Tag: How to write better
Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson & the Hope of Saving the Planet
In “Rivers of Death” Carson continues the onslaught of scientific facts which illustrate how pesticides and insecticides not only destroy the land but how they also contaminate water supplies, indirectly poisoning human beings.
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**Author Spotlight** Margaret Atwood by Prof. CG FEWSTON
Atwood studied Moodie, wrote about Moodie, and both Atwood and Moodie lived and wrote about the Canadian wild and the female who is transformed by it. However, Moodie is not the only Canadian writer to have influenced Margaret Atwood and the short story “Death by Landscape.”
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1, 2005) by Stieg Larsson
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the trilogy and recent film with plans for the others to follow, illustrate how a writer can, on faith alone, understand what is necessary to write a compelling story.
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The Mosquito Coast (1982) by Paul Theroux
As a writer there is always the temptation to be a cruel god over the imagined characters, typing down conflict after conflict without sympathy; there is also an even greater risk of loving the characters too much, coddling them as babes, and becoming benevolent creators over the fiction.
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The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford
There can be no successful revelation of a reader’s mind merging with that of the author without a strong narrative voice. Without a proper voice, characters fall to one dimensional shades and plot unravels like yarn balls on the floor of the reader’s imagination.
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The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles
Don’t Look Now, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Reverse psychology is a practical ploy for anyone to get an unsuspecting victim to do as he/she desires. But could this tactic work effectively in a novel?
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The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane’s novel, The Red Badge of Courage, is a master example of an author choosing to simplify his sentences while maintaining an impressionistic style filled with clear images. The blend of the two craft elements, simplification used to express vividness, are what makes The Red Badge of Courage an American classic.
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The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) by Thomas Pynchon
Oedipa stumbles upon a conspiracy in California which eventually leads her onto an amazing adventure, landing her by the end of the book in an auction room as she awaits the crying, or an auctioneer shouting out a sale, of a stamp collection once owned by her former lover, Pierce Inverarity, who is deceased.
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Going After Cacciato (1978) by Tim O’Brien
O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato is a masterful work of art that incorporates a powerful story brought to life and vivid characters that stand out and above the norm.
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Don Quixote (Part I, 1605 & Part II, 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes
In all the literature in all the world, never was there a character like Don Quixote to have predicted his own fame.
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Candide (1759) by Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet]
By keeping it to a much smaller scale, Voltaire is able to enforce magnetic and grandiose ideas in a line equivalent to a line in poetry.
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*** 100th Post *** WHY I WRITE: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction (1998) edited by Will Blythe
Writers write to feed that demon-babe who cries out from the misery the world has inflicted upon it. Hemingway and Orwell wanted to use their gifts to help change the world for the better. And the world, I believe, is glad they did.
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Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley
Many readers who cross the literary environs and pages of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) will close the last pages of the book and consider Victor Frankenstein as one who is tragically flawed.
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Aspects of the Novel (1927) by E.M. Forster
Even though E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel was first written and used for lectures inside the classroom at Trinity College, Cambridge, I cannot help but to imagine sitting in a stuffy classroom, loosening my collar, briefly staring out the window onto a sunny spring day in 1927 only to be drawn back to a powerful sermon concerning the craft of writing, given by a professional who knew what he was talking about.
