Archives

Imagery

January 23, 2019January 27, 2019 3 min read 31 views

I've been thinking about the settings that novels use. In my own stuff, I see a basic dichotomy in imagery, a polarization between positive and negative settings whether it's a city setting of alleys and parks or a more natural one of forest and farm. And since I know that I use imagery to reveal characters' feelings, I want to talk about how that works. I use the natural world as a kind of objective correlative for feelings, and I think that sort of image use gets into everything from literature to the kind of world we build for ourselves. Think about ...

VIEW the POST

Share

On Fiction

Metaphor

February 26, 2018January 10, 2019 3 min read 80 views

I've been thinking about metaphor. But to talk about it, I have to at least mention simile. As I understand it, a simile is simply a comparison: something is like something else. And usually, at least in literature, similes are used to link something concrete to something abstract, like a feeling or an idea. Although there's a big difference between a rose and a feeling, a simile can suggest what the feeling is like by comparing it with the rose. For example: My love is like a red, red rose. Something of how we respond to roses, their beauty, their ...

VIEW the POST

Share

Ideas and Theories

Literature and Identity

February 21, 2018January 10, 2019 3 min read 46 views

Reading fiction provides a foundation that initiates in us greater awareness of ourselves and of our culture; that helps to liberate us from provincialism; that provides the potential for personal growth that leads to identity. We learn through familiarity, through repeated exposure, and it’s important to expose ourselves to the best that has been thought and said. Such exposure fosters open-mindedness and a respect for the integrity of systems of thought. Exposure to literature helps alleviate our own moral ambiguity by developing in us a disinclination to accept a relativism which tends to ignore moral issues. If we learn by example, by repeated exposure, are ...

VIEW the POST

Share

On Fiction

Plot

February 20, 2018January 10, 2019 3 min read 67 views

I was listening to the radio a while ago and heard a writer talking about plotting a novel, a crime novel. He stressed the fact that he wrote out scene details on pieces of paper, different colours for different sub plots, and stuck them up all over the walls of the room he wrote in. He spent some time rearranging them periodically to see how the parts balanced and to discover what the order should be. He said, as well, that many writers use the technique. All of this was news to me. I don't plot anything, and I don't use ...

VIEW the POST

Share

On Fiction

Narrative

February 19, 2018January 10, 2019 4 min read 33 views

Narrative is simply the flow of time in a novel or short story. Sounds simple, but it's not, really. Writers can shrink time, stretch it out, make it bigger (more significant), make it smaller (less significant), fracture it, bend it, turn it upon itself, and so on. Writers can do whatever they want with time in the interests of story. The one thing time isn't is linear and progressive. Well, it is but it isn't. It's progressive in the sense that cause and effect can't function if it isn't linear. If any act carries consequences, then those consequences must be laid ...

VIEW the POST

Share

On Fiction

Which Person?

February 19, 2018January 15, 2019 2 min read 37 views

Which person, first or third, works best? I suppose it depends on the writer and what's being written, but for mystery writers person poses a problem. Here's where I run into just that kind of situation. Let's say I'm about to write a section that involves two people equally; that is, both have the same weight in the scene. The rule for point of view is that only one of them can be dominant; that is, the scene should be seen though the dominant person's eyes only. If the writer is using first-person narration there isn't a problem. Every scene is through the eyes of ...

VIEW the POST

Share

On Fiction

Exposition

December 18, 2017January 20, 2019 3 min read 51 views

I've been thinking about exposition, prehistory, that part of the story that comes before the story actually opens and how writers handle it. If you read stuff that has to do with story structure, you find that most writers who describe exposition have it coming at the beginning of the story, a kind of pre-chapter if you will. But mystery writers don't usually do that, and here's why: mysteries open, usually, with some extreme event, a murder, an accident, something to catch a reader's interest. At least that's what I've been told by people who should know, like Penguin editors. Maybe ...

VIEW the POST

Share

Imagery

Metaphor

Literature and Identity

Plot

Narrative

Which Person?

Exposition

Sign up to receive exclusive content updates from Gar!

Latest Tweets