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Ghost Stories Are Not About Ghosts
What’s the point of ghost stories? A really good and scary ghost story focuses me. It pulls me from my ordinary, self-focused fears and connects me with something older and more mysterious. Claire Cronin at Rumpus The ghost story was designed for the short form. It emerged a long time ago, from folklore and oral…
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What is a fractured fairytale?
A fractured fairy tale is a story which makes use of a traditional fairy tale but restructures and reimagines.
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The Cat Returns Storytelling Notes
The Cat Returns is a 2002 feature-length anime about a teenage girl who is transported against her will into a feline fantasy world after saving a cat’s life. Writer Aoi Hiiragi also wrote the script for Whisper of the Heart. This is a sort of sequel to that, where the main character writes this story. In written…
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Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley Analysis
This month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Today I continue with a selection of mentor texts to help kids see how it works. Yesterday I analysed the structure of an Australian bush ballad. Today I stay in Australia, with the modern picture book classic Diary of a Wombat…
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We Found A Hat by Jon Klassen Analysis
Earlier this month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Yesterday I looked closely at Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Sam and Dave Dig A Hole. Today’s picture book is We Found A Hat, which is similar to Sam and Dave Dig A Hole. In both stories, a dream sequence flings…
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What is the meaning of Save the Cat in storytelling?
Save The Cat was Blake Snyder’s term for screenwriters, though it’s used a lot by novelists, too. Snyder had the following advice when setting up a main character: Heroes should be introduced by a selflessly heroic moment in which they ‘save a cat’ or similar, to show they’re a good person. Blake Snyder The opening…
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Nice Does Not Equal Good
A lesson we must all learn at some point: ‘nice’ person does not equal ‘good’ person. I use these words as shorthand for ‘outwardly amenable’ and ‘morally generous’. Defining morality is a mammoth task in its own right and a nihilist might argue there’s no such thing as morality. I take the view that there is…
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What is an extradiegetic narrator?
Writers think in terms of point of view: omniscient, third person, first person, second person. Close third person, universal first person and so on. For most purposes, point of view as a concept does fine. But it’s worth taking a brief look at terminology used by narratologists. Every narratologist comes with their own terminology. The…
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My Summer Of Love Film Study
My Summer Of Love is a 2004 film based on a novel by Helen Cross set in 1984. If you’ve seen Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), My Summer Of Love bears similarities: A relationship of romantic infatuation between two teenage girls from very different backgrounds. This film puts the relationship between the girls to the forefront,…
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What are character flaws in fiction writing?
Most writers are well-aware that a main character needs a shortcoming. Christopher Vogler and other high profile story gurus often talk about a lack: It can be very effective to show that a hero is unable to perform some simple task at the beginning of the story. In Ordinary People the young hero Conrad is…
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How To Write Mystery
The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. Ken Kesey The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing. Raymond Chandler Mystery is the secret spice of all compelling…
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What is a heterotopia?
I have previously written about utopias, snail under the leaf settings, idylls and dystopias. I thought I had -topias covered. Then I came across the word heterotopia. What’s that, now? Foucault uses the term “heterotopia” to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye. In…
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What does Gothic mean in literature?
The Gothic is notoriously difficult to define. This is a type of story in constant flux. Each new literary period adds is own spin. “Gothic” is more like a skin layered upon other genres, most often: horror, romance, science fiction and fantasy. Where does one genre end and the gothic element begin?
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A Brief Taxonomy Of Book Titles
When writing a story, sometimes titles come easily, other times hard. This is something the self-published author has to think about. Traditionally published authors don’t need to get invested in the title. Marketing departments will decide for you. Here’s a secret: many, many, many titles are changed once a publisher gets hold of them. In…
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What is the meaning of hermeneutics?
The word ‘hermeneutical’ comes from the Greek word for ‘interpreter’ and means ‘pertaining to interpretation’. Every member of an audience interprets a text differently, depending on the life experience they bring. If you’re like me and you keep hearing this word and also keep forgetting what it means, a fix for that to simply replace…