Categoría: How to write fiction
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Why do stories need luck to survive?
[…] in 1936, when she was twenty-nine, the firm of Willett Clark published the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogion by Evangeline Walton under the title The Virgin and the Swine. An America just climbing out of a worldclass Depression was notably uninterested in fantastic legend, still the stuff of children’s books. Next, three loosely linked short stories appeared, based on the Breton legend…
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What are books?
PLACE, PRACTICE, AND KNOWLEDGEBooks are a load of crap. PHILIP LARKIN, «A Study of Reading Habits,» Collected Poems, 131 I read that in THE NATURE OF THE BOOK. Print and Knowledge in the making. ADRIAN JOHNS. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS. CHICAGO AND LONDON. Considering books are not necessarily THE truth, this thought [coming from a poet] is a bold declaration from the perspective of…
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Does your fiction begin with death?
Perhaps a Hero has no romantic partner, and is looking for the «missing piece» to complete her life. Thisis often symbolized in fairy tales by having the Hero experience a loss or a death in the family. Many fairy tales begin with the death of a parent or the kidnapping of a brother or sister.…
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Is fiction proper?
Yet, despite drawing on much older material, the author of the ‘Four Branches’ attempts to make the tales relevant to his own time, and indeed to any period, by using them to convey his views regarding appropriate moral behaviour, doing so by implication rather than by any direct commentary. THE MABINOGION. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by SIONED…
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Is communication overrated?
When communication nonetheless breaks down (as it sometimes does) we can pinpoint the error and make our language more specific: Yet another dark, oven-hot morning in yet another hotel bedroom, packing, dressing… and now I couldn’t find my sock. I opened the door of the wardrobe and said, ‘Have you seen my sock?’ ‘Shut it,’ she said. ‘I was…
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Do you think too much? Just do it!
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something— anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have…
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How are food fantasies and famine related to fiction writing?
Daniel’s chapter on food fantasies and fetishes is most widely applicable to the food-as-temptation story. In British literature, food fantasies typically depict “rich foods” in “vast quantities as well as foods that contemporary discourses on health condemn as fat-laden” (62). Daniel notes that because of Europe’s history of famine (in England, France, and Ireland), food…
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Are characters predictable or unpredictable?
But Heroes must also be unique human beings, rather than stereotypical creatures or tin gods without flaws or unpredictability. Like any effective work of art they need both universality and originality. Nobody wants to see a movie or read a story about abstract qualities in human form. We want stories about real people. A real character, like a…
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What is AI doing to printing reliability?
The practical consequence is that we do not have to agonize over the reliability of a published book before we can put it to use. We do not need to undertake investigatory work to confirm that its author does exist and that its text is authorized. No literary spy need be hired to ascertain that it was…
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How do piracy and new technology influence fiction?
But for good or ill, countless authors and publishers have encountered to some degree the loss of control induced by piracy. It means that the experiences associated with print are indeed different from those familiar to most Western readers. And any suggestion that the intrinsic cultural consequences of technology have simply been inadequately realized in such settings…