The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing Instructor’s Manual, Schemes and Mind Maps of Creative writing

Download The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing Instructor’s Manual and more Schemes and Mind Maps Creative writing in PDF only on Docsity! The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing Instructor’s Manual Prepared by the author of The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing, Dr Tara Mokhtari 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 1 03/10/2014 14:36 Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Chapter by Chapter Notes and Reading Lists 3 3. Bonus Exercises or Assessment Tasks 8 4. Glossary 13 5. Online Media 19 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 2 03/10/2014 14:36 2. Chapter by Chapter Notes and Reading Lists This section will explain how some of the exercises in each chapter relate to exercises in other chapters. A list of readings used in each chapter is included, but these shouldn’t limit students from reading a range of comple- mentary texts set by instructors and sourced independently. 2.0. Introduction Readings: Alison Flood, “Philip Roth tells young writer ‘don’t do this to yourself’,” in The Guardian online edition (UK: 16 November 2012) Charles Bukowski, “So You Want to be Writer,” in Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way (New York: HarperCollins, 2009) 2.1. Chapter 1: Writing and Knowledge The point to the exercises in this chapter is the creation of a sort of creative knowledge database that students can refer back to for material for the exercises in the following chapters in The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing. Most of the exercises are intended to be completed within 15 or 20 minutes, which doesn’t allow much conceptualization time; so, by collating a series of brainstormed lists in Chapter 1, students will have fallback material should they fail to have a gut-reaction idea to future exercises. The Stream of Consciousness exercise, particularly, is the foundation for later guided stream-of-consciousness- based exercises in the Reflection Writing and Feature Planning sections of Chapter 2, the discussions and exercises in Chapter 3, and culminating in an exercise in Chapter 4 which asks the student to use the best parts of previous stream of consciousness exercises in the development of voice. All of these exercises are suitable for in-class or homework tasks, and might provide an interesting forum for students to get to know each other before plunging into more intensive workshop situations. Readings: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, unabridged edition, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1965) Matsuo Bash, “Blowing Stones,” in Short Poems, ed. Jean Elizabeth Ward, trans. Robert Hass (Lulu.com, 2009) <http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Short_Poems.html> Katie Fischer, “John Slattery is a Natural,” Interview Magazine <www.interviewmagazine.com/film/john- slattery-in-our-nature> Lawrence Ferlinghetti, These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems 1955-1993 (New York: New Directions, 1994) 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 3 03/10/2014 14:36 4 The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing 2.2. Chapter 2: Writing the Self The exercises in this chapter put the student/author at the centre of the text. The Autobiography and Memoir exercises are an introduction to the storytelling techniques practiced in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. The Reflection and Personal Interest Feature Writing exercises are an introduction to the structural and conceptualization aspects of digital media and scholarly writing exercises in Chapters 7 and 8. It is important that students read the essays referenced by George Orwell and Joan Didion both as examples of the personal essay genre and for their insights into the subject matter of the Why I Write exercise at the end of the chapter. The exercise, Why I Write, is designed partly to motivate students, to get them thinking of themselves as a writer and consciously interrogate their relationship with writing. George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Florida: Harcourt Inc, 1956) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (London: Penguin Books, 2012) Readings: George Orwell, “Why I Write,” orwell.ru < http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw> Ian Jack, “Memoirs are made of this – and that,” in The Guardian online edition (AU: 8 February 2003) Anthony Kiedis and Larry Sloman, Scar Tissue (London: Time Warner Books, 2004) Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004) Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” (Bridgewater: Bridgewater.edu) <http://people.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/ ENG310/Didion.pdf> 2.3. Chapter 3: Poetics and Poetry Composition The intention behind the exercises in this chapter are threefold: first, to begin to link creative writing practice with poetics; second, to allow students to experiment with forms outside of their comfort zone; third, to emphasize the careful use of language across all genres. Although there are some key poets and poems mentioned in the section on Poetic Movements, these are just an initial guide. Instructors can add examples of different forms they particularly want students to focus on and build discussions on those examples from the overview provided in the chapter. The haiku exercise, in particular, is useful as an introduction to narrative structure discussions in the fiction and screenwriting chapters. It asks students to consider the haiku as a whole and experiment with the order and presentation of images which come together in the haiku to tell a story. It’s also not necessary for students to do the exercises in any particular order, and it may be helpful for them to be prescribed one exercise to attempt several times over the course of a few weeks to begin to master a particular form. For courses which focus on Poetry Writing, many of the exercises in this chapter can be completed and workshopped in class. As students become more confident sharing their drafts, and more familiar with each other’s work, the exercises might build up to an organized public poetry reading outside of class. While this is a big ask for under- graduate students, it’s also a motivating event to work towards. