We were taking finals and I was a distraction. Spencer told me I wasn’t pretty, that’s not why he was with me. He told me I could be charming when I tried to be. I should cheer up a little more often. I’ve never been a distraction.

In-between drawing bubbles in the shape of a whirlpool with my number two pencil, I watched you pace the front of the room. The soles of your Beckett Simonon dress shoes made a clicking noise as they met the ground. Look who’s the distraction now? Your eyes scanned the room, your palm reached inside your hip pocket. I would miss you.

Later that night, I should have been packing up, I’d need to leave the dorm in two days. I sat down, logged onto my laptop, and the thief threw my book at me. It hit my desk leg and page ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifty-two all bent. She didn’t say anything. Nothing. I carefully unfolded the pages, trying to decrease them, and she left.

My hair is long like a cobweb stretched straight across the corner of a room and I’m thinking about this because it tickled a little, wisped along my shoulders, which made me feel even more nervous when I sent you that email. You scanned in my final exam result that afternoon, quicker than any of my other professors, and I passed.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t passed my test, because then I’d have gotten to spend more time with you next year. Send.

I want to see you again.

Spencer rubbed my back when he told me he was breaking up with me. He worded it more like “I think this will be best for us” but he doesn’t know what’s best for me. Cups of coffee, half smiles from other people, and fitted suits are what’s best for me. Spencer knew my mom had just died, but we were both graduating. We were in my room. His eyes slanted forward when he tried not to look me straight on. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath his Chicago Bulls hoodie, but he never wore a shirt under his hoodies. He hadn’t washed his hair in a week. After the breakup, his friend Jeremy told me it was best. Spencer’d been kissing girls in bars, big sloppy wet ones after he drank too many Old Fashions, with lipstick tire tracks smeared on his chin. There was a blond he kept taking home on the weekends he wasn’t with me.

I need you to know that I didn’t really love him that much.

DeGarmo Hall is small, you know. Square, with brick foundation and translucent windows. Each wall of the building is made almost entirely of windows. I could see it across campus, barely, but I could see it. It’s the building that your office is in, and I could see it out my window when I would sit at my desk.

I used to live on the tenth floor.

You never answered my email that night. I told myself it was because you were grading other final exams. You were packing for vacation. You were cooking an old Italian, secret-family-recipe for dinner. I told myself it could have been a lot of reasons, but I didn’t believe any of them.

No. You were avoiding me. You were embarrassed of me. Or maybe you wanted what you sent back to sound perfect and it would take you time.

I spent all night with the taste of my own snot and spit as I cried, on my back, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling in the dim light of my floor lamp. I still hadn’t packed.

In the morning I sent another email. Just want to make sure you got my email. By the afternoon I sent you two more. Throughout the night I sent three. Why aren’t you answering?

It isn’t hard, the internet, to find things. I typed in your name on Facebook to find your city, I typed in your name and city into the search engine to find your phone number. And your home address. And then I stared at the two numbers in front of me like they were a diagnosis. I typed and my heart raced and my typing sounded like the four-four time signature of my pencil tapping and, just like before, I’m never a distraction.

I called. My skin wet with sweat went numb like when you burn it on the stove, and my breath shallowed like the simmering water above the flame. I typed your number into my phone and each heartless ring left me. Left me. I needed to hear your voice to fall asleep but you never answered. Your voicemail message was just the phone number said by a bot. I left you a voicemail, asking you to call me back. Telling you I missed you.

I told your voicemail good night, like a soft kiss, each night for seven days and I didn’t sleep for a week.

I wanted to see you again.

Now I’m in my car next to DeGarmo Hall on campus. It’s easier to see it this way. It’s West, and my window faced West, but it’s far from up there. From here, I see the grain of the bricks, burgundy sand weathered by years. I see my face reflected in the translucent windows but I can’t see in.

From the outside, it’s not easy to tell that everything I own is in my trunk and back seat with me.

I went to your house first. Five, six miles away. No, maybe twelve. I drove until I needed to turn left in your neighborhood, right down the dirt road, and another right until the end of the block. Your house is quaint. Yellow siding, white shutters, and a grey roof with a patch that’s starting to sag. A picture window in the front would have made it easy to see inside if your curtains weren’t closed. What were you doing in there? You should let me see. I threw a rock at your window, a small split zippered down the center, but you didn’t answer your door.

It doesn’t matter that you weren’t home. I’m eating some potato chips out of a bag I picked up at the gas station because I can’t eat in the cafeteria now that the dorms are shut down. Also, I’ve graduated. If mom was still around, she would have begged me to come back. I try not to think about how Spencer would have reacted to us graduating.

Crumbs fall on my seats, I suck grease off my fingers, as I wait in the parking lot of your office. I don’t mind waiting though because waiting isn’t an email or a voicemail. You’ll see me, and I’m hoping to lick you up after work.

Hah. Lick you up. You have to admit that’s kind of funny. Just a slip of my tongue.

I used to live on the tenth floor.I want to see you again.