Several of the posts you’ve been seeing in recent weeks, and several in weeks to come, are prompted or inspired by the time I spent with Booth’s indispensable text. That’s not a word I select lightly.
Saving Your Darlings
To kill your darlings means, during the revision process, to take a hard look at the parts of the story you're particularly passionate about, but which may not serve the overall plot/character/story, and cut them.
Speeches as Poetry
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a short speech at a large event. Maybe it could have been more distinctive if I’d had this thought before the speech, instead of about two hours later: I should have treated the speech like poetry.
An Oblique Approach to Reality
Thinking of poetry as an oblique approach to reality reframes my understanding of poems and helps explain why I’ve always struggled with writing original poems, but it doesn’t mean I can suddenly write poetry.
Patterns and Poetry in Prose
With poetry remaining, for now, something of a mystery, I've turned my attention towards instead applying certain poetically derived techniques to my prose.
Description Omission
I’ve recently begun reading Bleak House, a Charles Dickens novel. While I almost always enjoy Dickens novels, with the partial exception of A Tale of Two Cities, the funny thing is that I don’t really read his books for the stories.
Origins of Language Article
This is just a quick post to share an article across which I recently came. It was published in the Wall Street Journal, and since we often discuss linguistics in our posts it seemed worth sharing.
Poetics Review
Despite the title, Poetics should not be thought of as applying exclusively to poetry. Rather, it is equal parts literary criticism, and one of the world’s earliest “how to write fiction,” books. Much like Art of Rhetoric, there were pieces that have become outdated, but much has remained surprisingly relevant to modern literature. All that is required is a bit of translation.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf Review
I really wanted to like this book. I thought going in that I would like this book, because it seemed to have so many things that I look for in new fantasy novels: originality, unusual inspirations, intriguing characters with conflicting and mysterious motivations, really unique world and magic, et cetera. In fact, I wanted to like this book so much that I managed to convince myself to keep reading through to the end, despite the fact that at least once per chapter I was about ready to put it down, so I guess you could say that's a testament to it being a better novel than my rating would imply, since it kept giving me just enough of what I liked to keep me from walking away from it in disgust.
The Worm Ouroboros Review
I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into this read, as I make something of a point not to read too many reviews before I start a new book so as to not bias myself one way or another from what other people thought. Whatever it was I expected, I found something very different. After I finished it, I did see a review that aligned this book with something like The Iliad, which I think might be the most apt comparison of which I can think. This has a very mythical feel: all of the characters are larger-than-life, both they and their enemies are exaggerated in their powers and personalities, and character arcs are largely absent...
IGC Publishing 