U is for UTOPIA

UTOPIA is a type of fiction describing an imaginary, ideal world. The term comes from Sir Thomas More's Utopia, written in Latin in 1516, describing a perfect political state. The word UTOPIA is a pun on the Greek "outopia," meaning "no place," and "eutopia," meaning "good place." The earliest UTOPIAN work was Plato's Republic. Dystopia, meaning "bad place," is the term applied to unpleasant imaginary places, such as those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984.



(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

T is for THEME

THEME is a central idea. In nonfiction prose it may be thought of as the general topic of discussion, the subject of the discourse-- the thesis. In poetry, fiction and drama it is the abstract concept that is made concrete through representation in person, action, and image. No proper THEME is simply a subject or activity. Both THEME and thesis imply a subject and a predicate of some kind. For example, not vice in general but some such proposition as "Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive."  "Human wishes" is a topic or subject; the "vanity of human wishes" is a THEME.

When people say "there are no new stories," what they are really saying is that there are no new THEMES. Nearly everything-- every single THEME under the sun-- has been thought of, considered, written about and discussed in some context. It is how you write about your THEME that makes it something remarkable, not the theme itself.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

S is for Showing vs. Telling

SHOWING vs. TELLING is an empirical concept (meaning that it can be entirely subjective whether a scene deserves showing or can be told just as effectively). It emphasizes the superiority of dramatization, demonstration, enactment, and embodiment over mere telling. In To Have and Have Not (not such a great title btw), Hemingway could have told us something rather abstract-- "Shots were fired"-- but he chose instead to make us see and hear: "The first thing a pane of glass went and the bullet smashed into a row of bottles on the show-case wall to the right. I heard the gun going and, bop, bop, bop, there were bottles smashing all along the wall."

So when your work is critiqued with these hated words: SHOW DON'T TELL, think of these words: 

dramatization

demonstration

enactment

embodiment

And that's what you do. Just remember, however, that there are times when TELLING is okay. It's up to you, the writer, to determine what seems right in each instance-- because clearly one cannot SHOW the entire 100,000 manuscript.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

R is for Reader

No writer should say, "I am writing for me. I don't care who reads it." Because anyone who says this is either--

lying

deluded

talking about a personal journal  

never read a book and thus has no concept of the author/reader relationship

is participating in NaNoWriMo

The READER is king in the writer's world. It's all about connecting with the READER. A writer should have the READER  in mind as he writes. Stephen King has often stated that his primary reader is his wife Tabitha. He writes with her in mind as his audience. He knows if she gets it, then his demographic will, too. She represents his demographic. Tabitha King has made her husband a best-selling star among authors.

Who is your READER? Who do you write for, or think about as you work, perhaps even chuckling to yourself as you type out a scene, "Oh, yes, she is going to love this part"?

Q is for QUATRAIN if you're a poet and QUERY if you aren't

This is for all you poets out there. The novelists seeking publication can skip the next paragraph and instead go to this link on how to write a really good QUERY letter.

A QUATRAIN is a stanza of four lines. The possible rhyme schemes vary from an unrhymed QUATRAIN to almost any arrangement of one-rhyme, two-rhyme, or three-rhyme lines. Perhaps the most common form is the abab sequence; other popular rhyme patterns are aabb; abba; aaba; abcb. Robert Frost's "In a Disused Graveyard" consists of four QUATRAINS. In iambic tetrameter, each in a different rhyme scheme: abba, aaaa, aabb, abab-- quite a tour de force. W. H. Auden's "Leap Before You Look" rhymes abab bbaa baab abba aabb baba, in effect turning itself inside out.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

P is for PARODY

A PARODY is composition imitating another, usually serious, piece. It is designed to ridicule a work or its style or author. When the PARODY is directed against an author or style, it is likely to fall simply into barbed witticisms. When the subject matter of the original composition is parodied, however, it may prove to be a valuable indirect criticism. Or it may even imply a flattering tribute to the original writer.

