NOVELLA COMPOSITION 707
"in fiction writing, there are no rules, only expectations"
create a text of approximately 12,000 - 30,000 words
within 18 weeks
"in fiction writing, there are no rules, only expectations"
create a text of approximately 12,000 - 30,000 words
within 18 weeks
Prefacing Notes:
Why write? Why share?
- pros & cons: the external validation and financial benefit of publication -- self-publishing -- blogging
--- Appropriation, influence, plagiarism
--- Pre-packaged systems of symbols and meanings
--- The Fresh Concept
--- The Marketability of Fusion
--- Reinventing the wheel
--- Genre's trappings and tropes
--- Handling cliches in simile, metaphor, and plot
--- Predicting trends
--- Copyrights
Pertinent Side Notes--- Pre-packaged systems of symbols and meanings
--- The Fresh Concept
--- The Marketability of Fusion
--- Reinventing the wheel
--- Genre's trappings and tropes
--- Handling cliches in simile, metaphor, and plot
--- Predicting trends
--- Copyrights
*First draft debate: Over-writing and Under-writing
*When the author is self-conscious & self-referential
*The Author's Complementary Relationship with the Reader
*Accidental Meanings
*Good, Bad, and Ugly Causes of Second Readings
Required Reading (2):
* Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millennium
* Choose (1) novella (examples)
King, Stephen. Apt Pupil
Larsen, Nella. Quicksand
Oates, Joyce Carol. I Lock My Door Upon Myself
Vandermeer, Jeff. Dradin, in Love
A.
NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW / PERSPECTIVE:
* first (i), second (you) third (he, she, it)
* omniscient, limited
* present, past, future.
* serial, singular.
* the distinction between narrator voice-construction and authorial voice
CHARACTERIZATION:
*the importance of naming
*creating a set of characters each distinct from every other
*external appearance
*mental activities
*behavior
*example-illustration (People and Ideas: A Rhetoric Reader, Robert Baylor 1980):
*an example of a technique:
- character's virtue, immediately contrasted with character's vice:
"He's practically a martyr (virtue) the way he takes care of his sick mother, but he doesn't have a job and swindles her money to buy booze at the local bar (vice)."
*relaying of wants, needs, goals, ambitions, and ability to achieve them.
*"I (PROTAGONIST)wanted orange juice (GOAL, DESIRE), but grandmother (ANTAGONIST) drank the last drop"
[This is the Puzo-Yates method of generating instant conflict and a sensation of discordance within your readers, which causes them to turn the pages to resolve the feelings you've created in them]
*displaying personality traits
*know the genome
*know the culture and history
*Q: what makes your reader care about fictional entities?
*A: they struggle against terrible odds. they are extraordinary or rare in some way. your target readership can easily relate to any number of the characters' traits or situations. they are funny. they are understandable. they are either helpless, defenseless, or innocent. what else?
*Q: WHAT TO DESCRIBE?
*A: DESCRIBE:
- settings-in-action, to include augmentation of ambiance, atmosphere, and mood.
- characters-in-action
- dialogue (a representation of what characters say in order to get what they want, or express who they are)
STRONG SCENES: protagonist & antagonist leads to tension, which leads to a potential conflict, which leads to a potential resolution of conflict
- techniques of introducing or causing tension (journal: annotation exercise, giving examples):
- character clashes
- protagonist attempts to serve parties with diametrically opposed interests
- scathing, snarky, snobby, passive-aggressive behavior
- unclear communication
- personal slighting
- when an event might occur in an inappropriate setting
- an escalating subtle antagonism
- sexual or relational rivalry/jealousy + its expression
- creative rivalry/jealousy + its expression
- the reputation of a character can influence how other characters interact with her/him
HOOKS:
--- genre
--- personal (death and romance)
--- humor
--- topical (marine biology)
--- sexual
--- violent
--- mysterious
--- political
--- prose-style
NARRATIVE CLARITY: means these things are obvious to a reader: who is doing what, when/where are they doing it, how are they doing it, and/or why.--- personal (death and romance)
--- humor
--- topical (marine biology)
--- sexual
--- violent
--- mysterious
--- political
--- prose-style
- how does a writer anchor the text?
- uses concrete (five sense) descriptions
- is clear about the setting
- establishes distinct characters
- creates tension
- develops dramatic questions (Gotham Workshop) and alerts the reader these questions are being answered, ignored, subverted, or changed.
