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

Header

Liquid Story Binder XE by Black Obelisk Software

Disable Copy Paste

Amazon Quick Linker

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Mule and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

Mule and Men by Zora Neale Hurston


Mule and Men

 by Zora Neale Hurston


Mules and Men is a 1935 autoethnographical collection of African-American folklore collected and written by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The book explores stories she collected in two trips: one in Eatonville and Polk County, Florida, and one in New Orleans. Hurston's decision to focus her research on Florida came from a desire to record the cross-section of black traditions in the state. In her introduction to Mules and Men, she wrote, "Florida is a place that draws people—white people from all over the world, and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and West". Hurston documented 70 folktales during the Florida trip, while the New Orleans trip yielded a number of stories about Marie Laveau, voodoo and Hoodoo traditions. In addition, Hurston wrote about her experience being initiated into Hoodoo. Wikipedia

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, an anthropologist. An author of four novel ( Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and seraph on the Suwanee,
1948); two Books of folklore ( Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography ( Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in.1927. She was born on january 7,1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1937, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravestie with this epitaph: “Zora Neale Horston : A Genius of the South.”

Buy Zora Neale Hurston Books at Amazon

The PDF might take a minute to load. Or, click to download PDF.

If your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file.

Buy Zora Neale Hurston Books at Amazon
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)