List forms are, in the parlance of 2019, a “big mood” for me, both as a writer and a teacher. Fun, ultra-generative, and approachable for writers of all levels, the list form has given us poetry and fiction such as Terrance Hayes’s “Sestina: Liner Notes for an Imaginary Playlist” and Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box.” It gave my classroom such prompts as, “Top 5 Minor Things I Shouldn’t Despise But Do (Annotated Edition).”
Eula Biss’s list essay “The Pain Scale” organizes itself around mathematics, religion, philosophy, the body—and yes, of course, pain—using the scale as a framing principle and guide. From that arose my favorite among myriad list exercises: The CNF Rating Scale.
The premise is simple: Take any existing ranking, cataloguing, or classification system and apply it in a new, nonfiction-based context, elucidating each choice as you go. So, would you like to describe your ex-roommate’s Netflix arguments with her boyfriend, labeling each fight as Hurricane Category 1-5? Rock on. Want to ascribe Dungeons & Dragons character alignments to snack foods? Yes, please. (If I am certain of nothing else in life, I do know this: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are Chaotic Good.)
The one rule is that you may not apply a scale to an item for which it was intended. You can’t, for example, give Yelp stars to the best bars in town, no matter how vivid your depiction of the restroom graffiti. This primarily serves to keep the classification methods fresh and engaging, but it has a hidden bonus for the instructor—no one can argue with their course point totals via the exercise itself by attempting to grade their grades. Though this approach has never been mentioned aloud to me, I’ve seen enterprising hands gearing up to ask every now and again before I reiterate this rule.
This prompt lends itself to humor, naturally. Indeed, we owe much of the best work on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency to concepts of this type. But more serious students profit from the exercise as well, provided they’re willing to do the work. The student who wants to confront gun control can plot school shootings on America’s Richter scale. The queer girl can interrogate her internalized homophobia by giving Rotten Tomatoes ratings to her bungled attempts at coming out. This also creates a ripe avenue for the intersections of dark comedy and social awareness. I’ve never seen anyone try to sort police officers who’ve killed unarmed black men into Hogwarts houses, for example, but the collision and discomfort of such premises intrigue me. Pain and humor offer themselves equally here.
In my experience, some students will return to this well time and again, producing stranger and more delightful work as they go. More broadly, this prompt often generates some of the strongest pieces of the semester, even from struggling students. So, while I still can’t decide where to place my first boss on the Beaufort scale, I can assure you: 10/10, will use this exercise again.
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Bethany Lee is the author of one poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016). Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in 32 Poems, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. She currently teaches at Purdue University Northwest.