  Short Stories
This week: Art Vocabulary - In Writing Edited by: THANKful Sonali LOVES DAD  
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| I went for a workshop on teaching art to young children. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I found myself connecting what the resource person was saying, to writing. Here's my personal attempt at re-defining the terms she used, as I think they'd apply to writing. I'm not sure if this kind of thing has been done before, but I'd just like to say that this is all my own work, and I'm not technically art-savvy. It isn't meant to be 'studious', rather just something to chew on. Thanks! |
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Hallo!
I decided to try something new here. New to me, at least. I was fascinated by the 'art vocabulary' workshop I attended, and thought I'd come up with new explanations of the terms used, as a writer. (Please note what I say in the 'about this newsletter section!'  )
So - here goes!
1. LINE
For a writer, 'line' could mean - The progression of an event or incident, leading to the conclusion of the story.
Example (a line of thought showing how an 'impulsive' vacation isn't really all that 'impulsive')
From: A Spontaneous Vacation
By Erma Bombeck
My husband looked up from his paper one evening. “I’ve got a tremendous idea. Let’s take an instant vacation.”
“A what?”
“An instant vacation. One that is spontaneous. No preparation, no planning. Just go. Free from all cares. We’ll get up tomorrow morning, throw a few clothes in a paper bag and a few goodies in the cooler, and take off. Would you all like that?”
“We’d love it,” everyone shouted.
“Good, then it’s settled,” he said, snuggling down with his paper.
“Oh, this is going to be so exciting,” I said. “We’ve never done anything impulsive before. One of you kids get on the phone and call the vet. Tell him we’ll drop the dogs off on our way tomorrow. I’ll put a note in the mailbox to stop the mail and one in the milk-box to turn off the milk for a few days. Oh, and I better get hold of the egg man.”
“Do you think Frank could take my paper route?” asked my son. “And maybe take care of the hamster and the gold-fish?”
“I suppose so,” I mused. “Call him, and when you’re through I have to call Elsa and tell her I won’t be able to drop off those five hundred coat hangers for the scouts on Sunday. Maybe on the way out of town I’ll drop them off at Susan’s house. Oh, it’s such fun being impulsive,” I grinned.
2. BROKEN LINE
Where there are two or more incidents going on, and one interrupts the other, or where flash-backs or flash-forwards interrupt the main flow.
Example:
From "Invalid Item" by PatrickB 
Here, the protagonist is a writer writing about his meeting with a fairy. In italics is what he's writing, the rest is the fairy interrupting him as he writes.
When I examined her on my dining room table, the first thing I noticed was the four rose prickles that impaled her wings.
“Hey, wait,” Adrianna interrupts. “Aren’t they called thorns?”
“I thought so, too, but turns out that they are actually prickles. Thorns are stem or branch extensions in plants, while prickles are protrusions of the skin.”
“Wow, who knew?”
She had a large gash down the outside of her right thigh, a savage rip through the material of her pants that was still bleeding.
Here's what the author says, upon reading this newsletter!
Thank you for featuring the technique I used in "Invalid Item" to show broken narrative lines. It really is unorthodox and a hard sell in today's market, but I'm not a genre-chaser, but an artist. Thanks for the vote of confidence that my idea is workable! 
3. SHAPE - In art - A shape is an identifiable area with boundaries.
I guess for a writer this means the structure of the work. Short story, poem or novel? What shape do the words take, do the thoughts and images take?
Here are two entries to "The Writer's Cramp" - same prompt, different shape.
(Note - the prompt is mentioned with the short story.)
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4. LIGHT - Light creates focal points in a work of art.
So, we could say - plot driven or character driven story? Which particular incident or character to be highlighted? What is going to be a blur in the background, visible but not in the spotlight?
Here, Gallico focusses on the magic that is in nature and in each of us.
FROM: THE MAN WHO WAS MAGIC by PAUL GALLICO
The Magic Box
Adam raised his arms and his face had become transfixed. “Wherever you look,” he cried, “earth magic, water magic, fire magic, sky magic. See that cloud up there, just over the hill? The one that looks like a hippopotamus?”
“You mean the elephant?”
“It HAS turned into an elephant, hasn’t it? And now it’s changing into a kind of polar bear.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a seal,” and Jane laughed with delight. “But I never thought of THAT as magic!” she cried.
