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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Sunday, April 10, 2022

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

 

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

The Vicar of Wakefield 

 

by Oliver Goldsmith

The Vicar of Wakefield is a satirical story by Anglo-Irish novelist Oliver Goldsmith, first published in 1766. The plot follows Dr. Charles Primrose, a vicar who lives in a country parish with his wife and children in a perfect existence. However, all that changes when Primrose loses all his wealth and his family end up moving to another parish owned by Squire Thornhill, a womaniser with a dubious reputation. In a seeming analogy to Job in the Bible, the vicar goes through some terrible times, including his son moving away, his daughter's apparent death, and their house burning down. Extremely popular in Victorian society, The Vicar of Wakefield is mentioned in many other novels, including George Eliot's Middlemarch, Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.

About the Author 

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765).  Wikipedia 

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