literature

How do unsuccessful novel writers build houses?

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You get a backhoe and dig a BIG hole. You back up a cement truck and pour three BIG mounds of cement. While cement hardens, you cut down two giant oaks, strip the leaves and throw the trunks with limbs in the big hole on top of the cement. You pour, 100 gallons of glue, a quarter ton of bolts and nails, five porcelain toilets, and three bathtubs. You add 800 light bulbs of various sizes throughout the growing muddle. You mix three hundred gallons of paint in different, preferable incompatible (noncliché) colors, and splash the paint at random over … Read More…

Excessive Pride and Self-Confidence as Motive in Storytelling: Characterization and Plot Example

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An example of excessive pride and self-confidence in story excerpt from “Nemesis”. ___________ After he was fired from his job as audiovisual technician, Fred demanded early retirement, threatening to sue, and received forty-percent of his salary. A pittance of what I’m worth, he thought. Fred’s dismissal humiliated his wife Veronica. “Get a job,” she said, irritated to have him perpetually at home. “I think I’ll start writing a syndicated column for the newspaper,” Fred said, emboldened by his recently acquired disgust–through his intent viewing of TV extremist news–of how seriously deficient America had become. “You’re lazy,” Veronica said. “Lazy people … Read More…

Creating Scenes in Fiction: An Example Using an Historic Photo

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One of the many great paradoxes in writing fiction well is that dramatized in scene fiction can evoke reader involvement and emotions better than narrative telling. The photo of a lynching of two blacks in the south in the 1930’s is appalling. For a fiction writer, such an image hides strong human emotions; how does a writer capture feelings and create a significant reader reaction through prose fiction? A fiction writer has the opportunity in such a scene to create in a reader a multidimensional sense of what might have been the living thoughts and emotions at the moment.   Then, by objective … Read More…

Effect of Discursive Narration on Literary Story

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Narration of literary fictional stories today allows wide latitude for authors on technique and style. Traditional, successful, memorable, literary stories depend on strong imaginative characterization, dramatic plots with conflict and resolution, and identifiable purpose for the story being told so some enlightenment occurs about the human condition gleaned from the story presentation. In the past, stories were structured for momentum and engagement, and there was careful attention to story logic and credibility for the story world created. Authors wanted to please readers. Prose was dedicated to accurate use of the language, attention to the advantages of correct grammar within story … Read More…

Letter to a Student: Career Advice

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Dear Patricia, I’ve made no comments on The Tangerine Affair, a delightful story that you’ve presented very well. To critique it would imply something is wrong with the novel or the writing. Consider your novel finished. Put it away or send it out. Don’t tinker with it anymore and give full attention to your next work. As your career progresses, you’ll change and you’ll look back at this as an early piece and you might find things you would have done differently. But that’s okay. That’s what making your career as a writer is all about—continuous improvement. Don’t get trapped … Read More…