Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Thursday, March 3, 2022

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens


 
 
 

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Wikipedia
 

Originally published: August 1861
Page count: 544 (first edition 1861)
Genre: Novel, Bildungsroman
Characters: Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella, Abel Magwitch, John Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers, More

Major Thematic Topics: good versus evil; moral redemption from sin; wealth and its equal power to help or corrupt; personal responsibility; awareness and acceptance of consequences from one's choices; abandonment; guilt; shame; desire; secrecy; gratitude; ambition; obsession/emotional manipulation versus real love; class structure and social rules; snobbery; child exploitation; the corruption and problems of the educational and legal systems; the need for prison reform; religious attitudes of the time; the effect of the increasing trade and industrialization on people's lives; the Victorian work ethic (or lack thereof)

 

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