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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Showing posts with label Brander Matthews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brander Matthews. Show all posts

Friday, May 12, 2023

A Study of Versification by Brander Matthews [PDF]

A Study of Versification by Brander Matthews

A Study of Versification

 

by Brander Matthews

 

This is not a handbook of poetics, and its aim is not to consider the several departments of poetry—epic, lyric, and dramatic. It does not deal with simile and metaphor, nor does it seek to open the mind of the student to the nobler beauties of poetry. It is intended to be an introduction to the study of versification, the metrical mechanism that sustains poetry and differentiates poetry from prose. 

It is devoted solely to the technique of the art of verse. It is an examination of the tools of the poet's trade. Although poets are said to be bom and not made, there is no doubt that they have to be made after they are bom. It is not a fact that the bom poet warbles native wood-notes wild; he has to serve an apprenticeship to his craft; he has to acquire the art of verse; he has to master its technique and spy out its secrets. The poet is like the painter, who, as Sir. Joshua Beynolds declared, "is a painter only as he can put in practice what he knows and communicate those ideas by visible representation."

 

CONTENTS

I The Study of Verse 1 

II. Rhythm 8 

III. Meter 31 

IV. Rime 49 

V. Tone-Color 73 

VI. The Stanza 102 

VII. The Sonnet 125 

VIII. Other Fixed Forms  144 

IX. Rimeless Stanzas 176 

X. The Couplet 200 

XI. Blank Verse 225 

XII. Poetic License 244 

Appendix 

A: Suggestions for Study • • • • 263 
B: Bibliographical Suggestions • • • 266 

Index •••••••••• 269 


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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism, by Brander Matthews, 1852-1929

Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism, by  Brander Matthews, 1852-1929

Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism

 

by  Brander Matthews, 1852-1929 

 

CONTENTS

  1. American literature
  2. Two studies of the South
  3. The penalty of humor
  4. On pleasing the taste of the public
  5. On certain parallelisms between the ancient drama and the modern
  6. The importance of the folk-theatre
  7. Two French dramatic critics: 
    1. M. Francisque Sarcey
    2. M. Jules Lemaître
  8. Two Scotsmen of letters: 
    1. Mr. Andrew Lang
    2.  Robert Louis Stevenson
  9. Aspects of fiction:
    1. The gift of story-telling
    2. Cervantes
    3. Zola
    4. Kipling & co.
    5. The prose tales of M. François Coppée
    6. The short stories of M. Ludovic Halévy
    7. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner as a writer of fiction

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  • Friday, December 4, 2015

    The Philosophy of the Short Story by Brander Matthews (1901)


    The Philosophy of the Short Story by Brander Matthews (1901). If it chance that artists fall to talking about their art, it is the critic's place to listen, that he may pick up a little knowledge. Of late, certain of the novelists of Great Britain and the United States have been discussing the principles and the practice of the art of writing stories. The discussion took a wide range. With more or less fullness, it covered the proper aim and intent of the novelist, his material and his methods, his success, his rewards, social and pecuniary, and the morality of his work and of his art. But, with all its extension, the discussion did not include one important branch of the art of fiction.

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