“Hadn’t you?” Adam said. “What about when it becomes dark, swollen and angry, shoots forth lightning flashes, rattles the dishes with thunder and pours out bucket after bucket of rain? It’s the same cloud, you know.”
“I used to be afraid of thunder,” Jane said. “I won’t be any more, if it’s just a magic cloud.”
They fell silent for a while.
“And then,” Adam concluded, “there is still the YOU magic.”
“The ME magic? I don’t understand.”
“Close your eyes,” Adam said.
Jane obediently screwed them tightly shut.
“Now, think of another place – say, where you were once happy.”
“The sea shore! I loved it! Mummy, Daddy, Peter and I went when we were small.”
“What was it like?” Adam asked.
“Lots of sand and running away from the waves breaking on to the beach, so as not to let them wet our feet. We had buckets and spades and I built a castle. Oh, and the colour of the sea, the way it smelled, and the sound it makes.”
“You are there now, aren’t you?” said Adam.
“Yes,” Jane replied.
“Open your eyes!”
Jane did so. “And now you are here,” said Adam. “But you have just made a trip of many hundreds of miles.”
She stared at him.
Adam gently touched her forehead with a long finger. “It’s all inside there, Jane, like a box with many compartments. Each one you can call upon for anything you want or desire. It contains the greatest magic of all. It can carry you into the past, or let you imagine the future. It can help to make you well when you are sick and make bad things good. Everything that men or women have ever accomplished has come out of that miraculous box. When you use it properly, it enables you to think of or create things that no one has ever done before, even the way to the stars.”
“Will it help me to become a magician,” asked practical Jane, “as good as my brother, Peter, or even Daddy?”
“Yes,” said Adam.
“How?”
“There are compartments for just that called, I CAN, and I WILL. When you have learnt to unlock them, the strong magic will help you to move mountains.”
“But Daddy says I can’t, that I am stupid. And I am always dropping things.”
“That is because you have never used all the wonders you have packed away inside there,” and he gently tapped her forehead once more. “No one really ever has.”
Jane murmured to herself, “I CAN and I WILL.”
5. COLOUR
5. A. COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS - Colours which are opposite, but seem to fit side by side, like red and green at Christmas. This gives a vibrant effect.
(Two characters with opposite views being friends? Opposite traits within the same character, like the ambition and the bravery in Severus Snape, Harry Potter's 'least-favourite' teacher, after whom he winds up naming his second son?)
Another example of Gallico's writing! Various 'colours' of characterisation.
From: Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico
“Monsieur le Capitaine, why are you always so angry?”
He stared long at her out of his cold, hard eyes. “Because you are a fool,” he replied finally, “and I have no time for fools.”
“Dear Capitaine – why cannot you be as kind and patient with me as Carrot Top, Dr Duclos and Mr Reynardo. I am sure they thought I was very stupid at times today, but they never showed it.”
“Because your staring eyes and whining innocence make me sick.”
The attack was so savage that the tears came to Mouche’s eyes and she nodded her head silently.
“As for them,” the Capitaine continued, “it is no concern of mine what they do. Get along with them if you know what is good for you, during working hours. And keep out of my way at other times. Understand?”
Mouche nodded again. “I’ll try.”
Yet in spite of the harshness of the Capitaine, which had the effect only of moving her to a kind of pity for him, for he seemed to be so wretched in his furies, the week of the street fair in Rheims was one of the happiest times Mouche had ever known.
The warmth of her relationship with the seven puppets seemed to grow by leaps and bounds and soon she was familiar with their characteristics, their strengths and weaknesses, the striving and ambitious little Carrot Top with the soaring imagination which always wished to brush aside earthbound obstacles, and yet was tied down by the responsibility for all the others and the running of the show; the pompous, long winded Dr Duclos, the prototype of every self-satisfied stuffed shirt who still in his bumbling way was kind; and the vain, foolish, self-centered Gigi, who, of all the dolls, was not.
Most dependent on her was Alifanfaron, the giant who frightened no one and was so kind-hearted and slow witted that everyone took advantage of him. He looked pathetically to Mouche for help and protection and some of the most charming passages took place between the ugly, fearful-looking monster and the young girl who mothered him.
