Let’s explicate that piece of Carson McCullers dialog. There’s tons to learn from it, but today we’ll just focus on conflicting agendas and how she rings such a realistic, poignant note by keeping her characters firmly and clearly grounded in their separate agendas. Doctor Copeland: “I will not be hurried…. Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Explicating the gnat”
Author: Victoria
Pulp Rag: Weighing point-of-view techniques
So let’s talk some more about Point-Of-View. Because this is quite a sticky widget. The simplest, commonest, most straight-forward POV is third-person limited. And there’s a really good reason for this. Because it WORKS. Once upon a time it was first-person limited. However, first-person got kind of beat to death… Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Weighing point-of-view techniques”
Being in the right place at the right time
NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and there are now millions more written words in the world than there were a month ago. Aspiring writers all over America—all over the planet—are sitting in front of their masterpieces wondering what they have to to do to them before they can start querying… Read more“Being in the right place at the right time”
Pulp Rag: Hunting the lonely heart with Carson McCullers
The actual writing is what you live for. —Raymond Chandler Let’s talk about plotting and Point-Of-View. Carson McCullers was only twenty-three when she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her classic story of the fragility of human connection—nearly a child prodigy. Within the amorphous struggle to understand life, as… Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Hunting the lonely heart with Carson McCullers”
Linking to Millicent Dillon
This week we’re linking to an excerpt from a novel by Millicent Dillon, A Version of Love. I know who Dillon is because in 1995 I stumbled across her biography of Jane Bowles in a bookshop in lower Fillmore in San Francisco, A Little Original Sin, introducing me to the… Read more“Linking to Millicent Dillon”
Talking about a small, good thing
Today we’re linking to the New Yorker publication of the original version of Raymond Carver’s famous short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” as edited by the famous editor Gordon Lish. If you don’t know who Gordon Lish was, you will learn. Take note, all ye… Read more“Talking about a small, good thing”
Hey, Craig!
the Craig Bartlett interview
I met Craig Bartlett in 1980 on the The Evergreen State College Cooper Point Journal, where he was staff cartoonist and photographer and I was production manager. We were young, barely 20, and following in the footsteps of Lynda Barry and Matt Groening, who’d been running the Cooper Point Journal… Read more“<em>Hey, Craig!</em><br> the Craig Bartlett interview”
Linking to the Nobel Prize
Boy, I’ve been sick as a dog all week and am just catching up with work. And guess what I discovered this afternoon? Some of you agents giving advice on Twitter? I really don’t think it’s such a good idea to insult aspiring writers in public. Particularly a writer you’ve… Read more“Linking to the Nobel Prize”
Pulp Rag: Messing with each other’s head: dialog in action
Shall we see if I can get through a whole post about dialog talking about. . .dialog? I follow Twitter. Not enough, apparently, to see everything that goes by, because lots of people use it as a mirror they glance into constantly throughout the day assuming—I guess—the rest of us… Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Messing with each other’s head: dialog in action”
Developmental Editing
Do you ever wonder exactly what a full Developmental Editing letter looks like? How the conversation starts when you hire an editor to work over your plot with you—to make sure it tells the story you want to tell, in the most gripping possible terms, to keep a reader completely… Read more“Developmental Editing”