The Pace of Fiction

The Pace of Fiction PDF Author: Brian Gingrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191899143
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The Pace of Fiction redefines the literary history of the novel by analyzing its most elaborate feature: its pace. It moves from the rise of the novel to realism and modernism. It starts by tracing the evolution of two narrative units: scenes ("shown" slowly) and summaries ("told" swiftly). These units emerge from the conflict of epic and drama, gain shape in the commentaries of Fielding and Goethe, and become dynamically opposed in nineteenth-century realism. In Middlemarch, they rotate in regular sequence: summaries move swiftly until scenes slow them down; scenes play out dramatically until summaries sweep them forward; their movement imitates the conflict of fate and free will. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, scenic impulses overtake summary storytelling. The reader sees the tendency already in Austen's dialogues, Hawthorne's tableaux, or Balzac's battering drama, and finds it in Jane Eyre's placement of summaries in private scenes. When Flaubert extends scenic vividness to all of his summaries, and when Henry James subordinates his summaries to scenic consciousness, the extreme pressure of scene upon summary brings the opposition of realist pacing to collapse. But other oppositions arise in the modernisms that follow. In the alternation of stasis and kinesis, of drifting thoughts and everyday actions, of stories and acts of storytelling—in Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Mann, Hemingway—pace gathers and creates meaning in new ways.

The Pace of Fiction

The Pace of Fiction PDF Author: Brian Gingrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191899143
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Pace of Fiction redefines the literary history of the novel by analyzing its most elaborate feature: its pace. It moves from the rise of the novel to realism and modernism. It starts by tracing the evolution of two narrative units: scenes ("shown" slowly) and summaries ("told" swiftly). These units emerge from the conflict of epic and drama, gain shape in the commentaries of Fielding and Goethe, and become dynamically opposed in nineteenth-century realism. In Middlemarch, they rotate in regular sequence: summaries move swiftly until scenes slow them down; scenes play out dramatically until summaries sweep them forward; their movement imitates the conflict of fate and free will. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, scenic impulses overtake summary storytelling. The reader sees the tendency already in Austen's dialogues, Hawthorne's tableaux, or Balzac's battering drama, and finds it in Jane Eyre's placement of summaries in private scenes. When Flaubert extends scenic vividness to all of his summaries, and when Henry James subordinates his summaries to scenic consciousness, the extreme pressure of scene upon summary brings the opposition of realist pacing to collapse. But other oppositions arise in the modernisms that follow. In the alternation of stasis and kinesis, of drifting thoughts and everyday actions, of stories and acts of storytelling—in Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Mann, Hemingway—pace gathers and creates meaning in new ways.

Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure

Elements of Fiction Writing - Scene & Structure PDF Author: Jack Bickham
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1599637979
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Craft your fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability. An imprisoned man receives an unexpected caller, after which "everything changed..." And the reader is hooked. But whether or not readers will stay on for the entire wild ride will depend on how well the writer structures the story, scene by scene. This book is your game plan for success. Using dozens of examples from his own work - including Dropshot,Tiebreaker and other popular novels - Jack M. Bickham will guide you in building a sturdy framework for your novel, whatever its form or length. You'll learn how to: • "worry" your readers into following your story to the end • prolong your main character's struggle while moving the story ahead • juggle cause and effect to serve your story action As you work on crafting compelling scenes that move the reader, moment by moment, toward the story's resolution, you'll see why... • believable fiction must make more sense than real life • every scene should end in disaster • some scenes should be condensed, and others built big Whatever your story, this book can help you arrive at a happy ending in the company of satisfied readers.

The Speed of Light

The Speed of Light PDF Author: Elizabeth Rosner
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307417417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Every family has a story. Every story, eventually, must be told. For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister, Paula, lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a devastating secret too painful to share. Though their father took his demons to the grave, his past refuses to rest. As adults, brother and sister struggle to find their voices. A scientist governed by numbers and logic, Julian now lives an ordered life of routine and seclusion. My father gave up his language and his homeland. But he carried his sadness with him, under his skin. It was mine now. In contrast, Paula has entered the world as eagerly as Julian retracts from it. An aspiring opera singer, she is always moving, buoyant with sound. Singing was the only gift I could offer to my father. I filled the house with music. I tried to give him joy. . . . Yet both their lives begin to change on a Wednesday, miercoles, the day that sounds like miracles. Before embarking on a European opera tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to stay at her place--and to look after Julian in the apartment above. Yet Sola, too, has a story. I want to clean myself like the window of a house, make myself clear for things to pass through. Flat and quiet. As Paula uncovers pieces of her father's early life in Budapest and the horrifying truth of his past, Julian bears witness to Sola's story--revelations that help all three learn how to both surrender and revere the shadows that have followed them for so long. The Speed of Light is a powerful debut about three unforgettable souls who overcome the tragedies of the past to reconnect with one another and the world around them. In an extraordinary accomplishment, Elizabeth Rosner has created a novel of love and redemption that proves the pain of the untold story is far greater than even the most difficult truth.

The Pace of Fiction

The Pace of Fiction PDF Author: Brian Gingrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198858280
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
The Pace of Fiction redefines the literary history of the novel by analyzing its most elaborate feature: its pace. It moves from the rise of the novel to realism and modernism. It starts by tracing the evolution of two narrative units: scenes (shown slowly) and summaries (told swiftly). These units emerge from the conflict of epic and drama, gain shape in the commentaries of Fielding and Goethe, and become dynamically opposed in nineteenth-century realism. In Middlemarch, they rotate in regular sequence: summaries move swiftly until scenes slow them down; scenes play out dramatically until summaries sweep them forward; their movement imitates the conflict of fate and free will. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, scenic impulses overtake summary storytelling. The reader sees the tendency already in Austen's dialogues, Hawthorne's tableaux, or Balzac's battering drama, and finds it in Jane Eyre's placement of summaries in private scenes. When Flaubert extends scenic vividness to all of his summaries, and when Henry James subordinates his summaries to scenic consciousness, the extreme pressure of scene upon summary brings the opposition of realist pacing to collapse. But other oppositions arise in the modernisms that follow. In the alternation of stasis and kinesis, of drifting thoughts and everyday actions, of stories and acts of storytelling--in Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Mann, Hemingway--pace gathers and creates meaning in new ways.

