The Art of Narrative Craft
II. SETTING Every story takes place somewhere. And yet every year I receive from learning writers stories that seem to take place nowhere, that is to say, without any narrative depiction of the time and place wherein which the present action of the story occurs. What exactly do we mean by Setting? Here it is: SETTING = TIME and PLACE Continue reading II. SETTING
from E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel: Chapter 2: THE STORY WE shall all agree that the fundamental aspect of the novel is its story-telling aspect, but we shall voice our assent in different tones, and it is on the precise tone of voice we employ now that our subsequent conclusions will depend. Let us listen to three voices. Continue reading I. STORY, PLOT, STRUCTURE
I use the term ‘fictive’ to differentiate ever so narrowly from ‘fictional.’ There may be no difference to Daniel Webster, but there is a slight interpretative difference to me, and this text is meant as a guide for fiction and nonfiction alike, and thus admits to the notion that there is plenty about the nonfiction narrative that is ‘fictive.’ I Continue reading A BRIEF PREFACE
Beginning today, I will be uploading chapters from the new 2nd ed. of fictive craft to these pages. This is the text that I am using this Fall 2014 semester in the fiction workshops at Lehman College (CUNY). This text is essentially the same as the 1st Ed., but with editorial corrections, additions, and revisions. It is my intention to Continue reading FALL 2014: FICTIVE CRAFT 2ND EDITION
There is an excellent essay by Joan Didion from her wonderful collection, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, called “On Keeping A Notebook.” Didion writes about something not often discussed: why we keep journals, and what we should write in our journals (and why). This piece is incredibly valuable for all writers. You can find it online here. I have been keeping a Continue reading Keeping a Notebook
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
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
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
The voice of the story is the point of view from which it is told, and there are three main choices, identified (grammatically) by the personal pronouns used for each, with important sub-categories in the last, as follows: 1. FIRST PERSON (I or ME): When the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, she uses the 1st person POV, and Continue reading III. POINT OF VIEW
SETTING Every story takes place somewhere. And yet every year I receive manuscripts from learning writers that seem to take place nowhere, that is to say, without any narrative depiction of the time and place wherein which the present action of the narrative occurs. What exactly do we mean by Setting? Here it is: SETTING = TIME and PLACE What Continue reading II. SETTING