She got on the best with Madame Muscat, for the Madame was a woman who had seen life and felt that people should stick together for mutual protection. She was always Mouche’s ally with advice or aphorism, or a bit of useful information as to what was going on backstage, or below the counter, that mysterious domain where the puppets dwelt.
But if Mouche had to select a favourite of them all, it would have been Mr Reynardo. He touched her most deeply because he was sly, wicked, not quite honest, knew it and wished and tried, but not too fervently, to be better.
He amused her, too. He baited and teased her and sometimes worked up little intrigues against her with the others, but when it came right down to it he also seemed to love her the most and feel the deepest need for her affection. Much of his yapping was bravado and the moment when Mouche felt almost unbearably touched and happy was when from time to time cracks appeared in his armour of cynicism and through them she caught glimpses of the small child within, wanting to be forgiven and loved.
Though he was her friend and counselor, Mouche remained a little in awe of Monsieur Nicholas, the mender of toys, for he was a dispenser of impartial justice as well as kindness. His glance through his square spectacles always seemed to penetrate her and reach to her innermost secret thoughts.
Child-like, too, but in the fashion backed by the lore of his race, was Golo. He served the puppets, and now that Mouche had become one of them, served her too. He was versed in the mechanics of the show, yet they meant nothing to him. One moment he could be behind the booth assisting the Capitaine in a costume change for one of the puppets, handing him props, or hanging the dolls in proper order, head down so that the Capitaine could thrust his hands into them quickly for those lightning appearances and disappearances of the characters, and the next moment, out front with Mouche, he looked upon them as living, breathing creatures.
The belief in the separate existence of these little people was even more basic with Mouche, for it was a necessity to her and a refuge from the storms of life with which she had been unable to cope.
If fundamentally she must have been aware that it was the Capitaine who animated them, she managed to obliterate the thought. For how could one reconcile the man and his creations? And further, she rarely saw the Capitaine enter or leave the booth, for he was moody and mysterious in his comings and goings. Sometimes he would sit inside for as long as an hour in the early morning, or even late at night, without giving a sign of his presence there, until suddenly one or more of the puppets would appear onstage.
All orders were given, all business directed through Carrot Top, all rehearsals conducted, new songs learned, plots and bits of business discussed with the puppets, until conversing with them became second nature to Mouche and it became almost impossible for her to associate this odd family of such diverse characters with the pale, bitter man who was their creator.
5. B. ANALOGOUS COLOURS - Analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel. This gives a comforting effect.
(Two similar characters / characteristics? A series of similar incidents to show an unruffled existence?)
This extract, from Joan Aiken's work, seems to have the boy in harmony with nature. Feels sort of soothing, I think.
Last Slice of Rainbow by Joan Aiken
Jason walked home from school every day along the side of a steep grassy valley, where harebells grew and sheep nibbled. As he walked, he always whistled. Jason could whistle more tunes than anybody else at school, and he could remember every tune that he had ever heard. That was because he had been born in a windmill, just at the moment when the wind changed from south to west. He could see the wind, as it blew; and that is a thing not many people can do. He could see patterns in the stars, too, and hear the sea muttering charms as it crept up the beach.
6. TEXTURE - the 'feel' of it, by touch. In a painting, visual texture could try to depict actual texture.
I guess this, to me, would be about genre. Is it a comedy? A serious piece, a sentimental piece? How would it feel, if you were to touch it?
This one by Anne Frank, for example, feels really rough!
From: The Diary of Anne Frank
Saturday, 30 January 1943.
Dear Kitty,
I’m boiling with rage, and yet I mustn’t show it. I’d like to stamp my feet, scream, give Mummy a good shaking, cry, and I don’t know what else, because of the horrible words, mocking looks, and accusations which are leveled at me repeatedly every day, and find their mark, like shafts from a tightly strung bow, and which are just as hard to draw from my body.
I would like to shout to Margot, Van Daan, Dussel – and Daddy too – “Leave me in peace, let me sleep one night at least without my pillow being wet with tears, my eyes burning and my head throbbing. Let me get away from it all, preferably away from the world!” But I can’t do that, they mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kindhearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more.
