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Good Writing — Prompts and Advice from The 24-Hour Room virtual writers space
By Elizabeth Gaffney · Launched 2 months ago
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Let me read it first
Shouts and Whispers
modulating volume in dialogue
Aug 5
1
Levels of Diction
How do your narrator and your characters speak? What is their level of diction? In Thomas Pynchon's V., where ex-sailors hunt alligators in sewers (among other things), there is plenty of profanity, plus bawdy songs and naval slang. In the Evan Godolphin sections, the diction…
Jul 29
1
Chiaroscuro
harnessing the energy of tonal contrast
Aug 9
1
Purity and Danger
Mary Douglas's classic work of cultural anthropology Purity and Danger points out the relativism inherent in our concept of dirt: Soil on the forest floor has a kind of purity, but move it to the kitchen floor and it's filth. It's not about dirt, she argues, but order, and…
Jul 28
1
Most popular
A Walk, Alone
3
DRINK ME!
4
Now What Do You Want?
3
Pits & Peeves
3
List
2
Dear Madam —
2
See all popular
New
Curiosity, Not Virtuosity
Sometimes we fiddle and fuss with our prose but neglect the larger gyres of story. Other times the big plot arcs drive the writing. What is the thing…
Jul 27
1
Doubles and Dichotomies
Dichotomy is a superb engine of narrative tension. Take the scene in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in which the narrator appears at a costume ball dressed…
Jul 26
1
The Weather's (Not) Fine
It’s been a beastly summer in a lot of the world, so I can’t help being drawn to thoughts of ice. In Frankenstein, the monster is impervious to extreme…
Jul 25
1
A Walk, Alone
At the beginning of WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, the protagonist sets off on a solitary walk in the county of Suffolk. He walks carefree for hours…
Jul 22
3
Three Questions
With thanks to Emily Rubin, who was reminded, as we read Frankenstein aloud in The 24-Hour Room this week, of the three questions Anna Deavere Smith…
Jul 21
1
Cringeworthy
The best characters make the worst mistakes and fail egregiously to do the things they ought. In Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein's sins of commission…
Jul 20
1
Tertiary Territory
In Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, there's a spurned love interest, the protagonist's childhood friend Louise, who gets fairly little airtime and…
Jul 18
1
A TIME TO WITHHOLD
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as in so many horror stories and movies, the central horror is mostly kept out of sight. In Part I, Chapter V – the…
Jul 15
1
See all
Most popular
A Walk, Alone
3
DRINK ME!
4
Now What Do You Want?
3
Pits & Peeves
3
List
2
Dear Madam —
2
See all popular
The Engines of Narrative
Good Writing — Prompts and Advice from The 24-Hour Room virtual writers space
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The Engines of Narrative
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