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Tag Archives: carol emshwiller
Class Notes from Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction Stories – Week One
I’ll be posting notes after each Wednesday session, which all three classes can use to ask questions about or comment on what we covered. I encourage the students to hop into the discussion here, but it’s also open to the public.
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3 Things That End A Story Well
1. Circularity is a big help. It provides a sense that the reader has returned to the beginning, but now everything is changed. Here’s a cheat – take something that appears in your first three paragraphs and invoke it in your last three as well. It can be changed – the rose that initially trembled, dew-covered, as our heroine picked it is now lying withered and flat in the road. Or it is a new rose, being picked by another woman who is the replacement for the first? Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Tagged carol emshwiller, circularity, ebooks, how to end a story, joe hill, kindle, pat cadigan, story endings, writing, writing good endings
21 Comments
5 Things To Do In Your First 3 Paragraphs
Display your command of language. It’s worthwhile for a writer to think about poetry, and all its devices like assonance and alliteration, metaphor and allusion, internal rhythm, even meter. Save scraps of speech that you like, stud those paragraphs with wonderful things and spend with wild abandon from your store, because this is the make or break moment, when your reader decides whether or not to continue. You cannot lavish enough attention on your reader in the form of these paragraphs. Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Tagged beginnings, book lists, carol emshwiller, james tiptree jr, kelly link, kindle, paragraphs, reading, teaching, thomas m. disch, writing, writing exercises
25 Comments
