9780415317856_the_routledge_creative_writing_coursebook

www.ATIBOOK.irThe routledge creative writing coursebook 116point, that the main story develops, moves to its crisis. A slowly narrowing vortex ofaction brings the main characters together, draws them out of their separate lives towardsa position that will see those lives closely entwined. With escape routes cut off,confrontation follows. The aim of the writer will be to find a way of drawing his or hercharacters to this point of narrative progression, and one that is consistent with the overallnarrative image, with the way life is being lived by people like this in this part of theworld at this particular time. A major event: wedding, funeral, feast, reunion, or adeparture of some kind, imposes a structure on the lives of the characters, forcing them toadopt a position towards it and each other. One of the best examples of this structure isJonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections, where brothers and sisters meet for a lastfamily Christmas together. It’s also used by Roddy Doyle in The Woman Who WalkedInto Doors and Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, a novel where progression is delayed, for goodreasons, until quite late on in the story. In the stories by Kay and Carver, one character(Melanie’s father, and the woman on the phone) have been removed completely from thescene, and the gap generates focus and interest. In Doyle’s novel, Paddy Clark’s storyends when his father returns, now separated from the family, for a visit. But Paddy’schildhood has now come to an end, with a major shift of lives.Fiction and AnecdoteMany writers draw on their own experience as sources for fiction, and there are clearparallels between fiction writing and personal narrative. But at some point we will needto acknowledge a distinction between fiction and other literary forms of narrative, as wellas between these and non-literary forms such as the anecdote. Can we discuss these formsin terms of differences of content, or should we focus instead on their differenttechniques? Suppose, for example, that you have just failed your driving test for the thirdtime and are telling your friends about it. If you then used this material in a short story,would you intend to shape the narrative differently, produce a more literary style, usethird-person rather than first-person narrative? Or would your aim be to change theevents themselves, add to them, subtract from them? What would you alter to make itsound like fiction?My suspicion is that readers expecting a short story would not be wholly satisfied ifthey found themselves reading about your driving test, however brilliantly you expressedyour version of events. The reasons behind my suspicion derive from the notion thatnarratives, like language itself, always operate within a social context. The social contextof anecdote involves certain specific aims and conditions: the speaker is helping a knowngroup of friends and associates to catch up on some recent information about his or herown life, on what has recently been happening to the speaker—the next installment, as itwere. The context will also suggest that those listening could follow up with anecdotes oftheir own if they wanted to; the context implies continuity. With anecdotes,communication continues after the telling, just as it was already established before it.Both these conditions differ from those implied by fiction writing, where communicationhas not been established previously, will not continue afterwards, and does not rely on thelistener’s or reader’s prior acquaintance with the settings and characters of the narrative.The fiction writer will inevitably be more interested in developing the message ormeaning of a piece for a general reader unknown to her or him personally. We are