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 4 03/10/2014 14:36 2. Chapter by Chapter Notes 5 2.4. Chapter 4: Fiction Conventions The exercises in this chapter build to some extent on the memoir writing exercises from Chapter 2. Given that the first few exercises in this chapter are about micro-short stories, and this is a medium which is readily publishable with online social media, it might be beneficial to create a blog, Facebook group, or Twitter hashtag and workshop some of the writing online as homework. Students could do this in small workshop groups, or they could be encouraged to join a whole-class forum online and engage with a larger readership that way. The first exercise in this chapter, which gives a short list of “beginnings,” is ideal to use in class as a warm-up writing task. You might start by explaining the exercise, then projecting the first phrase and begin quiet writing time for three or four minutes, then stop writing, then replace the first phrase with the second phrase, then stop, and so on. It might help students keep up to give a warning 30 seconds before changing phrases. The exercise on narrative structure is a precursor to the narrative arc discussions and exercises in the following chapter on screenwriting techniques. This section is designed to get students thinking visually about the macro- structure of stories. It might be useful to relate this to the haiku line-order exercise in the poetry chapter. Ideally students will read the short stories by Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, and Guy de Maupassant before doing the related exercises which draw heavily from literary techniques employed in those works. These short stories might be prescribed homework reading and the exercises could be done in class. It’s less necessary for students to read the novels referenced by Sylvia Plath, Harper Lee, and Jane Austen, but these novels are selected because it is likely students will have been exposed to them in other English courses and will be familiar with the characters cited in the discussions and exercises. The concluding exercise in genre fiction is simply a fun, optional departure from literary creative writing, which might be helpful as a transition to the more formulaic practice of screenwriting in the following chapter. Readings: Poems linked in-text and/or included throughout. Readings: Anton Chekhov, “The Slander,” in The Horse Stealer and Other Stories (New York: The MacMillan Com- pany, 1921) Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (London: Urban Romantics, 2012) William Carlos Williams, “The Use of Force,” in The Doctor Series (New York: New Directions, 1984) Guy De Maupassant, “Confessing,” in The Hairpin and Other Stories (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2004) 2.5. Chapter 5: Screenwriting Techniques The first couple of exercises in this chapter ask students to practice fundamental screenwriting structure and presentation, and are ideally completed (or at least workshopped) in class so that you can correct technical errors before moving on to the more challenging exercises. It’s also preferable for students to practice these fundamentals—writing out slug lines and formatting action and dialogue correctly—in every exercise in the remainder of this chapter. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 5 03/10/2014 14:36 3. Bonus Exercises or Assessment Tasks 3.1. Chapter 1: Writing and Knowledge In this chapter, students are asked to reconsider the meaning and make-up of “knowledge” and apply the possi- bilities thereof to their own writing practice. This poses an opportunity for a presentation assessment/assignment task in the form of a series of panel discussions on the relationship between knowledge and writing. This task requires some preparation and should be done in class, as a class: STEP ONE: Ask students to bring in one favorite piece of creative writing they produced before starting this Creative Writing course. The piece should be no longer than a page or two. Photocopy or electronically distribute each student’s piece so that everyone has access to everyone else’s piece. STEP TWO: According to the subject matter and genres of work you receive, divide students into groups of four, and give each group a week in which they will be required to present their panel discussion. Give each group a topic based on the discussions in this chapter. Topics might include: writer’s block; your writer self compared with your social self; emotion as raw material. Before each panel discussion, the students’ homework will be to read the presenting group’s pieces and come ready to ask questions of each presenter. STEP THREE: You, as the instructor, should chair each panel presentation. When a group presents their panel discussion, each group member should have a few minutes to talk to the class about how their piece relates to the topic at hand. After each group member has presented, the class will ask questions of the panel or of individual group members. This exercise has the following benefits: MM It is a chance for students to engage in deeper discussions about their writing practice and get to know one another, which in turn will foster a healthier workshop dynamic in other tasks. MM It is an introduction to the idea of a “panel”-style forum which is central to many professional writing conferences, thus giving students a sense of active literary citizenship starting within the classroom. 