I’m reading a book by Francine Prose called, “Reading Like a Writer.” While her focus is large literary and academic, Prose caught my eye with many of the excerpts she chose from renown writers like Hemingway, Virginia Wolf and Rebecca West, among others. What stood out to me? Passive writing. Here’s a snippet from Rebecca West: He could not see her. She was sitting on the bottom of the step, and she was content that it should be so, as otherwise he would have told her either to sit up straight or not so straight. His criticism was not so urgent as other people’s was apt to be, but it was continuous. This short piece is from the middle of a longer paragraph with much of the same phrasing: it […]
Read the RestArchive | December, 2007
Ask the Doc: How to tighten the suspense noose!
Q: My most vexing issue is figuring out how to tighten the noose (build the suspense) toward the end of the novel leading up to the climax scene. A: Don’t you just love movies where you’re on the edge of your seat, eyes glued to the screen, thinking, how could this get any worse? We think of classics like Die Hard, and Hunt for Red October, and Frequency, and one of my newest favorites, the Cell. But really, all dramas, and even comedies operate on this principle. Of course, instead of risking the life of a character, a comedy risks their reputation and status quo. Still, the structure is similar…each situation brings the character further and further from their goal. Some of my favorite television shows (and most stressful!) are […]
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