Story Structure

We’ve been looking at elements of prose narrative – rather than verse – form recently. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. Just Google ‘story structure’, for example, and you’ll be snowed under with ‘How to’s’. A few results that tickled my fancy…

Many of the issues we discussed around how narratives can be structured – as well as many other elements of story like characterisation etc – are touched on here.

Another wide-ranging summary of elements that make up narrative can be found here.

And finally, a very schematic – even simplistic – but nevertheless interesting discussion of the novel form can be found here.

Happy hunting.

Short short fiction

Folks - enjoyed last night's look at short short stories. I actually learnt a lot, I think, and hope some of you found it thought-provoking. Feel free to post drafts of 'homework' here...

If you're in need of inspiration, you might want to read Dave Eggers giving some background to the pieces he wrote for The Guardian.

For a more sceptical look at the short short story ‘boom’ in the US, try this essay.

And taking it to the limit, some micro micro fiction (six-word science fiction stories from Wired magazine).

Poetry by Category

The Elmore Leonard dos and don'ts (see the previous post) are geared for prose writers - though there's good advice there for poets and playwrights too. But I've just come across this Beginners' Guide on the website of Bloodaxe Books: it's a pretty simplistic but still useful guide to different approaches taken by contemporary poets, and for those of you who're very new to poetry it may work as a 'taster' and/or suggest approaches you could experiment with yourself.