Essays

Developing a Theme

September 17th, 2011

Our first furnace was an oil stove that sat just outside the kitchen door, crowding the dinner table on one side of the living room.  The stove was square, standing waist-high with slots for vents in the top.  A stove pipe ran out the back, a sheet-metal tube that ran up the wall behind the stove, and disappeared into a hole near the ceiling, connecting the stove to the brick chimney behind the plaster.

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Using “On-The-Body” Physical Sensation

September 17th, 2011

To make a palm tree, you draw two curving lines that meet at a sharp point.  That’s the tree trunk.  Then, you draw some zigzag lines between the two lines, to suggest the bark of the tree.  Then, you draw long curves that branch from the point, and some zigzag lines that hang off those long curves.  For the palm fronds.

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Submerging the “I”

September 17th, 2011

This fourth essay will describe a distinction of Minimalism called “Submerging the ‘I’.”  

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Nuts and Bolts: Hiding a Gun

September 17th, 2011

This month, let’s take a break from big concepts and look at an ordinary writing technique.  A very  basic nuts-and-bolts chunk of advice for you to keep in mind.  To some writers, just discussing this topic will seem sleazy – the most obvious plot device – but it happens in stories because it happens in life:  The one detail or mistake or character flaw you’ve forgotten about… it comes back around to destroy you.

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Nuts and Bolts: “Big Voice” Versus “Little Voice”

September 17th, 2011

A lot of what happens here, in this workshop, will be us establishing a common language about writing.  That way, we’ll be able to communicate about what works in a piece of writing.  And about what could work, better.

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Nuts and Bolts: Using Choruses

September 17th, 2011

If you listen to the way people talk, you’ll notice that most of what this lecture series will be about is mimicking that conversational style.  Then, using that style to create a more honest-sounding, compelling piece of fiction.  Most of oral storytelling seems to be dead, except for stand-up comedians.  Only comics seem to practice delivery methods like timing and pacing and repetition.  Aspects of rhetoric that made public speakers famous a hundred years ago. 

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Beware the ‘Thesis Statement’

September 17th, 2011

To start work at the Freightliner Truck plant, I had to bring a sledgehammer I’d never, ever use. 

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Reading Out Loud – Part One

September 17th, 2011

In my dream world, you wouldn’t be reading this on the internet.  We would be sitting around a table, only seven or eight of us, and we’d each read our week’s work out loud.

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Reading Out Loud – Part Two

September 17th, 2011

How Do YOU Tell Time? Consider that you always tell stories, you create stories and share them whether or not you call yourself a “writer.” Every moment you’re awake or dreaming – you have what some cultures call your “Monkey Mind” chattering and yammering, trying to make sense of and resolve every sensory detail you encounter.  That little voice that has to find a “meaning” in every event.  That voice that replays every moment you’ve just lived.

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Nuts and Bolts -- Punctuating with Gesture and Attribution

September 17th, 2011

How often do you stand stock-still with another frozen, paralyzed person and hold a conversation?  Maybe only during the hottest moment of the hottest argument you’ve ever had.  Maybe never. Probably never. Watch yourself.  Watch a movie.  Look for the specific bits of physical “business” that characters perform as they speak.  Look for the tasks that keep their hands busy, and create a distraction from the conversation at hand, thereby adding tension and visual interest to the scene.

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