Archive for 'On writing'
Frank & Wall on searching for voice
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!A search for voice must always involve a willingness to experience what you already know in a new light. It doesn’t matter whether the objects in your world are unaesthetic, beautiful, ordinary, or extraordinary. The key is to become aware [...]
Frank & Wall on breathing deeply
Breath creates natural pauses between thoughts and the sense of true silence between paragraphs. Furthermore, breathing deeply can help you connect to emotions, and emotions help you connect to language.–Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall, Finding Your Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction
Frank & Wall on listening for voice
There’s really no mystery to learning to listen for your inner voice. It’s really a matter of paying attention, of throwing off ideas about what your voice should say and letting it speak for itself. It’s a matter of moving inside yourself, plunging into the whirl and depth of your innermost being–into the wilderness, the [...]
Ramos on writing
I try to write every day, even when I’m not motivated. Ritual is very important to me.–Mel Ramos
Frank & Wall on freewrites
Freewrites help you develop a vital relationship to your voice: They trick you into losing control, help you shake loose from external manipulations. They give you a chance to stumble on those interesting accidents which later can become significant events in your fiction, and focal points for improvisation.–Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall, Finding Your Voice: [...]
Frank & Wall on a fiction writer’s approach to voice(s)
The trick is to see potential in all these voices. Milk them for whatever they have to offer, drape them in costumes, set them up in impossible circumstances. This is the way fiction writers must approach everything in the world. Your question should always be: What can I get from this person, this image, this [...]
Frank & Wall on the creation of characters
In the creation of characters, you’re using your voice to project imaginatively into another body, perhaps another time and place. You’re drawing on your emotions, memories, impressions, but you’re throwing your voice–indeed your very self–like a ventriloquist. You’re simultaneously being yourself (even discovering yourself!) and abandoning yourself to enter fully into the voice and body [...]
NYT Book Review on creating characters
William James once called his brother, Henry James, “thin blooded and priggish.” So Henry created a character who had these characteristics.–NYT Book Review
Frank & Wall on caricatures
The caricature is simply the early manifestation of the more intriguing and surprising person. Your persona voices will evolve. Like sea creatures moving up the evolutionary scale, they’ll grow lungs, gain faith, an afterlife. They’ll dangle a high heel, whisper their secrets. Perhaps they’ll even surprise you by becoming unforgettable characters.–Thaisa Frank & Dorothy WAll, [...]
Baxter on staging
Staging in fiction involves putting characters in specific positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed…Certainly it involves the writer in the stagecraft of her characters just as a director would, blocking out the movement of actors.–Charles Baxtor, The Art of Subtext
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