Story lab: Week 12

 

The power of creative constraints: Constraints aren’t the boundaries of creativity, but the foundation of it.

 

What makes a hero?: Talks about the monomyth, and the things that heroes go through. ‘A hero with a thousand faces’

 

How to build a fictional world: There are stories all around you all the time. Whether or not you tell them is up to you

 

What Orwellian really means:  Language plays an extremely important role in what we believe/thing/do/say.

 

What makes something Kafkaesque?: We rely on increasingly convoluted systems of administration which have very real impacts on our lives. The world we live in is one we create, and therefore, can change for the better.

 

How to write descriptively: There are many reasons to write. The point of fiction is to transport someone directly into the story.

 

Beware of nominalizations (zombie nouns): Nouns made from other parts of speech are nominalizations. They cannibalize the English language. They also tend to sound pompous, abstract, and boring.

 

The pleasure of poetic pattern: rhythm and repetition can be used as the building blocks for poetry. Repetition can happen on multiple levels, and it can be used to bring the reader in or can shove the reader out.



                                   Notebooks for Different Writing Styles

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