novel

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…

Workshops on the Novel: Rules for Teachers, Guidelines for Students

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After prolonged in-depth analysis, it is clear that in contemporary fiction workshops that teach novel writing, the teaching of novel often competes unsuccessfully with short story, memoir, and creative nonfiction and teachers almost always fail to provide students with skills, attitudes, and direction to mount their best efforts to write a successful literary novel.  To improve the value of fiction novel workshops, teachers need to improve, and students’ expectations and willingness to learn difficult and complex ideas needs to be upgraded. PART ONE: RULES FOR IMPROVING TEACHING OF A WORKSHOP ON WRITING A NOVEL 1. Teachers should not teach novel … Read More…