3.2. Chapter 2: Writing the Self All the exercises in this chapter focus on the past and present self, but the past and present can tell us a lot about the possibilities for the future. The following task asks students to depart from non-fiction-based self-writing to experiment with a hybrid of fiction and writing the self. STEP ONE: Students should revisit the exercises in the last two chapters and think about what common threads tie their writings together. Do certain characters or settings recur in several of their exercise responses? Is there an overarching theme of family or friendship? Is there a particular time in their lives that gets more attention than other times? STEP TWO: Ask students to workshop their findings about what links they found in their writing to date. They can work as a group to discuss the following questions: What part does the practice of writing play in these recurring themes and ideas? Has the process of exploring certain subjects through writing helped or hindered the process of dealing with those subjects in daily life? How does the student envision these themes playing out in their lives ten and 20 years from now? 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 8 03/10/2014 14:36 3. Bonus Exercises or Assessment Tasks 9 STEP THREE: As a homework assignment, students can write a first draft of a fictional story in which they are the protagonist and some of characters may be based on people they know. The fictional story should be set some time in the future (at least five years, for greater contrast), and work as a kind of speculation on how some of the themes that have preoccupied them in the past might resurface in new and unexpected ways in the future. For example, this might mean imagining how a relationship might heal, alter or break down several years from now, or anticipating the way one might overcome an old phobia (by, say, flying for the first time), or the way a person’s notion of what constitutes a “home” might change given a new set of circumstances. The benefits of this task include: MM Aside from the obvious catharsis of taking a preoccupation of the past and reimagining it in the context of the future, the exercise demonstrates the idea that the self in writing is not necessarily a fixed idea—it is open to interpretation and imagination and change. This concept might be particularly emancipating after attempting the “Why I Write” personal essay exercise. MM It’s an interesting exercise for linking self-writing with fiction and screenwriting. It shows students the method of starting with real life and exploding that into fictional possibilities. 3.3. Chapter 3: Poetics and Poetry Composition The exercises in this chapter encourage students to experiment with different forms of poetry and ready poetry from different eras. This is a good jumping-off point for students to begin to conceptualize and collate a folio of poems which work together as a collection. The following task is probably too long to work as a stand-alone exercise, but it’s an effective assignment task: STEP ONE: Students can pick their own unifying feature for a poetry folio based on either subject matter or form, or a combination of both. For example, a student might choose to write a short series of poems on death, or a short series of sonnets, or a short series of haikus on love. Ask students to decide on the unifying feature of their folio and share with the rest of the class their plan for how and when they will write the poems. STEP TWO: You might allocate a period of two or three weeks in which students have to compose a suite of between four (for longer forms) and 12 (for short forms, like the haiku) poems which adhere to the unifying feature they set out for themselves in class. STEP THREE: After the poems are written, you can ask students to write a short critique (see Chapter 8) which explains the poetic techniques employed in their poems, justifies their creative choices, elucidates the unifying features of the poems and their significance, and cites at the work of least two published poets for context. This assignment is suited to both introductory Creative Writing courses and also intermediate-level Poetry Composition courses, and is useful for: MM Introducing students to critiquing their own creative process. MM Giving students the creative freedom to choose their own subject matter and form within a defined framework and with specific goals. MM Encouraging students two write more poems than they need to submit so that they have a range of work to select from. 3.4. Chapter 4: Fiction Conventions This chapter includes exercises designed to help students experiment with fiction and storytelling conventions such as characterization, setting, voice and plot. Some of the exercises in this chapter also touch on ways to find inspiration for stories and using different stimuli as starting points for new works of fiction. