About stories of all kinds
What makes drama different from narrative and poetry? It's not a trick question. It is, however, a rather broad question, posed by my first-year English teacher. I attempted to answer it, addressing a few of the most apparent considerations, without by any means giving a comprehensive analysis: A narrative, especially one with an omniscient voice… Continue reading On-Line English Literature Discussion: Being Dramatic
As a kid, most of what I read was part of a series. And did it ever suck when the library was missing some of the books. Now, for whatever reason, I don't read as many series. There are extensive series--particularly in the fantasy genre, it seems--yet most of the books that appeal to me… Continue reading Serial Killers: The Pros and Cons of Book Series
Folklore. Fairy-tales. Horror stories. Urban legends. Mythology. What is it about the inexplicable, the fantastical, and the outrageously unrealistic that captures the human imagination? For that matter, what is it about the human imagination that causes it to manufacture these things, if indeed there is no outside originator? It was while studying "The Old Nurse's… Continue reading On-Line English Literature Discussion: Not Natural
If you've read widely at all, you've probably read a book that's been translated. Easiest example: the Bible. All translated unless you're reading it in ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Books have been and are being translated by the millions. I feel as though most are probably translated from English into other languages these days;… Continue reading Books in Translation: author’s voice or translator’s voice?
Appreciation of poetry was a much neglected area of development in my education that my first year English classes rectified all too effectively. We studied all kinds of verse: sonnets, lyric poems, narrative poems, and even briefly encountered epic poetry. A pair of poems we studied concurrently were Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,"… Continue reading On-Line English Literature Discussion: The Lonely Shepherd
In any work of writing, even this blog, whether we are conscious of it or not, there is a voice that comes through. It's what you hear in your head while you're reading. It's how it makes you feel--is it whimsical? Informative? Tense? Know-it-all? It's up to how you interpret what you're reading on the… Continue reading Writing in Style: Authorial Voice
The conflict between Rumplestiltskin and Killian Jones (a.k.a. Cpt. Hook) is a long one—several hundreds of years long, in fact. The way it began was fairly cut and dried, with Killian playing the role of the villain, and Rumple the victim. But it didn’t stay that way. When Rumple acquired the power of the Dark… Continue reading Once Upon a Time: Hook or Crocodile?
A couple summers ago, I got the chance to share some books I love with my older brother and sister. When I asked each of them separately how they’d liked their individual selection, I got opposite (and therefore mirrored) responses: from my brother, “You can sure tell it’s written by a woman,” and from my… Continue reading “You Can Just Tell…”
I've loved stories since I can remember and have been reading and writing them since I was able to. But when I was probably ten or eleven years old it expanded from general love of stories to a love of books: the physical containers of such awesome worlds. That was about when lots of things… Continue reading Recovering Book Collector
Recently, swamped in the unequivocal disaster that is the second term of university, the changes in academic writing were again brought to my attention. One of my beloved professors (not even irony: she's a sweetheart) stated in her opening remarks about the expectations for her course that she doesn't mind the use of "I" in… Continue reading No Filters: sinking academic standards and how fiction-writing tips can save them
Fictitiously Yours 