Welcome

My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Elements of Craft


26 letters and 14 pieces of punctuation form libraries of masterpieces.  The only trick is the ordering.

One of the true paradoxes of art is that any art form is a holistic composite of many elements that are woven together.  In fact, a measure of good art is an almost invisible and seamless cooperation between those elements to all work towards the same impact.  The gestalt of the art transcends the measure of its discrete elements by leaps and bounds.  However, art can rarely be either richly understood or taught without breaking those elements down to examine them with some scrutiny, creating a false sense of boundary between them.  Dissecting art into its elements is like putting pins through individual butterfly species to examine them.  You have to do it to understand them, but it is nothing compared to the majesty of standing in a field while myriads of monarchs, satyrs, and metalmarks explode as a gush of color into the Arkansas sky around you.

When we examine fiction with the intent of improving our own craft, it becomes essential for us to look at the discrete parts as well as how they are all working together.  These elements are similar to literary analysis, but often use an even higher "magnification."

You have 26 letters and 14 pieces of punctuation.  With those forty symbols, rearranged, we can create anything from The Bell Jar to Sonnet 23 to Animal Farm.  So here is where I will do my best to explain the the elements that writers use, consciously or not, as the threads they weave into their craft.

Concrete Imagery
Significant Detail
Filter your Filtering
Prose Rhythm
The Punctum (easier to show than explain) Ex 1, Ex 2 (Say Something)
Tone
Narrative Distance

Related Articles

Tropeception
Character Driven Zombie Stories (Mailbox)
Fridging: Who's dying for Whom?


If you're enjoying this blog, and would like to see more articles like this one, the writer is a guy with a rent and insurance to pay who would love to spend more time writing. Please consider contributing to My Patreon. As little as $12 a year (only one single less-than-a-cup-of-coffee dollar a month) will get you in on backchannel conversations, patron-only polls, and my special ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

No comments:

Post a Comment