Excrept from "The Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith"
Dedicated to the classic books on fiction writing. Learn to write short stories, novels, and plays by studying the classic how-to books. I believe fiction writing is a Craft. In the hands of a writer who has mastered the Craft, it can become more than that. It can become Art. Art = Talent + Craft But the bedrock is Craft. There are fundamental techniques to be studied, unfamiliar tools to be mastered, tricks of the trade to be learned. And it all takes time. (Writing Mastery) (Writing Craft)
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Short Story Writing: The Character Interest by Lewis Worthington Smith
We can hardly have any vital interest in a
story apart from an interest in the characters. It is because things
happen to them, because we are glad of their good fortune or
apprehensive of evil for them, that the incidents in their succession
gain importance in our emotions. We are concerned with things that
affect our lives, and secondarily with things that affect the lives of
others, since what touches the fortunes of others is but a part of that
complex web of destiny and environment in which our own lives are
enmeshed. In the story it is not so true as in the drama that, for the
going out of our sympathies toward the hero or the heroine, there should
be other contrasting characters; but a story gains color and movement
from having a variety of individualities. Especially if the story is one
of action, definite sympathies are heightened when they are accompanied
by emotional antagonisms. In "The Master of Ballantrae," we come to take
sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly through having found his rival,
the Master, so black a monster. Such establishment of a common bond of
interest between us and the character with whom our sympathies are to be
engaged is a most effective means of holding us to a personal
involvement in the development of the plot. There must not be too many
characters shown, the relations between them must not be too various or
too complexly conflicting, but where the interplay of feeling and
clashing motives is not too hard to grasp, a variety of characters gives
life and warmth of human interest to a story.
Excrept from "The Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith"
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Excrept from "The Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith"
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