The PARODY is in literature what the caricature and the cartoon are in art. Known as a potent instrument of satire and ridicule even as far back as Aristophanes, PARODY has made a definite place for itself in literature and has become a popular style of literary composition. PARODY  makes fun of some familiar style, typically by keeping the style more or less constant while markedly lowering or debasing the subject. Thus Dickenson's--

                                                         The Soul selects her own Society--

                                                         Then-- shuts the Door--

has been parodied:

                                                         The Soul selects her own Sorority--

                                                         Then--shuts the Dorm--

The craft of PARODY prizes minimal tampering.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman) 

O is for Omniscient Point of View

OMNISCIENT is the point of view in a work of fiction in which the narrator is capable of knowing, seeing, and telling all. It is characterized by freedom in shifting from the exterior world to the inner selves of a number of characters, a freedom in movement in both time and place, and a freedom of the narrator to comment on the meaning of actions.

Sometimes called the "God-like" point of view, a writer must be extremely skilled to tackle this successfully. For novice writers, the first or third - person points of view are best. If you try writing a novel in OMNISCIENT POV you will most likely be called on it by your beta readers, with POV CHANGE!! red-penciled into the margins.


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

N is for Narrator

In fiction, the term NARRATOR is used for the ostensible author or teller of a story. In first person, the "I" is the NARRATOR. The NARRATOR may be in any of various relations to the events described, ranging from being their center (the protagonist) through various degrees of importance (minor characters) to being merely a witness. A NARRATOR is always present, at least by implication, in any work. A NARRATOR may be reliable or unreliable. If reliable, the reader accepts without serious question the statements of fact and judgment. If unreliable, the reader questions or seeks to qualify the statements of fact and judgment.

The NARRATOR may not always be the main character. In first person point of view, the narrator is most often the main character. However, there are instances where this isn't the case. In Breakfast at Tiffany's (awesome title btw) by Truman Capote, a first-person novel (more like a novella), the narrator is not the main character. The story consists of the narrator's relationship with and observations of the real main character, Holly Golightly (even more awesome character name).


(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)

M is for Memoir

MEMOIR is a form of autobiographical writing dealing usually with the recollections of one who has been a part of or witnessed significant events. MEMOIRS differ from autobiography in that they are usually concerned with personalities and actions other than those of the writer, whereas autobiography stresses the inner and private life of its subject.

One of the best-known MEMOIRS is Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, the story of his growing up years in Ireland, specifically centered around his mother, Angela. A MEMOIR does not need to be written by a famous person. McCourt was an unknown writer when he wrote his debut work. It is more in the meaning given within the MEMOIR rather than the fame or importance of the author.

Soon to be released is this MEMOIR by Ann Carbine Best, a blogger that many of you know from A Long Journey Home.  It is titled In the Mirror, A Memoir of Shattered Secrets. Oooh, sounds intriguing!

I

In the Mirror, A Memoir of Shattered Secrets by Ann Carbine Best is the story of a woman who planned on her marriage lasting forever.

When Ann marries Larry in September of 1961, she’s certain he will be that eternal companion. Eleven years later, she is devastated to learn that he’s been having affairs with men. She wants to help him. She wants to save her marriage.

However, powerful emotions pull Larry away from his family, and eight years later their marriage ends. As a single parent, Ann is now faced with four grieving children who don’t want to leave their father and their home in Utah Valley. But Ann needs to start a new life in a new place.

In the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Ann at last makes peace with the past.

I am looking forward to this one. Go, Ann!

L is for Local Color Writing

LOCAL COLOR WRITING is a term applied to writing that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, habits of thought, and topography peculiar to a certain region, primarily for the portrayal of the life of a geographical setting. About 1880 this interest became dominant in American literature. Bret Harte, Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller wrote of the West; Joel Chandler Harris of the South; Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman of New England.

LOCAL COLOR WRITING was marked by dialect, eccentric characters and sentimentalized pathos or whimsical humor. It lacked the basic seriousness of true realism and was content to be entertainingly informative about the surface of specific regions. It emphasized verisimilitude of detail without being much concerned about truth to the larger aspects of life. The bulk of the work done in the movement was in the sketch and the short story, although Mark Twain captured the genre perfectly in his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn especially.

It is helpful to modern writers to understand earlier movements and genres, so that some of the particular flavor of these can enter the work and add to its originality. Now we call LOCAL COLOR WRITING more accurately regional novels. WiDo Publishing has recently released two regional novels that use the local color concepts to add to the interest and originality of the stories: Mississippi Cotton by Paul H. Yarbrough and Arizona Guy by Raymond Spitzer. It is the LOCAL COLOR WRITING that adds to the charm of these two regional mysteries.

(This post has been inspired by and in some instances, directly quoted from A Handbook to Literature, 8th Edition, by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman)