Vivian Gornick on Situation and Story
In her short book called The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick describes one of the most useful and important ideas about writing that I know: “Every work of literature has both a situation
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In her short book called The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick describes one of the most useful and important ideas about writing that I know: “Every work of literature has both a situation
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I live in fear of weak specification. I consider it the eighth deadly sin: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony and weak specification. I’m guilty of it, I admit. I’m only human, or, some
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I’m reading the new Russell Banks’ novel, Lost Memory of Skin, and I’m pretty enthralled with it. I’ll review it here when I’ve finished it. It’s about a young man known as The Kid who
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In an earlier post (July 24, 2011) I mentioned Louise DeSalvo’s excellent writing book, Writing as a Way of Healing, and in particular her “stages of the writing process.” If you’re writing a memoir that involves
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to discuss because it is not a separate element like plot or even characterization. Rather it is a part of everything else. Real density is achieved when the optimum number of things is going on
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Sometimes when I’m critiquing a piece of writing, I find myself trying to describe the indescribable. There are certain concepts that seem to be totally necessary for the writer to grasp, but I find it
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I had intended this piece to be about how brilliant Elizabeth Bowen’s notes on dialogue are, from her essay “Notes on Writing a Novel,” which you can read by signing up for free at http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2006/notes-writing-novel.
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I wish one (or more!) of you would tell me how to write a novel. I’m trying to write a new one, and can use all the help I can get. I have written a
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“Show, don’t tell” is probably the most well-worn saw in teaching creative writing, supposedly originating with Aristophanes. It’s not bad advice, of course. The ability to dramatize action, characterization and relationships in scenes is essential to most engaging story telling. Mastery of the well-crafted scene in which the reader is able both to experience the situation at hand, and also interpret it – “read” it for meaning and understand its implications and reverberations in the story as a whole — is necessary if one is to ever be a successful writer. So why is it then, that I have come to want to kick something (or someone) whenever I hear that particular phrase trotted out?
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For starters, you’re going to be overwhelmed. We might as well get that up front. Writing–or trying to write a book-length anything–is overwhelming. I know, because I’ve written several, and it was hell. And I’ve worked with a lot of other people who have written books, and I’ve never heard a one of them say, “Hey, that was easy.” Or if I did, I fled the other way. I did hear a few of them say it was good work, and certainly many of them said it was entirely worthwhile, possibly life-saving, and deeply satisfying. In other words, worth it. But still overwhelming, especially in the beginning (also in the middle, not to mention the end…). So, okay. Now you know. You’re going to be overwhelmed. Other people have been overwhelmed and lived to tell about it.
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“So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious, that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But
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