Dig

Dig PDF Author: A.S. King
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101994932
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Medal ★“King’s narrative concerns are racism, patriarchy, colonialism, white privilege, and the ingrained systems that perpetuate them. . . . [Dig] will speak profoundly to a generation of young people who are waking up to the societal sins of the past and working toward a more equitable future.”—Horn Book, starred review “I’ve never understood white people who can’t admit they’re white. I mean, white isn’t just a color. And maybe that’s the problem for them. White is a passport. It’s a ticket.” Five estranged cousins are lost in a maze of their family’s tangled secrets. Their grandparents, former potato farmers Gottfried and Marla Hemmings, managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now they sit atop a million-dollar bank account—wealth they’ve refused to pass on to their adult children or their five teenage grandchildren. “Because we want them to thrive,” Marla always says. But for the Hemmings cousins, “thriving” feels a lot like slowly dying of a poison they started taking the moment they were born. As the rot beneath the surface of the Hemmings’ white suburban respectability destroys the family from within, the cousins find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name. With her inimitable surrealism, award winner A.S. King exposes how a toxic culture of polite white supremacy tears a family apart and how one determined generation can dig its way out.

Fiction Pacing

Fiction Pacing PDF Author: Rayne Hall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781713271192
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
This book teaches professional techniques for slowing down the pace for emotion and suspense, and for speeding it up for action and excitement Please note: this is an advanced-level book, not suitable for beginner writers.

Adaptation

Adaptation PDF Author: Pepper Pace
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781729038918
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Carmella was still a teen when the Motherships first appeared dotting the skies over the Earth. For years the world tried to normalize while the silent Motherships hovered. And then THEY arrived, promising that they meant no harm. But within ten years eighty percent of the world's population would be wiped out. Including everyone that Carmella loved.The 'blobs' took those that survived to another planet called Earth Two. But Carmella was an Earthling and she would kill the hated monsters that had destroyed her world before she would allow them to take her. Carmella settled into a lonely existence on the now desolate earth--all alone except for her wolf. And then she sees it hiding, watching her--maybe to capture her and remove her from the only thing that she can still call her own--her world.But Bilal is not like the other Centaurians. He is fully aware that he will never be like the humans that he's grown up with. Earth is the only home he knows and he feels that he is just as much an Earthling as any human. Shunned by his own kind, Bilal travels the Earth trying to capture an essence of the life that he could never be a part of and a world that would never accept him.When he sees the black woman living all alone his curiosity gets the best of him. He can not stop himself from watching her, and secretly growing more attached to the human. Bilal's quest to become human brings him to a decision that will forever change the course of human-kind. In an attempt to ease the woman's loneliness--or perhaps a need to recreate himself, Bilal impregnates the woman with his Alien DNA.

Dream House on Golan Drive

Dream House on Golan Drive PDF Author: David G. Pace
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781560852414
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
It is the year 1972, and Riley Hartley finds that he, his family, community, and his faith are entirely indistinguishable from each other. He is eleven. A young woman named Lucy claims God has revealed to her that she is to live with Riley's family. Her quirks are strangely disarming, her relentless questioning of their life incendiary and sometimes comical. Her way of taking religious practice to its logical conclusion leaves a strong impact on her hosts and propels Riley outside his observable universe toward a trajectory of self-discovery. Set in Provo and New York City during the seventies and eighties, the story encapsulates the normal expectations of a Mormon experience and turns them on their head. The style, too, is innovative in how it employs as narrator "Zed," one of the apocryphal Three Nephites who, with another immortal figure, the Wandering Jew of post-biblical legend, engage regularly in light-hearted banter and running commentary, animating the story and leavening the heartache with humor and tenderness.

The Bestseller Code

The Bestseller Code PDF Author: Matthew Jockers
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241243718
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
What if an algorithm could predict which manuscripts would become mega-bestsellers? Girl on the Train. Fifty Shades. The Goldfinch. Why do some books capture the whole world's attention? What secret DNA do they share? In The Bestseller Code, Archer and Jockers boldly claim that blockbuster hits are highly predictable, and they have created the algorithm to prove it. Using cutting-edge text mining techniques, they have developed a model that analyses theme, plot, style and character to explain why some books resonate more than others with readers. Provocative, entertaining, and ground-breaking, The Bestseller Code explores the hidden patterns at work in the biggest hits and, more importantly, the real reasons we love to read.

What Remains of Me

What Remains of Me PDF Author: A L Gaylin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473537991
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Irish Times top twenty crime novel of 2017 People don't need to know you're a murderer. They just have to think you could be... June 1980: 17-year-old Kelly Lund is jailed for killing Hollywood film director, John McFadden Thirty years later, Kelly is a free woman. Yet speculation still swirls over what really happened that night. And when her father-in law, and close friend of McFadden is found dead - shot through the head at point-blank range - there can only be one suspect. But this time Kelly has some high-profile friends who believe she's innocent of both crimes. But is she? 'You'll stay up late to read this' Laura Lippmann 'Full of crackling energy and heartache' Megan Abbott 'An exceptional book by an exceptional writer' Alex Marwood