I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg. Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And tsarist Russia. Me, I’m Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodelling.
- John Green, from Paper Towns
- @stephenfry
Descriptions of physiology are hard to write well because:
Yet now and again I come across a physiological description that’s original and engaging and poetic, and I’m filled with hope that it hasn’t all been done before. And then I think, “The field of possibles has just narrowed. I wish I’d written that!”
Wherever you went in the summer in America it was murder. It was always ninety degrees. If you closed the windows you baked, but if you left them open everything blew everywhere – comic books, maps, loose articles of clothing. If you wore shorts, as we always did, the bare skin on your legs became part of the seat, like cheese melted onto toast, and when it was time to get up, there was a rippling sound and a screaming sensation of agony as the two parted. If in your sun-baked delirium you carelessly leaned your arm against the metal part of the door on to which the sun had been shining, the skin where it made contact would shrivel and disappear, like a plastic bag in a flame. It was a truly amazing, and curiously painless, spectacle to watch part of your body just vanish. -Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
Since I come from a Land of Celcius, I had to look up ’90 degrees’. I found out it’s a measly 32.222 degrees celcius, which means Bill Bryson should make it to Australia one day. (Oh that’s right. He did.) Part of what makes Bill Bryson so funny (to many, at least) is his creation of unlikely similes. He sometimes takes something quite grand (say, a landmark river) and compares it to something everyday and unremarkable (a drink spilled across a table). He compares many things to food. (Like legs, to cheese on toast.) If you are writing comedy, it’s possible to be endlessly original about physiological reactions, because you’ve got an infinite list of bizarre imagery at your disposal.
Nothing prepares you for the Grand Canyon. No matter how many times you read about it or see it pictured, it still takes your breath away. Your mind, unable to deal with anything on this scale, just shuts down and for many long moments you are a human vacuum, without speech or breath, but just a deep, inexpressible awe that anything on earth could be so vast, so beautiful, so silent. Even children are stilled by it. I was a particularly talkative and obnoxious child, but it stopped me cold. I can remember rounding a corner and standing there agog while a mouthful of half-formed jabber just rolled backwards down my throat, forever unuttered. I was seven years old and I’m told it was only the second occasion in all that time that I had stopped talking, apart from short breaks for sleeping and television. The one other thing to silence me was the sight of my grandfather dead in an open coffin. – Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
I love how the first paragraph is serious, mock poetic, with the three adjectives listed to conclude. Of course, this is a build-up to the clincher: Grand Canyon compared to an old man dead in a coffin, which I probably shouldn’t find funny, but do. Wonderful juxtaposition.
And then we’re kissing.
I lean in this time, and she doesn’t turn away. It’s cold, and our lips are dry, noses a little wet, foreheads sweaty beneath wool hats.
- from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan
It’s very easy to sound Mills-and-Boonish when approaching anything sexual, and it’s sometimes safer to make it deliberately unarousing. The wet noses make sure of that. (Unless you love dogs, perhaps…)
It was like hell, she thought, because she could see no end to it, and to the feeling that came with it, but the torment was strange, it was all in her mind, it was like the arrival of night if you knew that you would never see anything in daylight again. She did not know what she was going to do.
- Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
So ‘homesickness’ isn’t technically a physiological reaction. But the psychological is connected, somehow, to the physiological.
Notice the very long, run-on sentence making use of commas rather than full-stops. This echoes the feeling of ‘no end’ in sight. It’s almost always a good choice to follow such sentences with a short, pithy one, and this is exactly what Toibin has done.
It is like a little pocket of air has rushed into her mouth and sent a little shiver down her back and tugged at the empty half-basin of her pelvic bone. She feels a prolonged and dislocated swoop in her belly and a yank of emptiness in her ribcage, and suddenly she is much too hot. Isolde feels this way sometimes when she is in the bath, or when she watches people kiss on television, or in bed when she runs her fingertips down the soft curve of her belly and imagines that her hand is not her own. Most often the feeling descends inexplicably — at a bus stop, perhaps, or in the lunch line, or waiting for a bell to ring… Here in the hallway Isolde is thinking, Did I feel this feeling then, that night? Did I feel this jangled swoop of dread and longing, this elevator-dive, this strange suspended prelude to a sneeze?
- Eleanor Catton, from The Rehearsal
That’s the most original description I’ve read. (And in case you’d thought that was all that could be possibly said on the subject, it goes on in totally original fashion for another few pages.)
