ELECTIVE 2: Creative Writing

WEEK 11

Learning Outcomes/Objectives:

a. Define narrator in their own words.

b. Recognize the importance of narrator in the story.
c. Analyze stories on the basis of the different elements.

Discussion:

Lesson 3: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: SHORT STORIES

About the story, Nadine Gordimer wrote, “how the characters will appear, think, behave,
comprehend, tomorrow or any other time in their lives, is irrelevant”. The luxury of short story writing lies
in its close attention to the moment, rather than to the continuous, complex life story. But shorter fiction can
give a sense of significant change in the life-direction. What characters do afterwards will be affected by what
happens to them on the day of the story. Because something has happened, they will be different, a trace will
have been left, even though what has happened may be no more than a phone-call, or an unopened letter.

Event, threat, crisis, turning point: these are the structural pressures compelling a piece of action, a
stretch of experience, into story-like shape.

Lesson 4: NARRATIVE IMAGE AND PROGRESSION IN LONGER

FICTION

In longer fiction, readers are usually prepared to move through a good deal more of this supplementary
narrative background. The central characters might be involved in various side-issues, minor but significant.
The point of this material is to create a pervasive image or impression of life as it is being lived in this particular
region, city, culture, or group, under the usual conditions. The narrative image is made up of these supplements,
each of which can be entertaining, colourful and suspenseful in their own right. But it’s out of these, at some
point, that the main story develops, moves to crisis. A slowly narrowing vortex of action brings the main
characters together, draws them out of their separate lives towards a position that will see those lives closely
entwined. With escape routes cut off, confrontation follows. The aim of the writer will be to find a way of
drawing his or her characters to this point of narrative progression, and one that is consistent with the overall
narrative image, with the way life is being lived by people like this in this part of the world at this particular
time. A major event: wedding, funeral, feast, reunion, or a departure of some kind, imposes structure on the
lives of the characters, forcing them to adopt a position towards it and each other.

Fiction and Anecdote

Many writers draw on their own experiences as sources for fiction, and there are clear parallels between
fiction writing and personal narrative.

The social context of anecdote involves certain specific terms and conditions: the speaker is helping a
known group of friends and associates to catch up on some recent information about his or her own life, on
what has recently been happening to the speaker – the next instalment, as it were. The context implies
continuity. With anecdotes, communication continues after the telling.
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With fiction writing, communication has not been established previously, will not continue afterwards,
and does not rely on the listeners’ or readers’ prior acquaintance with the settings and characters of the
narrative.

The fiction writer will inevitably be more interested in developing the message or meaning of a piece for
a general reader unknown to her or him personally. We also expect the characters to exist to a degree
independently of the teller and her or his audience of friends.

Camera Perspective

With this, we are enabled to see the characters from a distance, to hear their speech, to sense how a
camera is moving in close to them, moving away, pausing on certain details. We visualize a scene. The story
draws on the same techniques that we find in the visual media.

Narrators

In third person narrative, are you:

a. Standing far away from the characters, seeing a large section of their life history in one panoramic shot?
b. Standing very close to the characters, an eye-witness watching how they behave, where they stand, what
they say, what they are doing from second to second?
c. Standing right inside their heads, so that you are describing the world through their eyes and in their
own words?

The first two positions are called external narration or external focalisation, and the third internal
narration or character focalisation.

Focalisation implies a camera position.

In third person narrative, it is very important to realize that you do possess this cinema-like power of
attention to a scene and its characters; you can make decisions about where you stand, what you see, what you
choose not to see, or which character’s vision to inhabit.

Character Rhythm

This alternative approach can appear more attractive to writer because for one thing it doesn’t so directly
involve the technical business of narration change: external to internal, control over viewing position,
visualisation. The approach here is more painterly, less photographic. Words move over the page like brush-
strokes, and trace with their speed, slowness and adjustment the rhythm of a character’s recurrent patterns of
behaviour. The reader gets to know the character from the inside as well as from the outside.

In this approach you are using first-person ‘I’ narration, the narrator must be a character with strong
presence. Character rhythm holds clear implications for what happens in a story. Instead of writing about the
characters, the writer is producing their rhythm, and the character’s whole life will be present in that rhythm.
With this approach, you really do have the opportunity to find out what it’s like being someone else. A
character’s rhythm may change, be sometimes harmonious, sometimes discordant, and can be altered by
circumstances.

Rhythm and story structure are interdependent: one creates the other. Characters must interact with each
other and the world.
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Dialogue

Character rhythm always moves along a central line that deals to dialogue, but may not reach until
circumstances make speech necessary. Dialogue occurs as one of the signs of characters interacting, so that if a
short story begins, as it might, with dialogue and the interaction is stressful, then to show conflict the writer will
be relying on dialogue alone.

Delay and Suspense

Suspense is often associated with genre fiction: crime, thriller, mystery, especially with threats of
violence or physical danger, but stories can still produce suspense without being classed as such. Delay is a
narrative effect, a technique of writing that generates immediate suspense. Delay can focus attention by
manipulating details that excite, but do not fulfil our expectations.

As a device, delay cannot operate unless readers are given some goal, some target of expectation.
Suspense writing operates by telling us what to expect, and finally supplying what we expect.

Foregrounding

All stories aim to achieve impact, and in loner stories there may be several points where impact occur. It occurs
when a speech, image or event is foregrounded for us; it stands out and becomes significant and memorable.
The writer wishes the reader to finish the story and carry away something: an image, a judgement, a face, a
decisive speech. Foregrounding can serve to underline a story’s basic motif such as the invitation motif.