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Category: short stories
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Cody Klippenstein #004: Long sentences for description…
In the past three days, we’ve seen pathos, simplicity, soft sounds, euphony, hard sounds, cacophony, and connotation in Cody Klippenstein’s award-winning story, “Case Studies in Ascension.” Today, we’ll see another technique she makes use of that puts the reader THERE in the moment, visualizing what’s happening in the story. Here’s the example, first: I…
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Cody Klippenstein #002: Simplicity, softness, and single-syllable words
Before we get to today’s lesson, here are a few of the accolades for Cody Klippenstein and her work that I’m aware of: 2011 She’s a finalist for Malahat’s Open Season Awards 2011 She wins The Fiddlehead’s fiction contest 2011 She wins Prism International’s short story contest 2012 She wins Malahat’s Open Season Awards for…
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Cody Klippenstein #001 VOICE through pathos!
If you want to add VOICE to your writing, Cody Klippenstein is the one to turn to. She has won many major writing awards for her short fiction, including “Case Studies for Ascension,” which won the Zoetrope All-Story Short Fiction Contest. It’ll be our study text for this week and it’s up on…
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Gaiman #005: Explore a difference
As I’ve said before, contrast makes writing interesting. But in a longer work of fiction, it’s possible to REVISIT the same contrast in different ways. Here’s how Neil Gaiman does that in The Ocean at the End of the Lane: “Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds…
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Neil Gaiman #004: Hit ’em hard!
Take a look at how Neil Gaiman piles on the negatives at the beginning of chapter 7 of The Ocean at the End of the Lane: The next day was bad. My parents had both left the house before I woke. It had turned cold, and the sky was a bleak and charmless gray.…
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Neil Gaiman #003: The DOUBLE DELAY
Today, we’ll look at a very powerful technique Neil Gaiman makes use of in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s one I call the DOUBLE DELAY. Now, even kids know what a cliff-hanger is if they’ve ever read a Hardy Boys or Goosebumps book. The idea that you end a chapter…
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Neil Gaiman #002: Use THE ECHO as a voice!
Let’s get right to it today and see an innovative way Neil Gaiman uses parentheses in The Ocean at the End of the Lane: I would talk to people whose existence I had forgotten years before and they would ask me about my marriage (failed a decade ago, a relationship that had slowly frayed…
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Neil Gaiman: the clothes make the man!
I’ve just read Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I highly recommend it. This week, I’ll be examining five techniques he makes use of, and the first is one he uses at the beginning of the prologue: I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie…
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Braunstein: Contrast and time shift
Check out a few interesting techniques that are being combined in Sarah Braunstein’s short story, “Marjorie Lemke.” The first is that it is like she’s holding a conversation…with herself. The second is a time shift: the “selves” who are talking with each other are the person she used to be and the person she…
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Think YOU had a bad teacher?
I remember some horrible instructors I’ve learned from in the past, but only the writing prof I took a class from at the University of Saskatchewan even approaches this one’s behaviour: From “The Master,” by Marc Fisher: Assigned to [Robert] Berman for tenth-grade English, I took a seat one September morning alongside sixteen or seventeen other…