Blog – Fight to Write

I was always taught that similes are gentler than metaphors. You know–use simile in a Valentine’s Day card to your girlfriend; use metaphor for your angstiest emo poetry. Clearly, Sara Dailey didn’t get that lesson. First, look at the hard-hitting simile she works into her story, “The Memory Train”: Like the soul, a migraine…

Sara Dailey week #003: Knockout idea–Use a theme!

Jun 26, 2013

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by

Ace Baker

in fiction, headlock, knockout idea, novels, short stories, writing technique

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 Now you know that if this idea is stated in the Bible, a book that’s a few thousand years old, then it’s not exactly a new idea that writers struggle…

Sara Dailey week #002: Character and pathos

Jun 25, 2013

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by

Ace Baker

in fancy footwork, fiction, nonfiction, novels, short stories, writing technique

In “The Memory Train,” Sara Dailey begins by describing a man, Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who survived after a large iron rod punctured his left frontal lobe. The bleached bone shows a jagged U above the empty hollow of the left eye’s socket, bone that never again seamlessly met other bone. It…