Discussion – Week 3

Elements of the Craft of Writing

The narrator’s point of view is the reader’s window into the soul of your story. Combined with the tone of voice, characterization, and dialogue, these elements of the craft of writing give your story believability and interest. How can you combine the elements of the craft with the elements of the short story and the techniques of development you learned about in Weeks 1 and 2? In this Discussion, you will understand point of view, tone of voice, characterization, and dialogue and examine how other writers use these elements of craft to improve their work.

To prepare for this Discussion: Review the assigned portions of Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7 in Shaping the Story. Review “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor, “Mericans” by Sandra Cisneros, and “Why I Like Country Music” by James Alan McPherson in Shaping the Story. Reflect on the voice in the assigned stories. How would you describe the voice in each short story? How do these voices demonstrate what the authors are saying about the main issues of each story? Reflect on the similarities and differences in the ways that the authors use dialogue to establish character presence.

Consider the issues that each story discusses. How do these issues shape the characters and affect the light in which they are seen at the beginning and the end of the story? 

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 3: 2 to 3 paragraphs comparing and contrasting different approaches to two of the following elements in two of the three stories in the Week 3 reading.. Be sure to cite at least two specific examples from your readings. Point of View  Tone of Voice  Characterization Dialogue 

Be sure to support your ideas by connecting them to the week’s Learning Resources, or something you have read, heard, seen, or experienced.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.

Respond by Day 5 to at least one of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways: Ask a probing question. Share an insight from having read your colleague’s posting. Offer and support an opinion. Validate an idea with your own experience. Make a suggestion. Expand on your colleague’s posting.

Return to this Discussion in a few days to read the responses to your initial posting. Note what you have learned and/or any insights you have gained as a result of the comments your colleagues made.

REPLY QUOTE 18 days agoChad Husted WALDEN INSTRUCTOR MANAGER Tips for the week 3 discussion (read before you post)COLLAPSE

Great job so far, class! I’ve really enjoyed your first two weeks of discussion posts.

Now we will shift our focus to even more tools we can use in our own stories, but first, we will see how they play out in the work of others.

Make sure you do all the readings for the week before posting anything, and also, go through and ask yourselves all the questions (above) from the “to prepare for the discussion” section of the instructions. I will paste these (and the specific assignment requirements) below for convenience.

To prepare for this Discussion: Review the assigned portions of Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7 in Shaping the Story. Review “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor, “Mericans” by Sandra Cisneros, and “Why I Like Country Music” by James Alan McPherson in Shaping the Story. Reflect on the voice in the assigned stories. How would you describe the voice in each short story? How do these voices demonstrate what the authors are saying about the main issues of each story? Reflect on the similarities and differences in the ways that the authors use dialogue to establish character presence.

Consider the issues that each story discusses. How do these issues shape the characters and affect the light in which they are seen at the beginning and the end of the story? 

With these thoughts in mind:

Post by Day 3: 2 to 3 paragraphs comparing and contrasting different approaches to two of the following elements in two of the three stories in the Week 3 reading.. Be sure to cite at least two specific examples from your readings. Point of View  Tone of Voice  Characterization Dialogue 

Point of view, voice, characterization, and dialogue can really add a lot of personality to your story and make it unique, so put some thought into these elements of writing short fiction and think about how you can use these tools in your own writing.

The goal here is not to completely over haul what you alredy have going in your stories, but to reflect you back to the draft with some specific things to think about. Your style, tone of voice, use of dialogue, and the details, actions, observations, descriptions, etc. that you use to develop round, organic characters–these things are already happening in your stories. Now think about them individually and make minor tweaks/adjustments to ones that you think can have a positive effect on your story.

Do you already have a unique, quirky tone of voice emerging? If so, pay attention to it, and cultivate it for the benefit of your story.

Does the POV you chose to tell your story in feel correct? If not, there is still time to make a shift. I had a story once that just wouldn’t come around, and the solution I finally hit on was to change it from a first person POV story to a close, third person POV story. Once I made this change, the dominos fell into place and other improvements followed.

Are you using enough (or too much dialogue) and do your characters have distinctive, interesting, and telling lines (they shouldn’t all sound the same)?

These are some considerations to carry back to your own drafts after we complete this discussion and you start revision your own work in progress.

In your main post this week, make sure you use two specific examples (quotes, summaries, or paraphrases) from the readings, and try to cite these examples with both in-text and reference citations. 

Feel free to post, e-mail, or call if you are having trouble, want to talk through your story or a problem you are trying to solve in it, or if you just want to ask questions or bounce an idea off someone. I am here to help!

Chad.