A more succinct description:
He turned to look at her…Purl felt her pelvic floor contract and she steadied herself against the bar.
- Rosalie ham, from The Dressmaker
Accurate enough, I suppose. Functional writing. Slightly comic, which is the intention. That’s the thing about making use of the correct anatomical terms. It can come across as comic even when unintended. A few years back I complained that a drink was too hot and that it had ‘burned my esophagus’. This was not met with sympathy, but laughter. Apparently it was only funny because I’d used the correct term. Besides, some body parts can’t help sounding comical, and esophagus is one of them.
I woke up half an hour later, when she sat down on my bed, her butt against my hip. Her underwear, her jeans, the comforter, my corduroys, and my boxers between us, I thought. Five layers, and yet I felt it, the nervous warmth of touching — a pale reflection of the fireworks of one mouth on another, but a reflection nonetheless.
- finding alaska by John Green
A perfect portrayal of a teenage proto-relationship.
Elizabeth stared up into the darkness. She could feel, like tiny electric shocks, involuntary muscular spasms at the very core of her being, as if her body, like her mind, was trying to come to terms with what had transpired.
- Judy Nunn, from Maralinga
I don’t read much romance but I’m sure there are plenty of better examples. I’ll add a few more excerpts if I come across them. Even so, I’m thinking ‘spasm’ might be a popular choice of word.
Related Post: Why is there no good sex in fiction prize? from The Guardian.
Dick had not been married long and at the thought of the beautiful and curvaceous Dinah a clot of emotions lurched sweetly, a sensation he had come to terms with. It was a sensation which cried out for strong drink. Dick had found Dinah an exotic dish to have on his menu. Her presence, her absence, the very thought of her, called for a heady sauce. He took a turn around the room and peeped into the cupboard, although he knew before he opened the door that the bottle with the famous label which stared blankly back at him would be a skinner.
- Came A Hot Friday, by Ronald Hugh Morrieson
Two emotions are described above: wanting a drink, and being in love. For this character, the feelings are similar and he’s unable to fully separate the two.
I wanted to like booze more than I actually did (which is more or less the precise opposite of how I felt about Alaska). But that night, the booze felt great, as the warmth of wine in my stomach spread through my body. I didn’t like feeling stupid or out of control, but I liked the way it made everything (laughing, crying, peeing in front of your friends) easier.
(several pages later)
With her mouth half open, it occurred to me that she must already be drunk as a I noticed the far-off look in her eyes. The thousand-yard stare of intoxication, I thought, and as I watched her with idle fascination, it occurred to me that, yeah, I was a little drunk too.
- looking for alaska, by John Green
I don’t know how many beers I had, but – I will be frank here – it was too many. I had not allowed for the fact that in the thin mountain air of Santa Fe you get drunk much faster. In any case, I was surprised to discover as I stood up a couple of hours after entering that the relationship between my mind and legs, which was normally quite a good one, had broken down. More than that, my legs now didn’t seem to be getting on at all well with each other. One of them started for the stairs, as instructed, but the other, in a burst of petulance, decided to make for the rest-room. The result was that I lurched through the bar like a man on stilts, grinning inanely as if to say, ‘Yes, I know I look like an asshole. Isn’t this amusing?’
- Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
I’ve never been drunk, myself, so all I know about being drunk is what I’ve read in books and hearing people whinge about it afterwards. I’ve heard that you don’t always lose control of your legs when you get drunk – it depends. On what, though? Anyone know?
pic from columnfive
“All right. All right. No screaming. Head hurts.” And it did. I could feel last night’s wine in my throat and my head throbbed like it had the morning after my concussion. My mouth tasted like a skunk had crawled into my throat and died.
- looking for alaska, John Green
I can’t see that being hungover is any different from any other kind of dehydration headache. Anyone willing to comment on that?
The… plate was such a mixture of foods, gravies, barbecue sauces and salad creams that it was really just a heap of tasteless goo. But I shovelled it all down and then had an outsized platter of chocolate goo for dessert. And then I felt very ill. I felt as if I had eaten a roll of insulation. Clutching my distended abdomen, I found my way to an exit. There was no moving sidewalk to return me to the street – there’s no place in Las Vegas for losers or quitters – so I had to make a long weaving walk down the floodlit driveway to the Strip. The fresh air helped a little, but only a little. I limped through the crowds along the Strip, looking like a man doing a poor imitation of Quasimodo…
- Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
Blergh. I hate that feeling, evoked excellently here.
