The Cambridge introduction to creative writing
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Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li
| Storymaking Storytellers take preexisting tales, memorise the key moments, and then retell them with variations, almost like beautiful but innocuous lies. Few of their variations make a serious difference to the continuum of the original tale. Fiction writers are not really storytellers in method. They are storymakers and shapers, as poets are makers and shapers of poems. The final value of fiction rests in that making and rewriting. Made well and shaped well, fiction becomes believable – more like life than lie – and far less innocuous. In order to show well, rather than tell, you need to be clear about issues of position. Where do you, the writer, stand in relation to your created characters What do you, the writer, want your readers to know about them, and who tells the story As with character, you decide the point of view of your story before you begin to write, and prewriting several points of view will help you decide which of them, singly or in combination, carries the story most honestly. David Lodge reminds us, One of the commonest signs of a lazy or inexperienced writer of fiction is inconsistency in handling point of view ( 1992 : 28). Getting this right allows the reader to be captured by the story. Getting it wrong wrecks its continuum. Point of view and narrative voice These are important choices points of view are the visualising verbs for making a believable continuum for fiction. They include first, second and third person, that is I, you, ‘he/she’. Second person is less common, although offers the challenge of speaking with yourself, such as a schizophrenic other or a youthful or elderly version of yourself. It also allows you to address the reader, although 170 Creative writing it must be clear, always, who this you represents. You is more distant to the reader than I, yet you always feels like it could be conversation. A first-person narrative has a purpose-built narrator, I, and I can be the writer, a person spinning a story, the main character (the protagonist) or another character. The trick is closeness a reader will read the word I and come to the story through the eye of the character. They become the character, and the story may even begin to feel autobiographical, so wrapped up is the reader in the relationship. Thus, first-person narrators offer the simulation of reality and utter subjectivity and are therefore able to tell somebody else’s story extremely authentically. They tell the story of the main character because they are observing the person. They are the witness of events or the reteller of them. How reliable they are is up to you. The third-person point of view can be as objective as a camera, recording only what is seen or heard and never engaging with the thoughts or feelings of characters or it can be as engaged as if the characters were dear to you. Camera- like objectivity can be too distancing for the reader so, generally, you should elect to talk about your characters as if you know them. The narrator is not usually a character (although they have been known to show up in postmodern fiction, and what the narrator does not know about all the characters is not worth knowing. However, this godlike authorial viewpoint, or Third-Person Omniscient, popular among Victorian novelists, can seem strange to us now. The reader finds it hard to identify with a Creator loitering on the edges of the world of their book. You may therefore opt to write from the point of view of the Third-Person Objective, in which the narrator does not know everything, only what they have observed at firsthand. If well written, the reader will pickup resonances and inferences from what the characters do and say, although their thoughts and emotions remain unwritten. One final option is the Third-Person Limited point of view, in which the narrator perceives the fictional world through only one of its characters. This is the most flexible and common point of view; it can carry most stories and cope with almost any situation. Never switch a point of view without making some break in the action – say, a section or chapter. Narrative voice has little to do with finding your voice, although you might choose your own natural voice for your first stories. It is the voice of the character who tells the story, and that will include their dialect, idioms, manner of speaking, and their choice of language. Although neglected, tone is as important to capture correctly. Tone is the story’s attitude to the world of the story and its events and characters – the attitude and style of the narrator, too. It The practice of fiction 171 will greatly affect the way a reader perceives the story. When, in a workshop, a fellow writer says that a story does not quite work, usually it is best to examine tone and narrative voice, before working on the more obvious fault lines within point of view. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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