The Art of Narrative Craft
I. Anecdote: write a short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident. This should be something from your own life, a brief, humorous episode. Again, this is a writing workshop, so you are striving to achieve a presentation that is entertaining in the ways that stories entertain. II. Personal Narrative: write a short personal narrative: this is a form Continue reading PROMPTS FOR VOICE AND STYLE
Does ‘voice’ mean the voice of the writer or the voice of the character? This is a good question, and one that I hear regularly from students. Each character has a distinct ‘voice,’ or way of speaking, and you want to present your characters, when they speak, in their own voices. However, every author, too, has her/his own “voice,” and Continue reading VI. VOICE AND STYLE
Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” and Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980,” present memorable characters whose personality traits make them unforgettable. In “Cathedral” we have a reliable and mostly unlikable narrator whose character undergoes such an overwhelming transformation during the short term of the story, perhaps several hours, that we are astounded at Carver’s ability to depict this most human side of the human Continue reading STORIES FOR CHARACTERIZATION
I. Write a scene about something your character did when she/he was a kid, that now she/he is ashamed of. II. Write a scene for a story, using third-person narration, that opens with your main character having just done something despicable. Despite what he or she has done, find a way in writing the rest of the scene to make Continue reading PROMPTS FOR CHARACTERIZATION
We have learned from Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BC) that a tragic hero should be ‘of noble birth.’ What does this mean? It means he should be a king (Lear), or the cousin of a king (Macbeth), or a prince (Oedipus) both of whom then became kings, or a general (Othello), or a great warrior and leader (Okonkwo). Why? Because Continue reading V. CHARACTERIZATION
Stories that provide definitive examples of showing, not telling, are Hemingway’s “Indian Camp” and Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” “Indian Camp” is a coming of age story told through the close 3rd Person POV of a young boy who accompanies his doctor-father to an Indian camp to assist in an emergency birth. It’s important to note the way Hemingway never leaves the Continue reading STORIES FOR SHOW AND TELL
I. NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN: A couple are seated at an outdoor café. At first they seem in harmony, but something changes the mood. Write this scene, with showing, not telling. II. WRITING INSIDE VERSUS WRITING OUTSIDE : Tell your story from ‘inside,’ not from ‘outside.’ An example: Matt and Samantha were driving down a lonely highway on a cold February night. It was after midnight and they were Continue reading PROMPTS FOR SHOW AND TELL
IV. SHOW AND TELL: Learning writers in workshop settings often hear the phrase ‘show this, don’t tell it,’ and they may wonder what this means. Even when the concept is explained, the learning writer may struggle to differentiate between a passage that is ‘told’ and the same passage that is ‘shown.’ Perhaps one way to illustrate the difference is to Continue reading IV. SHOW AND TELL
Exemplary stories for the 1st Person Point of View include Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” and Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.” Both of these stories present what is called the unreliable narrator, which you will discover when you read them. An exemplary story for the little-used (because difficult to sustain) 2nd Person POV would be “How To Continue reading STORIES FOR POINT OF VIEW
I. Write a 1st Person POV narrative that begins with this line: I know it didn’t happen that way, because I was there. II. Write a 3rd Person Limited POV narrative that begins with this line: There was nothing s/he could do. III. Write a 3rd Person Objective (Fly on the Wall) narrative for this scenario: A couple, Chris and Continue reading PROMPTS FOR POINT OF VIEW