Tag: Story

Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 4: Self Within the universe of a novel, its author is a kind of god, an elemental force directing the fates of characters, conjuring crises and granting reprieves. She creates life… people who jump from the text to walk into the imaginations of readers. Protagonists who exist independently of her, continuing to make friends from the printed page long after their author has expired. In my previous posts for the Southerly I have discussed elements of the story which may be discovered in and through the creative process of writing. In this instalment I’m turning the…

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Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 3: Plot The supremacy of characterisation over plot or plot over characters is an old and worn argument. At one end of the spectrum there are those who consider plot merely a tool by which character is developed, at the other those who hold that characters are simply generic cogs in the machinery of a plot. Some writers develop detailed plans broken down by chapter and scene; others start at the first word of a novel and just write till it’s finished. Most writers and readers exist somewhere between. I tend not to know what the…

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Discovery through Story

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by Sulari Gentill Part 2: Characters When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. – Ernest Hemmingway In the space of time it takes to read a book, the reader comes to know a character, to discover his or her strengths and flaws, fears and dreams, to make a friend or find a foe. For every hour that the gentle reader spends this way, the author must spend many days discovering the person they have created. The process by which each author does this varies from those who first map…

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