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
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| Writing literary fiction As John Updike says, Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that mankind has invented yet Literary fiction is the customary objective for an apprentice to creative writing – the making of novels, novellas and short stories, as well as the modes of flash fiction and anti-narrative. Some question the legitimacy of this. Why not teach them to compose pulp fiction The answer is that some writing schools do teach commercial genres, and there is every chance that many more will follow the teaching of children’s fiction, after the success of Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson and J. K. Rowling, waxes exponentially. The argument to teach literary fiction comes down to an analogy with a rainforest. Like poetry, we value some species of writing for reasons other than their price within the free market. We value them because they are luminous, protean and give pleasure. More than any other function, they allow language to live. Our languages get flattened, ossified, drained of life by people who do not care about variety or luminosity. Such villains – among them politicians, bureaucrats, and the media – are like loggers working language’s forests to the roots, replacing their depth and strangeness with monocrops. Someone needs to cultivate the spaces regrow them and even surprise new species into happening. Like rainforests, you never know when these species of literature might prove useful, even essential, for the evolving life of language. Such literature even brings with it the possibility of prediction. Writing Game A M IN IA TU RI ST TALE Write a whole story from the narrative point of view of an adolescent (I. The subject can be either a date or an evening with friends. Use the present tense, and deliberately use precise language, tiny details and slang in the dialogue. The setting should be a suburban park. Begin the story minutes after something extremely dramatic has happened therefor example, a fight or an arrest. Write this entire tale in 500 words. A I M You will probably write 1,000 words before cutting this story to its elements, and the lesson in economy can be applied across your fiction. This exercise will get you used to some of the basic principles of story quickly. Flash fiction Flash fiction (or short-short) is a subgenre of the short story characterised by limited word length of anything between 250 and 1,000 words. Indeed, the entire action may take place within the space of a page. Think of them as The practice of fiction 157 prose-haiku. The shortest versions are called nanofiction and are popular on internet publishing sites. Despite their experimental brevity, write your story using a protagonist, conflict, obstacles and resolution even use a beginning, middle and end. Some aspects should be alluded to or implied, like sticky threads thrown wide around your piece in order to capture and reel in external connotations and resonances. This saves words. More than any other type of writing, a short-short should be written and redrafted in one sitting part of their energy arises from that concentration of nerve. As Don Paterson writes, ‘The shorter the form, the greater our expectation of its significance – and the greater its capacity for disappointing us ( 2004 : 189). Flash fiction is popular with new writers it makes for immediacy, but can become a displacement activity to avoid longer-haul tasks. Ron Carlson comments, ‘I’m all for short good writing with no sagging in it at all, but I’m also for good long writing with no sagging in it at all . . . the boom in short-shorts has more to do with precious page space than with attention spans . . .’ (Shapard and Thomas Carlson has a point. Is brevity a virtue The various Sudden Fiction anthologies edited by Shapard and Thomas provide models and challenges. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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