THIS TOPIC IS INSPIRED BY DISCUSSIONS IN THE FORUM about the use of pseudonyms by members of Writers’ Dock. The use of avatars is closely linked to this and it seems logical to examine this in some detail. Descent in Human Form: Avatar is a Sanskrit word rooted in the Hindu concept of ‘descent [...]
EZRA POUND (1885 – 1972), THE AMERICAN POET AND CRITIC MAKES THIS OBSERVATION about the language used by fellow American poet, Walt Whitman: You can learn more of nineteenth century America from Whitman than any other writers . . . The only way to enjoy Whitman thoroughly is to concentrate on his fundamental meaning. If you [...]
GOLDEN LANGUR CONSIDERS WHAT THE TITLE OF A WRITTEN PIECE LENDS TO THE WHOLE. A. L. Kennedy, the judge of 2011 Bridport Short Story and Flash Fiction Prize, commented: A number of writers seemed to have real difficulty finding a title that would help them . . . She went on to say that the [...]
STORY TELLING IS AS HOARY AS THEY COME. But, before the Renaissance, the voice of the storyteller was that of the religious-cultural orthodoxy of the time. In his magnum opus, The Dialogic Imagination, Mikhail Bakhtin (1865-1975), a Russian scholar of literature and language, whose works have influenced theories of the narrative in western literature, argued [...]
STEPHEN KING, THE WELL-KNOWN AMERICAN WRITER, says that a writer must write the type of book/poetry that he/she wants to read. In his work, Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold (1822 – 88), the English poet and literary critic, argued that a society needs more than the gratification of the individual, more than scientific knowing and [...]
IN ONE OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, the narrator steps back in time and recreates the sights, sounds, smells and landscape of his childhood. Indeed, this work has given rise to the literary concept of ‘Proustian moment’, which is an intense reliving of the past in [...]
WRITERS’ DOCK FORUM HIGHLIGHT The Christmas season is upon us and that means a Writers’ Dock seasonal affair of writing. Whether you’re a member or not yet a member, you’re invited to write yourself and other forum users a Christmas food themed story. The host area for these stories is the one known as Savage [...]
US AUTHOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY WAS FAMOUSLY ECONOMICAL IN HIS STYLE. He was once challenged, supposedly for the price of his bar bill, to write a complete story in only six words. Hemingway rose to the challenge brilliantly: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. The science fiction writer, Frederic Brown, is also credited with writing one [...]
HOLLY HOWITT-DRING’S STUDY OF MICRO WRITING, Making Micro Meanings – Reading and Writing Microfiction, is excerpted in this article in edited form. Despite its increasing popularity in anthologies, microfiction is not as recent a form as some may imagine, as it has historical precedents in Japan, China, Latin America and Europe, where it has been [...]
HOLLY HOWITT-DRING’S STUDY OF MICRO WRITING, Making Micro Meanings – Reading and Writing Microfiction, is excerpted in this article, by kind permission of the author. One feature often seen as the definitive hallmark of microfiction, is the ‘twist’: [T]he twist ending allows the writer to pack some punch at the end of the story. [...]
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