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 9 03/10/2014 14:36 10 The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing The following task is a departure from the usual fiction writing assignment which offers a writing prompt and word limit. This task is designed to marry experimentation with convention together with the idea of developing good writing habits, with the intended outcome of helping students find ways of working their writing practice into their everyday lives. STEP ONE: Using one of the exercises from the Fiction Conventions chapter in the book as a starting point, students can plan a long-short story in class. The idea is to take an idea and expand on it by embellishing the plot, adding or taking away characters, and exploring the thematic possibilities. Students might be given 20 minutes of class time to write up a synopsis, either in prose form or in dot points. STEP TWO: This part of the assignment can go on for a period of three weeks. Ask students to commit to a writing regime where they must write at least 200 words a day of their story, every day (or five days a week) for three weeks. You might have students meet up in their workshop groups each week to share drafts and discuss their progress, or you could dedicate an online forum where students post drafts and comment on each other’s work on a regular basis. By the end of the three-week period, students will have at least 3,000 words of first draft material to work with. STEP THREE: The rewriting phase of the assignment should take one or two weeks. Ask students to continue working on redrafting and editing their short story every day. They might choose to do one full structural in the first week, and a closer edit in the second week. Or they might feel they need to do a series of two or three rewrites and copyedit in the last two days. At the end of the rewriting phase, students are ready to submit their short story. The purpose of this assignment is to: MM Encourage students to start writing a little bit every day. MM Demonstrate the benefits of working on one piece of creative writing slowly over an extended period of time, as opposed to banging out work at the last minute. MM Emphasize the creative process of both writing and rewriting. MM Challenge students to be accountable to each other and support each other’s writing practice to foster a positive literary community. MM Have their creative process (as well as the final work they submit) assessed by the instructor. 3.5. Chapter 5: Screenwriting Techniques This chapter covers both the technical aspects of writing for screen, as well as theoretical thematic approaches to conceptualizing stories for film and television. The exercises in this chapter prepare students for the challenges of writing a screenplay and emphasize the collaborative aspect of screenwriting industry practice. This primes students for a screenwriting assignment task: STEP ONE: Organize students into groups of three. In class, have the groups work together to come up with an idea for a 15-minute short film which they could theoretically hand over to students in the film and television faculty to produce. This means that the film shouldn’t depend upon B-grade type plots and plot devices, CGI, graphic sex, etc. Explain that this requirement is not meant to censor their creativity; it’s there to challenge them to think practically and visually about telling their story. Once students come up with a basic idea, ask them to fill in the Dara Marks quote on the relationship between theme, character and plot with details of their film. It might be useful for each group to pitch their film idea to the class before moving on to the next step. STEP TWO: For homework, groups are to collaborate to write a synopsis for their film idea. Emphasize that a good synopsis covers all the plot points and major character developments of a film from beginning to end. Students should bring in their synopsis to work on in class. In class, have each group read out their synopsis and have a class discussion on their progress. Then, in 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 10 03/10/2014 14:36 4. Glossary Absurdist: A text which plays with the philosophy of the tension that exists between the human desire for meaning and the inherent meaninglessness of life. Action: The prose in a script which describes the physical actions to be shown onscreen in a scene. Affirmation: The third paragraph in a five-paragraph argumentative essay which presents the evidence in favor of the thesis stated in the introduction. It precedes the negation paragraph and immediately follows the narration paragraph. Alliteration: The repetition of sound at the beginning or in the stressed syllables of multiple words in close proximity. For example: The salubrious citizens opposed her self-assured sensuality. Analogy: The communication of the likeness of one scenario with a manifestly familiar counterpart scenario. For example: Colin had trouble saving cash. After he broke a hundred dollar note it was like trying to shovel sand with a fork. A more clichéd example: The mathematics teacher had a voice like nails down a chalkboard. Anecdote: A brief story with one single intended crux. All the information provided works towards the twist at the end of the anecdote. Unlike other stories which depend on characterization, plot, theme, and setting, an anecdote is told only for the purpose of making a specific point. Antagonist: The character in a literary text who most directly opposes the protagonist, either actively, as in a villain, or passively, as an existential competitor. Sometimes the antagonist’s role is very subtle; he or she could simply be a character who demonstrates the qualities that the protagonist wishes to embody. Other times the antagonist’s role is to aggressively roadblock the protagonist’s efforts at overcoming his or her fatal flaw. Argumentative Essay: An essay that makes an argument in favor of one side of an issue. An argumentative essay is structured like any other essay, with an introduction with a thesis statement that articulates the essay’s central argument, a body, and a conclusion. Some of the evidence provided in an argumentative essay is supportive of the thesis