- indicates the character's purpose
COHERENCE AND LOGIC: establishing the rules and laws of the world, setting accuracy, addressing character changes unintended by the author, plot holes
READER ANTICIPATION: know what your reader will think by knowing what you communicate with your words; this allows you to be one step ahead of them, and make certain plot devices, like sudden twists, both possible and believable
- suspense
--- classic dramatic structures - details the successes and failures of the protagonists, builds momentum by making each success or failure mean progressively more to the characters, until there is a final, defining moment of triumph or failure
--- merge form with content (House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsky or Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane)
--- episodic structure
B.
THEME, MESSAGE, POINT, PURPOSE ("To mean or not to mean - that is the question")
- annotation exercise: identify the themes of your reading
RHETORIC/COMPOSITION: pathos, logos, ethos. classification, analysis, parallelism, repetition, balance (passive & active voice; weight of intense vocabulary, important ideas, or actions), rhythm, tone, pitch, substance, syntax, style, grammar.
GRAMMAR: simple, compound, complex sentences. usage of commas, hyphens, en dashes, em dashes, semi-colons, conjunctions, quotation marks, capital letters, etc etc
IDIOMS
MUSICALITY (Cane by Jean Toomer)
SENTENCE BY SENTENCE SYLLABLE COUNT
METER
END & INTERNAL RIME (A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski)
CREATION OF BEATS (Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. First 100 pages: use of the "B" sound)
EUPHONY & CACOPHONY
OPACITY & LIGHTNESS (Italo Calvino) at the micro- (sentence by sentence) and macro- (totality of the story) levels.
- Contrast the density of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian with the lightness of Grimm fairy tales.
SPECIFICITY & VAGUENESS (concerning description of images)
- vague precision and the dream aesthetic (pdf)
DEGREES OF INTENSITY-- specificity & vagueness, pace / story-speed, emotional or intellectual engagement with reader
C.
phenomenal imagery engages all five senses + mental activity
- subjective lyricism --- encyclopedic empiricism
- minimalism --- maximal-ism
synaesthesia ("honey moon")
symbolism & motifs
indra's net of imagery (the interplay between all images takes on its own unfolding)
painting the picture (ex A.S. Byatt Crocodile Tears)
stream of consciousness (ex Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce's Ulysses)
poetically-reflexive prose & the imitation fallacy (ex. Michael J. Seidlinger's The Laughter of Strangers)
precision
utilization of lists
similes & metaphors
hyperbole & meiosis
onomatopoeia
unique, made-up, or archaic vocabulary
purposeful use of run-ons and fragments (contrast Roberto Bolano's 2666 with Jeff Vandermeer's Finch)
the nine a's: allusion, alliteration, acrostic, acronym, anagram, analogy, assonance, analepsis, association
D.
CATALOG (records for oneself, historically accurate or made up):
*environmental details (weather, flora, trees, birds, etc)
*fashion
*music
*art
*new or interesting vocabulary
*architecture
*fascinating or telling quotes
*technology & descriptions of how something works
*annotated bibliography of readings, their techniques
JOURNAL:
*brainstorming
*word clouds
*reaction to music, news, art, film
*dreams
*prose-experimentation
*revision 'blocking'
ex: "Life is like a box of chocolates" This is from Forrest Gump, but pretend I'm editing the screenplay and these were other possibilities I eventually rejected:
--- a junkyard, you...
--- a fish tank, you...
--- an ant hill, you...
*scene re-writes (from different perspectives, with new focuses)
*daily observations, descriptions (of everyone and everything sensible and imagined)
*ideas (seeds to germinate)
*genre (magic, world-building, monster-making, plot-twisting)
*exercises
--- re-write a paragraph in which the first letter of each sentence is unique.
--- thoroughly describe an object (such as a pineapple), physical sensation (a headache), or event (a visit to the doctor) to someone who knows nothing about that object, sensation, or event.
--- summarize a scene or vice versa
--- free write about a home
E.--- thoroughly describe an object (such as a pineapple), physical sensation (a headache), or event (a visit to the doctor) to someone who knows nothing about that object, sensation, or event.
--- summarize a scene or vice versa
--- free write about a home
NARRATIVE THEORIES:
--- classical, renaissance, 18th century, surrealism,post-modern entropy, millennial particle fever.
F.
STYLE RUBRIC:
each is worth a maximum of 25 points
lose the lowest for a total of 200 possible points
discipline: consistency, unity, grammar/spelling, accuracy
voice
imagery:
clarity
character
story: something substantial and worthwhile occurs
musicality & lyricism
theme: gives a sense of purpose, sends a message, makes an argument
experimentation, ambition, risk: attempts to expand possibilities of the narrative genre
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