Narrative Strategies

At the most basic level, writing begins with a person, a place, or a thing.

Fiction: a story which is an act of imagination. It uses character, point of view, voice, setting, image, and plot. Point of view might be omniscient, third person (or third person limited), second person, or first person. Dialogue reveals character and the character's agenda. Exposition shows a character’s thoughts.

Essay: The word essay refers to a walk, or walkabout. It can be personal or impersonal. It is
intended to inform or enlighten the reader about a topic. Essays might present an argument (and refute other points of view) or it might be an essay of definition, description, cause/effect, classification, or a blend of these. The best essays examine one of life’s unanswerable questions.

Memoir: a slice of life (as opposed to an autobiography). Memoir often takes a more artistic form or pattern. Vivian Gornick distinguishes between a situation and a story, and she recommends
that writer create a narrator that is a truth-teller, not to brag or to communicate that she has a handle on the truth, but rather she or he investigates her or his own motives and actions. The "voice" is unique and compelling. See George Orwell's: "Shooting an Elephant," and James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son."

Poetry: can be narrative or simply imagistic, but it is a ‘patterned language.’ It has a sound
pattern (like alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, or figurative elements (metaphor) or a visual
pattern in its images or form. Paul Valery said the difference between poetry and prose is physiological. It is more connected to breath and oral tradition and sometimes ritual. The language of the poem is memorable, and the white space after line breaks and stanza breaks often are there to guide the breath and pace. The language in a poem is meant to create new meaning each time it is read, but the language of prose is meant to fall away once the meaning is delivered. 

Some poetry is “formal,” meaning it uses an established format like the sonnet which has a prescribed number of stanzas, lines and syllables per line, and the lines are in iambic meter (the heart beat rhythm). There are also other meters (trochaic, anapest, etc) and forms like villanelle, pantoum, ghazal, etc. Blank verse doesn’t have a specified form, line length, rhyme or stanza requirements, but it does iambic meter. Free verse refers to a poem without established patterns. The poet creates his or her own pattern.

Forms

ABC : The alphabet is used as the organizing principle. It’s A-Z. In poetry, it is called an
abecedarium and is a very old form often used for laments.

Advertisement: For example, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Yours can be like a commercial or a personals ad.

The Argument: the writing has a focus to persuade; examine other points of view and their limitations (to refute), and to promote one's idea and provide supports for that idea. See Lydia Davis's short fiction: "Letter to a Funeral Director"

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula Le Guin: a story of novel as a container or carrier bag:
https://stillmoving.org/resources/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

Curriculum Vitae: Use the form of a resumé for an autobiography. See poet Lisel Mueller’s
“Curriculum Vitae” https://poets.org/poem/curriculum-vitae

Character Sketch: This form was popular during the Progressive Era (early 1900s) and often
used by communistic/socialist publications. It’s a portrait of an individual without necessarily
adding a plot.

Chronology of events: events told in the order these have occurred

Cinematic: list of screen shots, a camera close-up, a camera long-distance view

Collage: assemblage of diverse elements (like “Just Add Water” exercise). Combine images, text
fragments, sensory details, and whatever else you like

Confession: An act of enumerating one’s failings in order to gain forgiveness and
understanding.

Comparison/Contrast: see Natalia Ginzburg: "He and I"

Classification: often used in essay to describe sub-types of a subject

Creation story: how things came to be; the beginning of the universe/world

Definition: explains something using description and classification. It can also use comparison,
contrast, and example.

Description: to provide a strong visual picture

Dream: One piece of advice: Do not end with “and then I woke up.” Let the mystery or dream
logic be.

Epistolary: using the form of a letter (or letters)

Fable: a brief story (usually about animals) that teaches a lesson, fables often use animals as the story's characters

Fairytale: a story might connect to a myth, Biblical story, urban myth, or well known cultural
story (Wizard of Oz, or It’s a Wonderful Life, Elvis)

Fantasy: a storytelling which features magic, the supernatural, or mythical beings; the setting can be past, present or future on earth or alternative universes

Graphic: graphic novels depend on both images & some text

Hybrid form: a combination of narrative forms or any of the modes of telling: a combination of fiction/nonfiction/essay

Instructions or Recipe: A how-to-do something

Inventory or List: Imposing a limitation on a piece of writing can sometimes yield excellent
results. It serves to focus a story, essay, or poem. Lorrie Moore, in her book Self Help, has
several fictional stories based on lists: “The Kids Guide to Divorce” and “How to Talk to Your
Mother.”

Letter: In a letter, a writer often can find an intimate voice, if it is to a friend. For an example of
a letter, see Lydia Davis’ “Letter to a Funeral Parlor.”

Narrative Verse: a story or legend told in poetry form, using line breaks, stanzas, and possibly attention to rhyme and meter

Prose poem: a brief writing that looks like prose (because it doesn't use line/stanza breaks) but often borrows other characteristics of poems: metaphors, images, sound patterns, manipulations of time, or associational leaps

Snapshot: one image, one moment, like a photograph

Travelogue: This describes a trip or journey, and not just the external places (things to see, places to go, foods) but generally, the internal trip or journey of the writer

Vignette: usually a page, a brief story

Writing Workshop for Women Veterans

Women Veterans are invited to a retreat at Giant's Ridge in Biwabik.

I will be teaching a writing workshop at this event, on Saturday May 5, 2018 from 3:00-5:00 pm.

Every veteran has a story to tell, and we welcome you.

