Reading and Writing FictionVisual Writing entails using Imagery to make visible what characters think, feel, fear, and desire.
What is atmosphere? Atmosphere is something that the writer creates through setting to make a reader feel a certain way in a particular scene. Mood, on the other hand, creates a feeling that lasts from cover to cover. Creating mood through setting seems to me to be a subtle manipulation of the reader to feel […]
To talk about metaphor, 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 […]
Mood is just what it says; it evokes feelings in readers mostly through description. Mood is therefore buried in the setting; it’s part of the setting and setting surrounds readers with material that links the concrete world of things with the abstract world of feelings and ideas. Setting does this through the use of imagery, […]
When I was teaching classes in literary structure, one of the things I looked at was the idea that seasonal and solar flux impacted literature whether writers intended it to or not. If one stood back a little from the narrative, one could sense the structure of images on which the narrative depended. Each of […]
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 […]