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Category: novels
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8 Titles You Can THINK SOMETHING DIFFERENT For. . .
In the July / August 2013 Report on Business, Eric Reguly has an article titled “STORAGE WARS,” but it’s not about the TV show where people buy abandoned storage lockers in the hopes of finding treasure. It’s actually aboput Big Oil’s reserves and what would happen to them if we stopped “burning the stuff…
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Starter from Margaret Talbot
Today’s line to get you started comes from Margaret Talbot’s “Shots in the Dark,” in the April 15th, 2013 edition of The New Yorker : What’s the worst that could happen? Try this: Who’s thinking this and why? Once you decide that, go write the scene. Coming tomorrow: A fighting 8 count that…
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Starter…from an ad for a tv show!
Today’s prompt comes from an ad for the show Maron, and it shows a tweet that’s kinda, sorta, not really sweet: I found this article describing the 6 stages of a romantic relationship. I went thru all of them in one weekend. Her name was Jen. Try this: Now, it doesn’t matter if her…
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Starter . . . from an advertisement!
Today, I’m going to give you an opening line. Then, if you really want to know where it came from, follow the dots down the page. It may give you an ADDITIONAL idea to write about! The line is… She’s first. * * * * * * * * * * * These…
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Sara Dailey #007: Circle technique
Ok, so it’s our final day of looking at Sara Dailey’s technique via her creative nonfiction piece, “The Memory Train.” Today it’s all about circle technique. If you look back to the first post of this week, you’ll see she began with a paragraph about Phineas Gage, a railway worker who LIVED after accidentally…
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Sara Dailey #006: Character foils–another interesting contrast for your writing
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Character foils are two characters in the same situation who react differently. Picture two kids with an alcoholic parent. One grows up and never touches a drop of alcohol. The other becomes alcoholic. Those are foils, and they’re another way to show contrast, just like the rhetorical questions we explored yesterday. Let’s see…
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Sara Dailey #005: Rhetorical questions and contrast
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I know what you’re thinking…POWER PUNCH? For a rhetorical question? Are you kidding me? But rhetorical questions are powerful because they automatically imply a CONTRAST and contrast is what makes writing interesting. What I mean is that there are usually two opposite ways of answering a question, so conflict is naturally indicated this…
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Sara Dailey #004: Hard and soft similes
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…
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Sara Dailey week #003: Knockout idea–Use a theme!
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…
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Sara Dailey week #002: Character and pathos
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…