Guiding Your Reader’s Eye: The Choreography of Perception, Part Three By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Read Part One and Part Two ~ An especially enticing expository challenge occurs for us as writers when we open a story…
Tag: on prose
Doing More with Less
Guiding Your Reader’s Eye: The Choreography of Perception, Part Two By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Read Part One here ~ When we’re writing synoptically—“sketchily,” that is—and wish to move on to parts of a story we…
Writing Effective Dialogue
Some Additional Suggestions By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes What is it in fiction that yields the most compelling dialogue? The creation of characters who achieve for us, as readers, an unparalleled distinctiveness, a certain something in…
Being "Walled to a Stop"
Disorientation and the Experience of Wonder* By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “We came up over the crest and were walled to a stop.” “Walled to a stop.” So Ivan Doig begins his powerful evocation of that…
What Metaphor Can Do For Us
Part Two By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Read Part 1, “What Can Metaphor Do For Us?“ ~ On what basis does Proust argue that “metaphor alone can give a sort of eternity to style”? Let’s…
What Can Metaphor Do for Us?
Part One By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “I believe that metaphor alone can give a sort of eternity to style.” —Marcel Proust, Chroniques What can metaphor do for us? We should ask, in the same breath,…
Writing Jerks
Craft Notes: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost…
Still Talking
The Abiding Voice of Toni Morrison By Lisa Zeiger, WTP Guest Writer “You hear the voice of the dead. They’re still talking and they want to be heard. And that, to me, is irresistibly interesting.” —Gore Vidal, on essays, from a BBC interview with Melvyn Bragg, c. 2008 Whenever I read an author I particularly…
The Virtue of Villains
Shoptalk: A Prose Central Series By DeWitt Henry, Prose Editor I evolved shoptalk or notebook sheets during my teaching of fiction workshops, which proved helpful to me and to students. I asked them to ask themselves about character, plot, setting, dialogue, sensory imagery, sentimentality, translation, simultaneous actions and other aspects of craft. But foremost of…
Paul Bowles and Covid-19
On Paul Bowles: Living the End By WTP Guest Writer Lisa Zeiger “One of these days the future will be here, and you won’t be ready for it.” ― Paul Bowles, The Spider’s House I have wanted to write about Paul Bowles for a long time, and because he is a writer who explores endings,…
On Aphorisms
From Richard Kostalanetz’s A Writer’s Torah A Selection by DeWitt Henry, WTP Prose Editor Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature,…
Adverbicide
Must Writers Eradicate Adverbs? By Ann S. Epstein, WTP Guest Writer Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, craft articles, and book reviews. Her novels include On the Shore (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), Tazia and Gemma (2018), and A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press, 2018). Her stories and nonfiction work appear…