It was too dark to see the gemstones in the sand now. She was fighting back nausea and swallowing back a bile in her mouth that tasted like warm beer, pasta, and woody aftertones… all mixed with a hint of self-loathing.
- from Girl At Sea by Maureen Johnson
Alternating waves of hot and cold washed over her, and she knew she needed to get out of the bed, but her legs would not hold. Remaining on her knees, she crawled to the door. Shaking violently, she tried once again to stand. This time her legs stayed under her, but she could not get her equilibrium. She felt as though some central ball bearing inside her that made balance possible had been knocked loose… Never had she been this sick before. Kneeling with her head over the commode, she was so violently ill that the contractions sent pain into her neck and back. Her head throbbed so that she no longer saw shapes, only patches of gray and black. She felt as if she were being turned inside out, as if she were being scoured.
- Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
…the urge to be sick became even more intense then before, forcing her to get down on her hands and knees and vomit a thick liquid with a vile taste that made her shudder with revulsion when she lifted her head.
The ship’s movements took on a harsh rhythm, and replaced the sense of lunging forward and then being pushed back she had felt when she woke first. … There was hardly anything left to vomit, just a sour bile that left a taste in her mouth that made her cry…
- Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
The room was big. He could feel its size although he could not clearly see. He could feel a cold breeze in his face, the blood in his heart. It was cold, too, the blood, and it felt as if it cracked — like ice — when his foot bumped into a soft heap on the floor. A body, a dead body.
- Christopher Pike, The Party
That one doesn’t work for me at all. I think it’s something to do with the extended metaphor of ‘cold blood’ – which is hard get away with, because it’s so old. (Truman Capote, anyone?) Not only is the blood cold, it’s ‘frozen’, and cracks, which is overdoing the metaphor.
Blomkvist shut his eyes. He suddenly felt acid in his throat and he swallowed hard. The pain in his gut and in his ribs seemed to swell.
- Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Most often ‘bile’ is mentioned in this case, to the point where ‘bile rising in one’s throat’ is almost cliche. I think it’s therefore wise that the translator made use the word ‘acid’ instead. I think I know this reaction, but I may have led a sheltered life because I can’t think of a time in which I was so shocked and frightened that I actually experienced it. I wonder if I have a stronger stomach than most, or if it takes extreme stress to produce the bile in one’s throat (the sort of stress most often recreated in thrillers), or if this physiological reaction is used disproportionately more often in novels than happens in real life.
She woke screaming, the smell of burning fabric assaulting her nostrils… Although she didn’t see or hear anyone in the room with her, it felt like a pair of strong hands grabbed her from behind and pulled her out of the room… Vivi’s fear was so strong she could taste it in the back of her throat. So strong it caused her to pee ever so slightly in the borrowed boxy panties she wore.
- Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Wells hasn’t mentioned ‘bile’; instead she says ‘could taste it’, which is judicious, given the aforementioned cliche.
Her head was in her hands, and when she looked up at Vivi and Pete, her black face was streaked with tears that shone silver in the fading light… Vivi could hear Genevieve’s screams coming from the master bedroom. She ran past Shirley and up the stairs. When she stepped into the bedroom, Genevieve was slapping Mr Whitman on his face, his neck, his arm, whatever she could reach. Teensy stood by herself, near the bay window, her hands covering her face.
- Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
The character of Shirley describes the involuntary scream of shock (at a son’s death) as ‘the screech howl’, which is executed perfectly in the film. One woman commented on the YouTube segment of this movie that unless she had personally witnessed her own auntie’s reaction at losing a child, she’d not have believed that this screech howl happens in real life. She would have considered it melodramatic. It does seem that people do unexpected things when faced with terrible news; some more than others, some cultures more than others.
For a moment, everyone in the gym was silent, and the place had never been so quiet, not even in the moments before the Colonel ridiculed opponents at the free-throw stripe. I stared down at the back of the Colonel’s head. I just stared, looking at his thick and bushy hair. For a moment, it was so quiet that you could hear the sound of not-breathing, the vacuum created by 190 students shocked out of air.
I thought: It’s all my fault.
I thought: I don’t feel very good.
I thought: I’m going to throw up.
