The Situation and the Story

The Situation and the Story PDF Author: Vivian Gornick
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466819014
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth. How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras. This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

The Situation and the Story

The Situation and the Story PDF Author: Vivian Gornick
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466819014
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth. How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras. This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

Story and Situation

Story and Situation PDF Author: Ross Chambers
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452900452
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Studies the relation between teller and listener in a set of French, English, and American short stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Anatomy of a Premise Line

Anatomy of a Premise Line PDF Author: Jeff Lyons
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317558952
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
If a story is going to fail, it will do so first at the premise level. Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success is the only book of its kind to identify a seven-step development process that can be repeated and applied to any story idea. This process will save you time, money, and potentially months of wasted writing. So whether you are trying to write a feature screenplay, develop a television pilot, or just trying to figure out your next story move as a writer, this book gives you the tools you need to know which ideas are worth pursuing. In addition to the 7-step premise development tool, Anatomy of a Premise Line also presents a premise and idea testing methodology that can be used to test any developed premise line. Customized exercises and worksheets are included to facilitate knowledge transfer, so that by the end of the book, you will have a fully developed premise line, log line, tagline, and a completed premise-testing checklist. Here is some of what you will learn inside: Ways to determine whether or not your story is a good fit for print or screen Case studies and hands-on worksheets to help you learn by participating in the process Tips on how to effectively work through writer’s block A companion website (www.routledge.com/cw/lyons) with additional worksheets, videos, and interactive tools to help you learn the basics of perfecting a killer premise line

The Empty Cell

The Empty Cell PDF Author: Paulette Alden
Publisher: Radiator Press
ISBN: 9780988518926
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
In the wake of the brutal lynching in 1947 of a young black man named Willie Earle by a mob of cab drivers in Greenville, South Carolina, four people on the periphery of Earle's life find their own lives unexpectedly upended. Against the backdrop of the social and racial strictures of the fifties, each of these characters struggles to find his or her own version of freedom. Each experiences loss, sorrow, and growth, as the South begins its own long march towards racial equality.

An Impossible Situation

An Impossible Situation PDF Author: Del Spier
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
ISBN: 1599324156
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The true story of how lives were lost, taxpayer money squandered, and reputations destroyed as part of an ill-conceived effort to remake Afghanistan into something akin to our own image. What started as a project to reconstruct the highway between Kabul and Kandahar evolved into an ambitious effort to provide Afghanistan with new roads, bridges, schools, clinics, power plants, and irrigation projects. These assignments fell to a Texas-based security firm, US Protection & Investigation, LLC (USPI), which in the space of a few years rose to become the most pervasive and effective paramilitary force in Afghanistan. The initiatives required weapons, health and death benefits, ammunition, uniforms, and vehicles, which the underfunded Government of Afghanistan could not supply, but still mandated. Amendment 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1972 prohibited USAID from funding these items. Aware of these Vietnam-era legal restraints, Del Spier of USPI alerted U.S. officials to the implications and was assured repeatedly that a way would be found to solve the problem. This is the unbelievable true story of a normal American couple, Del and Barbara Spier, in unfriendly enemy territory, in the middle of a war. Unknown to Barbara, Del was forced to take matters into his own hands to accomplish U.S. objectives. He was caught in the crossfire of Afghanistan's endemic corruption, criminals, and ethnic rivalries and Washington's shifting military strategies and bureaucratic inertia. USPI security personnel worked across the country, where they encountered ambushes, IEDs (improvised explosive devices), warlords, drug kingpins, criminals and ordinary Afghans coping with the horrors of everyday life. These horrors struck a humanitarian nerve in the Spiers and without any government assistance they provided clothing, medicine, training, fuel, food and shelter to the unfortunate. As American troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan, one overriding question will occupy the public for years: How could an endeavor that began with the toppling of the Taliban regime in Kabul a decade ago have evolved into the longest war in American history? The Spiers' path ultimately led them into a protracted legal battle. USAID turned on the very company that for years had protected its construction sites in Afghanistan and enlisted the FBI and the Justice Department in a three-year, multi-million dollar investigation vendetta against the Spiers and their company. Only dramatic courtroom decisions handed down in March and July 2010 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. brought the matter to a surprising conclusion. The Spiers' tragedy is a microcosm of America's misadventure in Afghanistan.

Subsequent Performances

Subsequent Performances PDF Author: Jonathan Miller
Publisher: New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : E. Sifton Books/Viking
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
A director's brilliant inquiry into the problems--and solutions--of staging, filming, and acting classics for modern audiences. 90 black-and-white and color illustrations.

Men in My Situation

Men in My Situation PDF Author: Per Petterson
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1644451654
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A tender, merciless portrait of a life going to pieces by the internationally acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses. Men in My Situation, Per Petterson’s evocative and moving new novel, finds Arvid Jansen in a tailspin, unable to process the grief of losing his parents and brothers in a tragic ferry accident. In the aftermath, Arvid’s wife, Turid, divorced him and took their three daughters with her. One year later, Arvid still hasn’t recovered. He spends his time drinking, falling into fleeting relationships with women, and driving around in his Mazda. When Turid unexpectedly calls for a ride home from the train station, he has to face the life they’ve made without him. Critics have already hailed Men in My Situation as the equal of Petterson’s international bestseller Out Stealing Horses, in part for his unflinching portrayal of Arvid’s dark night of the soul. In this moment of faltering hope and despair, Arvid’s daughter Vigdis—who he’s always felt understood him best—has a crisis of her own and reaches out. Now he must find a way to respond to someone who, after everything, still needs him. Reaching the heights of Petterson’s best work, Men in My Situation is a heartrending, indelible story from a celebrated author.

A Helpless Situation

A Helpless Situation PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781523288533
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel." Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother, Orion Clemens.

The Story of an Hour

The Story of an Hour PDF Author: Kate Chopin
Publisher: Tale Blazers
ISBN: 9780789154798
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Kate Chopin. Also includes "Regret." In these selections, two women examine their lives, one looking forward to the future, the other regretting the past. 34 pages. Tale Blazers.

Strange Situation

Strange Situation PDF Author: Bethany Saltman
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1925938239
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter. When award-winning editor, writer, researcher, and longtime Zen student Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she felt like there was something ‘off’ about her experience. She knew she loved her daughter, but would oftentimes be angry, short on patience, even unkind. She went in search of the reasons why, and how to better understand herself, her daughter, and their relationship. Saltman launched a broad inquiry into the science of attachment, a field of developmental psychology that answers the question of why — from an evolutionary point of view — love exists between parents and children. Specifically, she focused on the data from a famous laboratory procedure, the ‘Strange Situation’, used around the world by scientists as the gold standard for measuring attachment security. What Saltman found by studying the Strange Situation is that love is unbreakable. Each and every one of us — including her — is built for it. In this intimate, rigorous, and deeply personal rendering, Saltman discovers that while our behaviour as parents is important, what matters most is the way we think about our attachments, transmitted mind to mind from generation to generation. This is excellent news. After all, as Saltman’s decades of Zen practice tell her and her readers, the one thing completely within our power to change is our minds.