Fiction Writing Master Class by William Cane

Author:William Cane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media

There’s no rule saying you shouldn’t ever use these words, but being aware that they can lead to subordination can help you spot problems that are easily fixed with a little Hemingwayesque rewriting.

THE LOOK OF YOUR PAGES

How often do you step back from your work and look at the pages you’re writing? I mean actually look at them from a distance. “What good is that?” you say. “I wouldn’t be able to read the words!” That’s precisely the point. When you’re far away you don’t see the words, all you have is a sense of how the pages look—something that’s actually more important than you might think.

One of Hemingway’s little-known tricks of the trade was to be aware of the appearance of his pages. He didn’t like fat paragraphs. Instead he relied heavily on dialogue, especially short lines of dialogue between two characters. This technique is actually more than two thousand years old and was invented by the ancient Greek dramatists, who called it stichomythia, literally short lines of poetry or dialogue. You’ll find plenty of stichomythia in Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and other ancient Greek dramatists. Here’s an example from Aeschylus’ The Choephori.

Clytemnestra: So, you plan to murder your own mother?

Orestes: You are the one murdering yourself.

Clytemnestra: Beware the fury of a mother’s curse.

Orestes: What of my father’s fury if I don’t avenge him?

Clytemnestra: I gave birth to a snake not a son.

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