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
| Language’s mercury Language evolves by use, but what language do you choose, what parts of speech work best for your voice Writers favour whatever comes most naturally, and so you should begin with what you possess and imitating authors you admire. The order of words to achieve meaning – syntax – is where the springs of surprise come in a writer’s voice. It would not be out of order to spend an entire week on phrase making. Although the order that words take arises from many pressures on language, including sound and sense, how a writer makes a phrase (and makes it seem inevitable) is one of the keys to their voiceprint. Words are language at the cellular level. A novelist feels forward word byword, knowing that every sentence must advance the body of the plot, knowing also that any word or phrase that distracts the attention of the reader from the book is redundant. Every word of a poem is a tiny but essential part of the body and metabolism of that poem. Every choice of word ramifies the potential directions of apiece, and simultaneously shuts down other possibilities. Overwriting or pompous abstraction spreads cancer in the cells of language. Writers even weigh punctuation on the same scales as words – fora writer, punctuation is part of speech. A misplaced comma, hobbles a paragraph. A writer thinks forward in their language and the permutations of possibility thrown up with every decision and the mercury-movement of language. The process becomes an elaborate series of gambles. All sorts of different stories or Composition and creative writing 111 poems open up as well as the one that must be written the inevitable final piece. How do you keep the lid on language Sometimes you can and sometimes you cannot, and it is a good idea to let it blow or unravel. Students should try this. It is not about writing badly it is about unravelling possibility. It is even about making apparent mistakes in language. You might yield two or three lines or sentences that, by sheer chance, are part of the poem 112 Creative writing or story you were seeking to write (but did not consciously know, or some entirely uninvited poem or story that, by its sudden presence, raises your game. Even a misspelling or a misreading on rewriting can yield surprisingly fresh possibilities. Later on, those chances – like the chances created by a rhyme scheme in poetry – look like choices, and seem inevitable. The novelist William Burroughs allowed this chance-process full rein with his cutup technique, pulling paragraphs together out of random readings – something you can try for yourself. Have in the back of your mind that concrete language usually has more resonance for the general reader than abstract language, and editing usually takes care of this. As George Orwell writes in his essay Politics and the English Language’ (NE When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. One of the main purposes of writing workshops is to clear away verbiage and false language. George Orwell offered six rules for nonfiction, the purpose of which was to keep your language alive for the reader, and which are useful for self-editing or editing in poetry and fiction workshops: r Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. r Never use along word where a short one will do. r If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. r Never use the passive where you can use the active. r Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. r Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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