To Become a Writer

(一） find your own writing process

Nobody knows where ideas come from.

But if you immerse yourself in Sth. , you are going to get ideas about it.

The more you work in it, the more ideas you'll get about it.

（二） identify your fear and face it

Afraid that people will laugh at you?

--You don't have to show them anything untill you're ready.

（三） get started

Unless you get Sth. onto the page, you're not writing.

Stories Are Patterns Interrupted

（一）A story needs a break in a pattern to get it going.

A good plot has to have Sth. hAppening in it that is of readers' interest and our hope for the characters.

Let readers want to know what's going next.

To make it, you'd better

? Read more and draw from the stories that have come before.

Regard the past stories as a giant LEGO set from which you can build your own structures.

eg. It's almost impossible to read English literature written before without encoutering biblical references and modes of thought.

（二）After knowing the essential stories, try to subvert them.

Unless you know the original, you don't understand why that's an interesting variant.

eg. film <Maleficent>

originates from the Sleeping Beauty story

Ways of Telling the Story

（一）ways:

time jumps; flashback; detective novels; from different perspectives; change the order; provide more than one endings…

other examples:

①Frame Storytelling in

<One Thousand and One Nights>

②Layers of Narrative in

<The Blind Assassin>

eg. <Little Red Riding Hood>

（二）Finding the Appropriate structure takes time.

It's OK to pull your story apart whenever you want. You are in control of your story, untill you decide to show it to somebody else.

Besides, you need to strike the balance between Sth. that's too complicated and doesn't work and Sth. that's just complicated enough and does work.

"If nothing is hAppening by page 10, you are in trouble. Cause you don't have story."

（三）But, if just start,

start simple

Simply telling your story and see if you can master that part.

Practicing the skills, if you can get such simple things to work, then you can start with the variations.

Learn from others and know yourself well.

Choosing Your Point of View

（一）The first thing is that writing is a voice.

Whose voice is that is doing the talking, and to whom are they speaking?

（二）different perspectives:

the first/secend/third person; know-it-all narrator; stream of consciousness~

Or maybe multiple points of view

eg. <The Sound And The Fury>

four different narrators and four different points of view

（三）While writing

?You can always change your mind.

Don't know choose who to tell your story?

Learn by doing.

--an exercise in point of view will be helpful

?You should know exactly what your narrator know

①reader knows more

eg. <Dracula>

The reader know Sth. that the character doesn't know, which makes it very suspenseful for the reader.

②narrator knows more

<The Murder of Roger Ackroyd>

The first person narrator turn out to be the murderer.

So there's a lot of misdirection that goes along with all of that.

③they know the same amout

POV in

①<Alias Grace>

At first, chose the wrong POV.

It's much difficult for she to lie in the first person.

②<The Handmaid's Tale>

The first person as witness.

Bringing Characters To Life Through Details

（一）Why doing so?

--Actions reveal character.

A person is what hAppens to them, all of the interactions keep changing us.

Put your character into new situations

You don't know what new faces of he/she are going to reveal.

（二） One thing you need to figure out

--What you should know about your characters???

（三） A tool for character development.

Draw a graph of “time” and big events.

Connecting character's growth with those big events.

（四）While writing

You should leave enough clues for your readers.

--Cause people will leap to their own conclusions, if you don't give them enough clues.

（五）After you finished

Ask expert for advice on character accuracy.

--It's always these small detials that may trap you up because you've never thought about them.

Create Compelling Character

(一）Defying gender norms with your characters.

? Such as women, they are not always be kind and good.

There's limited space on a pedestal.

? How they present their gender are deeply affected by the society they are put into.

Cause presenting gender is a way of presenting yourself.

? What does gender mean?

--Gender is a bell curve, it's a continuum.

And the character can be situated anywhere on that.

(二）My trial on creating devious character

---《The Robbber Bride》

? The name comes from a Grimm's fairy tale called《The Robber Bridegroom》.

It's structure like the opera 《Tales of Hoffman》.

? Surprisingly, Zenia became the most idenfied person among the readers.

To some extent, she was an outlet.

(三）Villains and unlikable characters

? "the devil has got all the good lines" _Willam Blake

Villains' unpredictability, so surprising.

Convicing surprise may lead to readers engaging with the story.

? A character can be very vibrant and alive although not likable.

Writing Through Roadblocks

(一）Be prepared to be Interrupted

Cause your life isn't all about writing, there are other things you have to do.

(二）Writing Is problem solving

You do suffer, in some ways.

Then go for a walk or go to sleep maybe helpful.

"Discipline, sticking to it, fortitude, grit, get back on the horse that threw you, all those types of things.

They all very well to say, but if the person's problem is that they don't have those qualities.

How do you foster them?

How do you defeat the devils themselves, doubt,

that are usually the things that are stopping people?

It's always better to actually do something, rather than to brood about the fact that you're not doing it.

Do it.

However, crummy you may think the result may be, at least you're moving."

(三）What's like going into a book

Illuminating the Dark.

Going into Sth. that was dark, you could't see.

And then bringing some form of illumination.

(四）Get better by doing the work

? Any form of human creativity is a process of doing it and getting better at it.

If you're writing, it's important to write Sth. to keep your hand in, or just to continue the process of writing.