If I talk, everyone thinks I am showing off; when I am silent they think I am ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I’m tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc. The whole day long I hear nothing else but that I am an insufferable baby, and although I laugh about it and pretend not to take any notice, I do mind. I would like to ask God to give me a different nature, so that I didn’t put everyone’s back up. But that can’t be done. I’ve got the nature that has been given to me and I’m sure it can’t be bad. I do my very best to please everybody, far more than they’d ever guess. I try to laugh it all off, because I don’t want to let them see my trouble. More than once, after a whole string of undeserved rebukes, I have flared up at Mummy: “I don’t care what you say anyhow. Leave me alone, I am a hopeless case anyway.” Naturally, I was then told I was rude and was virtually ignored for two days, and then, all at once, it was quite forgotten, and I was treated like everyone else again. It is impossible for me to be all sugar one day and spit venom the next. I’d rather choose the golden mean (which is not so golden), keep my thoughts to myself, and try for once to be just as disdainful to them as they are to me. Oh, if only I could!
Yours, Anne.
7. SPACE - where what is, how the surface is used
In a story, it would be what you tell first, what you tell next - and how many words you give to each aspect. Do you put it first and dwell on it? In the middle somewhere, in passing? At the end? Where, for how many words?
Look at the way Karkaria tells this story - his beginnings - straight to the situation years later, and an incident to show his character.
STEPHEN ARATHOON, HOTEL OWNER by BACHI KARKARIA
Stephen Arathoon had come to Calcutta as a wide-eyed twenty-year-old, with less than a hundred rupees in his pocket. He began his career as a hawker, peddling his wares from a wheelbarrow. By the time Arathoon died, he had built up an empire that included Calcutta’s poshest properties. Arathoon also owned the finest hotel in the city, “The Grand”.
Stephen Arathoon had an unflappable confidence, an unshakeable ambition. He made his fortune as much by counting paise as by investing rupees well. And he was a gentleman gifted with the ability to turn even adverse situations to advantage.
Thus, we hear the story of an angry hotel guest who swept into Stephen’s office one morning brandishing his teapot, crying “Cockroach! Cockroach!”
Stephen did nothing more than raise his monocle to his eye, peer inside to examine the offending insect lying on the bed of perfect Darjeeling tea, let the monocle drop, sit back and pronounce: “500 rooms, 500 teapots, only one cockroach. Very good average.”
8. PERSPECTIVE
In art - the same duck, different perspectives!
For a writer, this means, from whose point of view, and what mood were they in, at the time? Who was looking at (thinking about, feeling, responding to) whatever had happened, and where were they standing at that time, emotionally, intellectually, in terms of circumstance?
How does Kundera view the photographs, and the characters in it? How do the characters view each other?
From THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING by Milan Kundera.
A magazine photograph: a row of men in uniform, bearing rifles and in helmets with protective plastic visors, watch a group of young people in jeans and T-shirts, hand in hand in a ring, dance in front of them. The young people have formed a circle, and, to a simple will-known tune, are taking two steps in place, one step forward, raising first the left leg and then the right.
I think I understand them: they have the impression that that circle they are describing on the ground is a magical circle uniting them like a ring. And their chests swell with an intense feeling of innocence: they are united not by marching, like soldiers, but by dancing, like children. What they are trying to spit in the cops’ faces is their innocence.
That is how the photographer saw them, and he brought out the eloquent contrast: on the one side, the police in the false unite (imposed, commanded) of the row, on the other, the young people in the true unity (sincere and natural) of the circle; on this side, the police in the sullen posture of lying in wait, and on that one, those who are delighting in play.
Well, I guess that's it for now! Hope you enjoyed reading this Newsletter as much as I enjoyed creating it!
Write On!
Sonali
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Short Stories!
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A few poems I enjoyed!
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A few days to go, to enter the Official Site Contest!
Came across this post the Noticing Newbies Forum - an innovative way of writing a story!
"Introducing myself and an idea"
Some all-time favourites!
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Since my last Short Stories Newsletter "Short Stories Newsletter (October 30, 2013)" was a discussion, I included feedback to that issue as a PS in the same issue. Since then, there's been one response - here it is!
Mavis Moog
It is genuinely an interesting subject. I am quite academic in my approach to reading and I cannot suspend that for a "good story", which may be my loss, but I do not think so. The pleasure I derive from reading well-crafted literature is far greater than it would be if I judged it only on the grossest qualities.
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Short Stories: November 27, 2013 Issue [#6012]
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