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Tag Archives: writing techniques
Two chapters.
Well, two chapters and some miscellaneous odds and ends. That’s all that stands between me and a completed first draft of the novel I’ve been writing for three years. Why does it feel so far way? This is one of … Continue reading
Chimamanda Adichie: “The danger of a single story”
This is terrific. Author Chimamanda Adichie tells of her childhood in Nigeria, reading American and English books and then writing books with white characters playing in the snow, eating apples, and discussing “the weather,” then goes on to discuss the … Continue reading
The Writer’s Lexicon: Inciting Incident
Key to identifying the inciting incident, I think, is figuring out exactly whose story you’re telling. For a writer struggling with a plot structure, this can also help to determine what your central conflict is, and where the climax will fit. Conversely, deciding on whose story you’re telling might change your inciting incident. Continue reading
The Effect of Narrative Point of View, part two (an illustration)
A brief case study of the effect of point of view and how its effect on the reader’s sense of reliability can make or break a piece of writing. Continue reading
The Unreliable Narrator
Few literary techniques can be as interesting – and few as frustrating for beginning authors – as the unreliable narrator. Every reader is familiar with the unreliable narrator, and every reader responds to it – even if they don’t know the name, and often don’t recognize their own response – and it’s up to the author to recognize the technique, and either put it to use or counteract it. Continue reading