? When it comes to writing, those old masters don't usually peak in their 20s. Why?

--Cause writing is about people and stories about people. And you know more about people and their stories as you get older, you just learn more.

(五）Be kind to yourself

Creating Dialogue

(一)Real Life Conversation vs. Dialogue

RLC: quite a lot of padding and verbiage, pauses

D: much more selective

How people talk has to be consistent with who they are.

So here's one question, what the intention is in talking to this other character.

(二) Dialogue is subjective

What the person hears, what they understand by what the first person has said, those are interesting.

Or you can try

to have your character overhearing two other people.

(三）Know your characters' vernacular

You want to show who they are, where they are living, what their social level is,what sort of vocabulary would be available to them and what's their level of speech.

eg. Shakespeare's plays

--He put in Sth. for everyone.

(四) Balance the time characters were put into and how they tend to talk

Words and phrases come in and out of fashion.

So, if you're setting your dialogue in the past, you should be accurate to Sth. people would actually have said then.

Revealing The World Through Sensory Imagery

(一) Observe the particular

We human do tend to generalize and abstract, though everything is particular.

So instead of a middle-aged lady, which middle-aged lady？

When we put a lable on others, what do we mean by that?

(二）Use all the senses

The world we live in is made up of all those diffrerent senses.

So you're situating your characters in this world, and you do want your texture surrounding them to be possible.

One way of honing your sensory perception is to block off some of the senses.

eg. describe a night journey

(三）Description in <The Hanmaid's Tale>

" This is freedom, an eyeblink of it. Limp, I spell. Gorge. What a luxury. The counters are like candies, made of peppermint, cool like that. Humbugs, those were called. Iwould like to put them into my mouth. They would taste also of lime. The letter C. Crisp, slightly acid on the tongue, delicious."

(四）Take notice of your imagery

Readers will assume that everything you've put on the page is there for a purpose.

Prose Style and Texture

(一）Think about the sound of your prose

The units of language are words, phrases, sentences, but at the micro level, they are letters and sounds.

And part of a texture is how those words sound.

"getting the geese out"

So read your text loud to see how it sounds.

(二）Types of prose style

At the extrems, plainsong and Baroque.

Choose which one depends on what kind of illusion you're trying to practice.

eg.

① Charles Dickens _<A Chrismas Carol>

( Baroque Writing)

“Oh, but he was a tight-fisted, hand at the grindstone Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covertous, old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire. Sacred and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him. He iced his office in the dogs days and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."

②_<Gulliver's Travels> (plainsong Writing)

"My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire: I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and Applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound Apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years."

(三）Style vs. Description

I didn't get it. ???

(四）Prose Style Assignment

① Pick an event and write that in both two ways.

See the difference.

② Imitating the style of another writer.

Working With Time In Fiction

(一）The novel is about time.

whether circular

( lead to analog clocks, sundails and seasons)

or linear

And for histroy is always changing

What kind of time are you going to have in your novel?

(二) Keeping your readers oriented

How to indicate to the reader when you are moving from the present to the past and vice versa?

--mark the time; put in some indicators(such as clothing; maps(if an historical drama)

(三）Make your flashbacks compelling

avoid making them too long or tedious

Do we really need to know that?

Begin with Sth. that's going to hold reader's attention.

(四）Using the "Meanwhile"

Sometimes you're jumping around in the space and time.

(五）Consider your motives

Above all, why you want to jump around in time?

So, try it this way and see if it works for your story.

Is this working for my book that I'm writing right now?

So don't move from the abstract into the concrete.

Move from the concrete.

"So it is a megalomaniac's dream, writing a novel. You can do anything."

The Importrange Of the First Five Pages

(一）Brilliant examples

"call me Ishmael." _<Moby Dick>

①His name isn't Ishmael.

②Who Ishmael is.

③Who he is speaking to.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." _<A Tale of Two Cities>

(二）The First Page Is a Gateway

If you cannot get your reader through the first page, they'll never read the brilliant insights into life that are on page 75.

Lead them through the doorway, and leave enough hooks there so that they will want to read on.

those pages may Appear as you writing on

(三）Writing the Beginning of

<The Handmaid's Tale>

original beginning turned to the chapter 2

"We turn left at the corner and continue along. To our right is the wall, red brick, with its sentried gates and the barbed wire and floodlights and broken glass set in concretealong the top and the electronic alarm system. These sentries have dogs. No one goes through those gates willingly."

Writing the Middle and Ending

(一）Keeping your reader engaged through the middle

Sth. has gone off the rails and needs to be resolved.

How are you going to get your characters out of the difficult situations we hope you have put them into?

(二）Changes can hAppen along the way

Writing long books is one part inspiration and nine parts perspiration.

It's Sth. you work away at.

There's no shame in realizing that you got it wrong.

And there's a good thing that you can get that's better than what you have done.

(三）Approaching the ending

(The ending that you think is going to be the ending is often not the ending.)

maybe write before

if too fast, add more.

(四）Open vs. Closed Endings

How much are you going to resolve?

Cause readers thought they were in the kind of book.

So you're always dealing with readers, you're always dealing with what you think they may already expect.

And how much of that expectations you're going to fulfill.