Let’s talk about sex.
Who we are and how we feel about things drives what we write. Narrative perspective isn’t just about character point of view and verb construction, it’s about the author sees the world.
This is particularly important when we write about gender and sex. Our sexuality can empower our stories, creating vibrancy, passion and authenticity. But it can also lead to bad writing, dreadful stereotypes and hackneyed characterisation.
To show you what I mean I’m going to share a series of my own drawings, based on images from Frank Miller’s marvellous Sin City graphic novels. I will use them to demonstrate a technique that will help you to shake up your own biases, and energise your stories and characters.
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English is a subject/object structured language. A normal English sentence goes like this: Subject -> Action -> Object. But, because English is a wonderfully flexible language, we are allowed to re-order our sentences. We can hide both subject and object within subtle layers of meaning. So how do you choose your sentence structure? And why have years of academic writing left me struggling with my fiction edit?
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This is the final part of my 5-part beginner’s guide to musical writing. How can we use sound and rhythm to create beautiful writing? So far I’ve explored the use of stress and sound to create patterns and rhythm, both in individual phrases and then how to draw it together to produce cadence in a scene. In this final part I’m going to bite the bullet and try to give an example of how to take a bare bones scene and make it musical. I’m not promising great writing (would that I could). But you should be able to see the musical process in action, and then steal it and do something better. Good luck!
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This is part 4 of my beginner’s guide to musical writing. How can we use sound and rhythm to create beautiful writing? Parts 1 and 2 looked at the building blocks; stress, alliteration, assonance and repetition to create satisfying patterns. Part 3 starts pulling these things together with the concept of cadence. In this part I will talk about how cliché and rhetorical figure can be used to create pattern, and how building a toolbox of rhetoric sets you on the path to writing musical dialogue.
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This is part 3 of my beginner’s guide to musical writing. How can we use sound and rhythm to create beautiful writing? Parts 1 and 2 looked at the building blocks; stress, alliteration, assonance and repetition to create satisfying patterns. Part 3 starts pulling these things together with the concept of cadence. How do we build an overall pattern, and how to unify it with a satisfying final note?
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