In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* On Focusing Down
* A Special Bonus
* Of Interest
My Quote of the Day
“Could’a would’a should’a didn’t never made a damn.” My version of an unattributed, informal, colloquial folk saying expressing regret over missed opportunities
The Bradbury Challenge Report, in memoriam
Saturday, August 22, would have been Ray Bradbury’s 106th birthday if he was still around. I wish he was, but then everybody deserves a rest after awhile.
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Nimnicht” 3109 Historical Adventure
- Christopher Ridge “Rags” 1589 horror
- William Ridge “Trapped in Reflection” 2284
- Dave Taylor “Her Search for the Answer” 2,062 Science Fiction
- Glynn Young “Rain Dance” 2384 General
- Glynn Young, “Lucy” 2225 General
Congratulations to all of these writers.
On Focusing Down
Focusing down is an important and wide-reaching craft technique that touches setting and character description plus the characters’ personalities and psychology.
Through both narrative description (and how the setting and characters are described) and dialogue, it can also introduce or enhance tension and suspense. And yes, it can be used across the genres.
I’ve talked about focusing down before in TNDJ. To find those posts, visit the Journal website and put Focus Down or Focusing Down in the search box in the sidebar.
But today I have a really good example for you. I’m not going to copy it and paste it here, but you can find it by reading (or rereading with Focusing Down in mind) Chapter 23: The Hit on Eldridge Reeves. (Don’t be confused. Another chapter will post today at 10 a.m.)
You’ll find examples of focusing down in the setting description both inside and outside the car as well as in the dialogue and in how the male character’s demeanor is revealed by his unspoken thoughts and his side of the dialogue.
I probably cycled over that chapter four or five times, and because it was a high-tension chapter my specific purpose was on focusing down. I wanted to be sure the reader was inside the car with the characters (if not inside either of the characters).
If I was still teaching an English or Literature class in college, I would print out this chapter, give it to my students, and ask them to write an essay about focusing down in whichever area they choose from the chapter, with examples.
Or maybe I’d ask them to compare and contrast the demeanor and mental state of the characters. Or what Nick learned from Marie and from the overall experience about doing his job.
Of course then I’d have to grade all those papers and be amazed at how different the answers were from one paper to the next.
If I was teaching a creative writing class in college or in a live seminar, I would print out this chapter, give it to my students, and ask them to write their own physically and psychologically intense story in which they focus down on at least three aspects of the story.
You who are in the Bradbury Challenge (or if you want to jump in) could do this exercise.
Take a look and see what you think.
A Special Bonus
Hey, remember last week when I mentioned a writer who said in a video that Ernest Hemingway’s writing is “all on the surface,” uninteresting, and “not revealing of the human condition”?
Keeping my own opinion to myself, I’ll leave you with this excerpt from that writer’s work. The excerpt is copied verbatim. You’re the reader, so you be the judge:
Bereft of alternative deliberations, my aquiline fingertips portentously ensnared the corners of the desk like perfidious webs enveloping derelict edifices. Formerly shallow and timorous, my breaths succumb to a cacophony of dissonant undulations. My heart-shaped lips — once the spring to his winter — parted with a solemn irreverence as though blighted by the tempest of matrimony. My cerulean orbseses [probably wanted ‘obsesses’ or ‘obsessions’] never again to know love’s nourishing embrace were more ghostlike to him than the bedimming candlelight.
Thanks to a friend for sending me the excerpt.
Talk with you again soon.