I stood up and ran outside. I mae it to a trash can outside the gym, five feet from the double doors, and heaved toward Gatorade bottles and half-eaten McDonald’s. But nothing much came out. I just heaved, my stomach muscles tightening and my throat opening and a gasping, guttural blech, going through the motions of vomiting over and over again. In between gags and coughs, I sucked air in hard.
- looking for alaska, by John Green
CRYING
She began to cry until tears soaked her face, her hair, her gown. She did not remember putting on the gown she wore, did not recognise it. She needed terribly to blow her nose, but she did not have a handkerchief. She could not bear the thought, but she decided she was going to have to blow her nose on the sheets.
- Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Crying is one of those things that you can’t get away with much in a book — I don’t identify with characters who mope about and cry all the time, regardless of their circumstances. I think this has something to do with passiveness. Also, the act of crying can sort of absorb the feeling which caused it; if the character cries, the reader doesn’t have to. That said, it’s done well in the paragraph above.
by Magic Madzik
There’s a game we had to play at school – usually for relief teachers who were stuck with a room full of students and no lesson plan – in which the class is divided into pairs. In these groups of two, one person tells the other how to tie up a shoelace, while the shoelace-tier isn’t allowed to do a single thing unless they are told, imagining, for instance, that they are an alien or a robot, or a computer programmer*. The instruction-giver ends up saying things like, ‘Put your left thumb and left forefinger together over the end of the lace, then lower your left hand towards your left shoe…” etceterah, etceterah.
The point of this exercise? To build a generation of computer programmers, I would say.
If (shoeLace = knottedBadly)
{
DoFirstThing;
DoSecondThing;
}
Sometimes when I’m writing, I envisage an action – or a tic – or a facial expression and I know exactly what it looks like, and I’m sure my readers would too, if only they could see what’s in my head… and I wonder how best to convey this smile, this way of walking, this way of shrugging. I don’t want to end up with a Shoelace Situation. (There’s only one Rule Of Writing as far as I can make out and it’s DON’T BE BORING.)
I’ve been taking a hard look at what my favourite authors do, and this is one of those situations in which simple does best.
Here’s how it’s done. With simile.
Sara was standing in the doorway, one hand cocked on her hip and the other fiddling with her car keys as if to say, Let’s go.
The Old Man stared back at Alaska like a bull at a matador.
- looking for alaska, by John Green
*I’m married to one. It’s okay.
Have you seen The History Boys (film or play), written by Alan Bennett?
Bennett went to school a long time before the 1980s, which is when this play is set. He writes in his 2004 diaries of some issues faced when depicting a modern(ish) school.
First he had to take out a gymnasium scene, because by the 1980s sixth formers wouldn’t have been enrolled in physical education.
As part of his research, Bennett visited the London Nautical School to avoid outdated clangers.
My main impression is how burdened the boys are, humping all their possessions with them wherever they go so that they’re slung round with coats, togs, books and bags, none of them seemingly having their own locker or desk.
This is true in my experience too (both as student and teacher). This was to do with theft and vandalism, and no doubt also to do with the tendency for students to leave uneaten food in their lockers, to rot the wood and attract rodents.
I wonder how many schools still have lockers, compared to how many fictional students still have lockers. In American school dramas we always see scenes involving lockers. The lockers themselves are often used as a plot device, with plantings of drugs and offensive graffiti emblazoned across them, and love notes pushed through the cracks, and timid boys being locked inside… In fact, everything I know about lockers comes from fiction:
Now, it is possible to slip a note into a locked locker through the vents. Even, with some pushing, a pencil. Once, Tiny Cooper slipped a Happy Bunny book into my locker. But I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine how Jane, who, after all, is not the world’s strongest individual, managed to stuff an entire winter coat through the tiny slits in my locker.
- from Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.
But I have no idea how many North American schools still provide lockers for their students. (Perhaps one of you will enlighten me.) In New Zealand, as in England (like Bennett observed), most students lump around a bag full of textbooks all day. This can’t be good for the back. I think at some schools parents are starting to complain about this, and lockers may be making a comeback.
Bennett writes:
Nicholas Hytner has shown the script of The History Boys to one of his former teachers at Manchester Grammar School, who says that teaching these days is so circumscribed that many traditional tools of the trade are now impermissible. Sarcasm, for instance, is out, pupils are never touched and there are often viewing panels in the doors.
