Some Additional Suggestions By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes What is it in fiction that yields the most compelling dialogue? The creation of characters who achieve for us, as readers, an unparalleled distinctiveness, a certain something in…
Category: on prose writing
Writing Dialogue: Errors to Steer Clear of
(and Some Principles to Bear in Mind) By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Let’s begin by remembering— Effective dialogue in fiction is a created artifact; it is not a mere transcription of “things actually said.” Our “go-to”…
What Are They Talking About?
“Listening in” and Playing Catch-up: Writing (and Reading) Dialogue By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “I mean, like—y’know?…” It’s not fresh news to any writer of experience that readers of fiction are forever playing “catch-up.” Suspense—again, grounded,…
Whom to Doubt? What to Trust?
The Peculiar, Unwritten “Etiquette” of Speaking By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “To be, or not to be—that is the question.” (Hamlet, Act III, scene i, line 66) Erving Goffman offers us a marvelous distinction in the…
Smoothing the Way
Modulating Between Direct and Indirect Discourse By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes In the previous craft note, “Writing Dialogue: The Hidden Art in Plain View,” we explored the tonal qualities separating direct from indirect discourse, and as…
Writing Dialogue
The Hidden Art in Plain View By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “’… Well, what’s to be said?’ the Worm murmured to the Tortoise.” (Source unattributed) Few readers, indeed, will have even the faintest awareness of the…
The “Journey” of Reading
And the Function of Suspense By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes In “Disorientation and the Experience of Wonder,” we looked at the ways in which “travel” might be likened to our experience while we read—reading constituting a…
Being "Walled to a Stop"
Disorientation and the Experience of Wonder* By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes “We came up over the crest and were walled to a stop.” “Walled to a stop.” So Ivan Doig begins his powerful evocation of that…
A Novel in Notebooks
Review of Peter Selgin’s Duplicity By Jack Smith, WTP Guest Writer Duplicity by Peter Selgin (South Orange, NJ: Serving House Books, December 4, 2020; 396 pages; $17.95; ISBN 978-1947175433). The text of this novel is a found object of six composition notebooks, containing, states one Emeritus Professor Gayton F. Sinclair, PhD, in his Afterword, autobiography mixed…
Further Reflection on Metaphor
Metaphors as Affording us “Magnified Sight” and Related Considerations By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes In the previous craft note, we broached the question of how a metaphor might be given the proper space to breathe, the…
Reflecting on Metaphor
Giving a Metaphor Space to “Breathe” and Related Considerations By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street. And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,…
What Metaphor Can Do For Us
Part Two By WTP Writer Richard Wertime Woven Tale Press writer Richard Wertime reflects on the craft of fiction in an ongoing series of craft notes Read Part 1, “What Can Metaphor Do For Us?“ ~ On what basis does Proust argue that “metaphor alone can give a sort of eternity to style”? Let’s…