*

Recently, the Washington Post reported the United States has 2 million women veterans, and once they are back from duty, their service is often unacknowledged or even forgotten in our culture. Their stories are just now beginning to emerge.





Read more at :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/female-veterans-say-its-their-time-to-write-the-memory-of-war/2018/03/30/bc8ea5d4-06a4-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?utm_term=.f397e128532f

Publishing opportunity for veterans: https://iowareview.org/veteranswritingcontest

Casting More Than One Shadow

Mary Oliver has described poetry as writing that casts more than one shadow.  By this phrase, she refers to the way that poems can yield more than one meaning. Recently, I found a corollary regarding short stories by Ricardo Piglia.

A short story [cuento] always tell two stories [historias].  In the classic short story, there is a visible story that has another secret story embedded inside of it. At the end, the secret story comes to the surface, producing an effect of surprise.  The two stories often operate with two different "systems of casuality."  The key elements function for both the presenting and the secret story.  The modern short story, according to Piglia, "abandons the surprise ending and the closed structure; it works the tension between the two stories without ever resolving it, telling "two stories as if they were one."  

Piglia, Ricardo.  "Theses on the Short Story."  New Left Review 70. 2011.  https://newleftreview.org/II/70/ricardo-piglia-theses-on-the-short-story

Storytelling on the Web: Choreotextographies

Reading and Writing

Reading and writing are the two sides of a text. Reading opens doors and writing crosses thresholds. Reading begets writing. For me, it is a steady chase. Writing begins with an insisting image or something stirred by conversation, between pages or words exchanged with a friend. I begin with no expectation—because that is the best way—simply moving my hand across the page, writing the most mundane things and in this process from somewhere comes a word or a phrase that I follow until I’m lost. Getting lost is necessary, and so is way-finding through dreams, associations, experiments, and reverie.

In books, I find stillness and escape. The lamp on my desk shines books splayed downward and others fallen in stair-step patterns up and down. Books I’ve read are turned titles down, spines to the right, and books I plan to read have titles up, spines to the right. I love to read sitting by a window turning the thick pages fragrant with the scent of libraries and women who wear glasses on delicate gold or silver chains.

Words written in long before arrive into a new encounter, like a letter found in a bottle. While reading, an intimate and silent dialogue occurs with the past or with another life experience. Here is part of an exquisite poem by C.P. Cavafy that uses the phrase "an invisible procession"--

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.

Aside from the narrative of a leader losing his country, aside from underlining the need to face one's losses with courage and other meanings, the poem identifies an individual's cascade of images, memories, and associations. As the world changes, we might apply this metaphor to our experience with old ways of publishing books and experiencing stories.  In our imagination, an invisible procession occurs that can lead to our own creative work. I want to create new works that are evocative and have openings that invite the reader to make multiple meanings. 

In the Digital Age

E-books are static—static as a print book (although this is changing)—and they do not give the reader the sensation of a unique object that pleases the sense of touch and smell. The web provides new and different perspectives and languages: virtual reality, online gaming, multiple media and interactivity. A story that goes from print to film often contracts. The visual language and music will carry meaning as well as the words. If that same story is used in interactive gaming, it will expand. 

Digital media offer new artistic opportunities to make the invisible processions visible. With an increasing range and breadth of communication and networks, we select and arrange multiple things, people, places, and experience. We see memes, and we like to participate. We like our videos to go viral. Curation is a system of collecting, organizing and presenting. Patterns have become more apparent and necessary.

As a poet writing on paper and an artist presenting in digital online environments, I consider the reading and writing exchange. I can best describe the web films I've worked on as innovative ways of reading. The projects arrive, and they depart in code. They are mobiles of text, sound, and image. I call these choreotextographies.

Choreotextography

I look for metaphors of movement: flows of rivers, wind, and water, bird and animal migrations, human travel and migrations. Also I’m drawn to transformations—metamorphosis, organic growth and decay, alchemy. Creative work can demand this same process. People change residences, relationships, and/or activities in order to complete an artistic work. Even the language conveys how radical the process can be: one executes a piece of art or music. The verb means a successful rendering but also it carries a shadow of death. The old way of being dies, and a new one arrives. We become part of the artistic piece at the same time as separating from it. Every creative work is an act of change.

Artists court change. Virginia Woolf said, "...we can read ... with another aim, not to throw light on literature ... but to refresh and exercise our own creative powers." Writers are good readers. Readers are open to enchantment and meditation. Readers are thinkers and dreamers. In the exchange, there is a potential transmission of energy and breath and intimacy that extends beyond one's life.  

This was originally published in Proof Magazine, 2014.

Weaving: Telling Not Just One Story

Weaving Text

Think of writing text as weaving. The result is fabric. The word text comes from a Latin verb texere,  to weave, braid, intertwine or compose. Words with the same root are texture and textile.  Writers are weaving together people, places, things and other stories.  My mother was a weaver, and I write. The texture of the writing reflects all of these things; these together with the personality comprises a writer's voice. The context has to do with time, place, community and purpose.  For Tillie Olsen and many women writers, the practice of incorporating other texts and stories acknowledges and honors the struggles of others. Olsen's mission was to lift the voices of those who are not in the history books. 

Hypertext and Intertext

The internet creates the opportunity for weaving. Hypertextuality can provide links to images, oral and written history, maps, other texts and stories; therefore, it increases content and provides more context.  Hypertext increases the intertextual links between stories.