Each of these observations is very true, and it does frustrate me when I see sarcastic dialogue from teachers in modern fictional schools. We were taught firmly at teachers’ college that sarcasm is a no-no — and the objection doesn’t just come from above; today’s students detect sarcasm in a second, and will pull you up on it. I remember filling in for another teacher, turning up to anarchy and saying, ‘Some quiet would be nice.’
One of the students was listening, at least. She turned to me and said, ‘Watch the sarcasm, Miss.’
And if I hadn’t been so busy with the humdrum, time-consuming and dreary job of calling a class of unknown students to attention, I might have delivered a lesson on what ‘sarcasm’ actually means, and how it compares to ‘understatement’ but this was a maths lesson. (I also remember later in the hour being asked how to do quadratic equations, and I was of no help whatsoever with that.)
Yet authors of fictional teachers are still making heavy use of sarcasm in lessons, and this lacks authenticity to me… Which is problematic if authenticity is what they are going for.
Regarding the touchy issue of touching, in every school you’ll probably find at one point in staff history:
But most teachers never, ever touch students, not even in kindness. So when I see a teacher in a fictional drama touching a student, even on the shoulder, even to gain attention, I notice.
I also notice when a teacher keeps a student behind after class for a talking to. Even if this is innocent — like ‘Where’s your homework?’ — I always think how unlikely it is, that a teacher would keep a student behind after class. Teachers know to keep their classroom doors open, and when speaking to an individual student, keep their friends along too, or just outside the door, within earshot. Isn’t every modern teacher ever-aware of fictional claims of sexual abuse and harassment? Even fictional characters? I get the impression that authors of fictional teachers underestimate this unfortunate and lingering anxiety.
So often in American dramas the bell rings; students snap their books shut, stand up, walk out.
I have never seen this scenario (except with one teacher who, it was widely acknowledged, had major problems controlling her classes).
What usually happens is this:
1. The teacher is keeping an eye on the clock about every five minutes. (You don’t see this much in dramatised classrooms either.) The teacher is often more cognizant of the end of class than the students, and it is the teacher who orchestrates the wind-up of a lesson.
2. About ten minutes before the end, a good teacher will ask the class to contribute to a recap of the day’s learning material. There’s usually some boring admin stuff, like homework, but I can forgive a scriptwriter for leaving that stuff out.
3. A tidy teacher will ask students to pick up any litter on the floor, and if it’s the last lesson of the day, the chairs will go up onto the desks. (Can you think of a single time you’ve seen this on the screen?)
4. If students start packing up before they are requested, any teacher with middling management skills still knows to put the kybosh on that, or else students soon learn that they can pack up a good 20 mins before the end of each class and battle for position near the exit, ready to burst out the door with the first tinkle of the bell. Any teacher who lets this happen is not on top of things.
So why, in fiction, do students pack up and leave taking their cue from the bell, not their teachers, with ‘good’ teachers shouting over top of the ruckus in order to finish their sentence?
In modern classrooms, students have far more to say than in the classrooms of yesteryear. The teacher is no longer a lecturer; rather a facilitator. Students are frequently divided into groups, set to work on a task (often on a computer), then present to their peers.
What I see in fictional classrooms: The teacher yaks. Students listen. This is a particularly vexing scenario when the class is supposed to be ‘difficult’.
I can tell you for a fact, modern students have little tolerance for lengthy lectures. There are still lessons during which teachers do a goodly proportion of the talking, but they are not met with the bright and alert faces which are seen so often on TV and movies. What you definitely get during a high school lecture lesson is a teacher who is telling Amy to stop talking, Corey to refrain from tapping the desk with his pencil, Riley to quit rustling with whatever is in that plastic bag yadda yadda yadda.
The most realistic depiction of a fictional classroom that I have seen is Summer Heights High (Australia), closely followed by Seven Periods With Mr Gormsby (New Zealand). Matt Lucas as Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate’s ‘am I bovvered’ are also scarily accurate. That, of course, is exactly why they’re funny. These are all parodies, yet they achieve a realism that serious drama can’t seem to match.
These depictions get a bit closer to what really happens in a modern high school lesson, at least in Australia, NZ and England. The Catherine Tate sketch is scarily accurate… A VERY similar thing happened when I went to teach English to the English with a New Zealand accent. I almost think Catherine Tate was a fly on the wall that day, especially since my main sparring partner was called Lauren.
