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True Grit Film Study (1969)
When iconic Australian film critics Margaret and David reviewed the 2010 film True Grit they did enjoy it, but couldn’t see the point of a remake. The 1969 original stood the test of time, so they said. That’s what made me watch the original. Turns out the 1969 film is benign enough to watch with my…
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Who is the main character?
Most of us writing about story pick one of the following terms and stick with it: On this blog I use these terms at random, though I’ve started to drift away from ‘hero’ in favour of ‘main character’. When I learned that, correctly, ‘protagonist’ means ‘the character who starts the action’, I dropped it completely,
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Definition of Anagnorisis and Other Similar Words
Anagnorisis is a moment in a work of fiction when a character makes a critical discovery. Even for plotters rather than pantsers, this is the part of writing that often emerges in the process of storycrafting.
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How To Write An Unlikeable Main Character
In a previous post I wrote about how to make a character likeable. This is basically an expansion on that post, because when you’re writing an unlikeable character, you’re using the exact same tricks, except more of them. Then, when you’ve exhausted your toolkit, your morally repugnant character can get on with the job of
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Narration and Storytelling: Diegetic Levels
When discussing ‘diegetic levels’ of a story, imagine a ground floor. Level zero. All events and characters featured on this level are part of the story. Level zero is the normal, basic narrative level in a text. A story may not have any other levels, but it will at least have a ground floor. This…
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Popular Kids In Stories For Adolescents
Children’s literature is at the vanguard of change; ‘children are the future’ and all that. For children, ‘popular’ means something different. A NEW DEFINITION OF POPULAR My daughter is a Sims fan. As I ambled past the PC she announced that she’d discovered how to become popular on Sims 3. Since she’s a little too
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Pax by Sara Pennypacker Novel Study
Pax is a middle grade novel by Sara Pennypacker about a boy and a fox who embark upon a mythic journey to reunite after Pax is abandoned in the woods. Structurally, Pax is the middle grade equivalent of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
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The Influence of The Lovely Bones on Modern Literature
The emphasis in the First Golden Age [of children’s literature] was very much on being healthy in mind and body – if a child became sick, he or she usually got well as part of their story. Today’s reader has no such encouragement. There is an alarming trend in what has been termed “sick-lit” which
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The Ideology Of Persistence In Children’s Literature Analysis
If you work hard you will find success. Persistence leads to success is a comforting truism, because we feel the future is under our own control. Work hard, you win. An episode of a Freakonomics podcast provides a strong, economically sound argument for sometimes giving up. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a book for
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Humour Writing And Spongebob Squarepants
SpongeBob Squarepants is a fast-paced children’s cartoon for a dual audience, written by a guy who is also a marine biologist. This is a highly successful and long-running show, with humour that broadly appeals. This series has been running since 1999. Critics say the show has been declining in quality in the last few years,
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Welcome To Camp Nightmare Storytelling Study
R.L. Stine has written a huge number of horror books for middle grade and young adult readers. I was a bit old for them when they first came out, though I recollect reading one or two. Now I’ll read some of his works to see how, exactly, Stine took the horror genre and bowdlerized it
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Moral Dilemmas And Children’s Stories
What Is A Moral Dilemma? Philosophers are especially concerned with moral dilemmas, and ask the following question: Is it possible to do a morally wrong action in order to do what is morally required? Various branches of philosophy disagree on the answer to that question. Some believe the question itself contains a paradox, rendering the
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Ghosts, Flaws and the Psychic Wound in Fiction
There are various words to describe the event from a main character’s past which holds them back in the present: the fatal flaw, the psychic wound, the ghost. “Our culture believes strong individuals can transcend their circumstances. I myself don’t much enjoy books by Hardy or Dreiser or Wharton, where the outside world is so
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The Juniper Tree by Lorrie Moore Analysis
“The Juniper Tree” is a short ghost story by American writer Lorrie Moore, published in the collection Bark (2014). Or is it a ghost story? I interpret this story as a metaphor for the death of middle-aged friendship, and the mourning process one goes through when deciding to let a friend go. WHAT HAPPENS IN
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Birds In Children’s Literature
Birds occupy a special place in children’s stories, as they do in the Bible, in folklore and in fairytales. Are they good or are they evil? No other creature has so successfully been both, equally. If you’re writing a children’s story, you can do what you like with birds. Whereas dogs as companions in children’s