Related Links: High School Hierarchy in YA Fiction; The Most Realistic TV Shows About High School, like, ever, from Flavorwire.
Posted in Thinking Thursday
Tagged Alan Bennett, characterisation, cliches, David Levithan, fiction, John Green, school, teachers, writing
“Interesting capitalisation,” I said.
“Yeah. I’m a big believer in random capitalisation. The rules of capitalisation are so unfair to words in the middle.”
- Margo, from Paper Towns by John Green
Sometimes the smallest copy-editing thing starts me thinking. What are the capitalization conventions for titles and also for made-up compound names in fiction? Does it depend on publishing region? On individual editor? Is there a trend? Should I follow it?
As Nicholas Hudson puts it in Oxford Modern Australian Usage, ‘There are really only two uses for capitals, plus one freak.’ (There is a crumb in my keyboard, under the ‘k’, as usual.)
The Rules:
The Freak:
On words which no longer (or never had) a connection to a proper noun e.g. frankfurter, teddy bear, sandwich.
I wouldn’t capitalise any of those, but people used to, before we all forgot that Frankfurters were named after a place, that Teddy bears were named after a guy called Teddy and that the Earl of Sandwich was very fond of his bread.
Here’s a useful word: ‘capitonym’. This is a word that changes its meaning depending on whether or not it starts with a capital. e.g. The Church, the church (the organisation vs the building), God, god (monotheistic God vs polytheistic god).
All of this is very interesting but what I want to know is: Which words of a title are you meant to capitalise? All of them? Or just the words that carry lexical meaning (ie not ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘of’ but all the other kinds)?
Capitalization in Titles
It depends on house style. Wikipedia says so, and here’s a detailed and lengthy explanation.
Do what you like. I think titles look better when every word is capitalized. That’s my egalitarian nature kicking in, you see.
Made-Up Compound Names in Fiction
For compound names, it seems there’s no rule. You can either capitalise the first word and not the following, or each word in the name which is not a determiner or preposition:
There’s no doubt about it, capitalization conventions have been changed by email and internet:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged capitalisation, capitalization, design, grammar, John Green, quote, rules, typography
“Do you believe in epiphanes?” she asks. We start walking again.
“Um, can you unpack the question?”
“Like, do you believe that people’s attitudes can change? One day you wake up and realize something, you see something in a way that you never saw it before, and boom, epiphany. Something is different forever. Do you believe in that?”
- from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan
I don’t think ‘epiphanic’ is a proper word but I’ve heard it used in regard to short-stories and their purpose.
It was Joyce who coined the term epiphany when applied to literature. Before that it was a religious term, a divine manifestation (a sighting of god).
a moment of insight which briefly illuminates the whole of existence.
Epiphanies are usually invisible and private. On the outside, things seem pretty much usual.
It is important that epiphanies take place inside the everyday, subtly altering the character’s perceptions, making time stand still.
One purpose of literature is to allow readers to see something old in a new light. The epiphanic moment achieves this. The short-story form is particularly well-suited to epiphanies. Perhaps the main aim of the image-based short story is the epiphany. Other stories simply entertain. The best do both.
Epiphanies happen for us in everyday life. They make us go huh, and we blink and we tilt our heads and we get on with our lives. It’s the job of the writer to note the small epiphanies down and save them for a short story.
Epiphanies can be life-changing or they can be small and barely perceptible.
It is useful when reading fiction to look out for the epiphanic moment. Take note of the build-up. Take note of where it comes in the story, how it ties in with the imagery.
Sometimes, you may choose to write a story notable mainly for its LACK of epiphanic moment:
Have you had your epiphanic moment today?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/astama/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
Here is a list of writing cliches from some literary agents.
Here is a list of movie cliches. I’d avoid them in stories too.
Here are some of my own:
(I once taught a girl whose sister was called Cliché. Sue the parents, I say. They probably thought it sounded foreign and… original?)
SF and Fantasy Cliches, nicked from a submissions webpage:
Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.
- Geoff Dyer
Are you, for some strange reason, searching for the perfect cliche? Try here.
- MARTIN AMIS
Related Links: Three Ways To Play With A Cliche by Figaro; The Banned List Top 100, How Cliched Is Your Writing?; The Cliche Finder (an online tool – copy and paste your text into a box); Top 10 Most Common Idioms, from Voxy Blog.