statement. Other evidence which counters the argument is provided to give the author tangible oppor- tunities for rebuttal. Aristotelian Structure: Describes the functions of the beginning, middle, and end of a dramatic narrative according to Aristotle’s Poetics. Attribution: The formal, written acknowledgment of the source of a quote or paraphrase in a scholarly, nonfiction, or creative text. Autobiography: All or part of the author’s own life story which is written with the intention of representing true accounts. Ballad: A narrative poem with distinctly musical qualities. Beat: A section of a scene in a screenplay which is subtly distinguished by a sustained level of tension, a balance of power being held by one character, a mood, or a tone. Sometimes this is determined by a change in the tone or topic of dialogue, sometimes it is marked by a shift in action or setting, other times the introduction of a new character within a scene punctuates a beat. Billboard Paragraph: See Nut Graf. Block: A unified section of a scene in a screen or stage play that maintains one distinct mood, tone, power balance between characters, or topic of conversation in dialogue. Blocking: The job of directing the action in a scene of a film or play. Blog: An informal web publication (and sometimes a discussion forum) consisting of multiple posted entries of text and/or multimedia content. Body: The combined paragraphs between the introduction and the conclusion in an essay, critique, exegesis, or article which present the main information and narrative thread of the subject matter. Canto: One unified section of a longer poem. Cathartic Writing: Writing which serves a therapeutic purpose for the author. Cathartic writing is written for the sake of self-expression or venting emotion. Cathartic writing is not necessarily written to be read. Cause and Effect: The philosophy of causality. Causality is about the necessarily dependent relationship between an outcome and the factor which initiated it. In literature it can be thought of a sequence of dependent events in a plot which challenge the protagonist. Sometimes in order for the protagonist to succeed in the end, she must wilfully intercept the cause and effect sequence and take some kind of definitive action. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 13 03/10/2014 14:36 14 The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing Characterization: The conventions for developing and exposing a character’s inner workings, motivations, relation- ships, and history in a work of fiction. Climax: The plot point in a story in which everything comes to a head. Close Reading: The act of analyzing the individual parts of a text in an effort to understand the text as a whole. This might mean going through a poem line by line and identifying the poetic techniques used and the meanings conveyed through those techniques. Conceptualization: The process of bringing an idea into fruition or the planning stage which precedes writing. Conclusion: The last paragraph in an essay, critique, exegesis, or article which amalgamates the information in the body to respond to or reiterate the point of the text as it was stated in the introduction. Concrete Poetry: Poetry that takes a physical shape on the page which conveys an integral part of the poem’s meaning; came into prominence in Europe in the 1950s. Confessional: Poetry and literature which deals with the poet’s own deeply personal and internal life. Conflict: A problem that arises in a work of fiction to drive the plot and force the characters to act. Couplet: A stanza or other unified set of two lines in poetry. Craft: In creative writing, the artistic skill required to compose literature. Creative Nonfiction: A literary genre in which true stories are written using creative writing techniques. Critique: A text which critically analyzes a piece of creative writing or other artefact. Denouement: The plot point at the very end of a story which shows the protagonist’s life return to normal after the climax. Dialogue: The speech and conversation exchanged between characters. Digital Poetry: Poetry which is composed with a strong presentational, usually multimedia, component. Digital poetry might be thought of as the technologically advanced grandchild of concrete (or shape) poetry. Discursive Symbolism: A language-based, linear and logical way of communicating which is limited by syntax and grammar. E-book: A book published on a digital platform that can be downloaded to an electronic device such as a PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet, e-reader, Kindle, iPad, or iPhone. End Stop: In poetry, when a line break occurs at the end of a natural phrase. (For example: Lime and lemongrass emanate from Little Bourke lanes / beats and riffs pulse underground / through dark hours the warmth remains / she holds my hand and walks me ‘round.) Enjambment: In poetry, when a line break occurs in the middle of a natural phrase. (For example: his name is a breath // of fresh air.) Epic: A long narrative poem. Exegesis: A critical analysis of a text, its meanings, and the literary conventions and creative writing techniques it employs. In the context of Creative Writing scholarship, an exegesis is usually a longer form of critique with an articulated thesis and points of comparison and contrast. Exposition: The mode of fiction writing whose purpose is to give back story or introduce settings or characters. The art of good exposition requires the author to know how much detail is really essential and at what point to stop explaining the past and enter the characters’ present dilemmas. Fable: A short story with a moral lesson revealed at the end, often intended for children. Fairytale: A magical or fantastical children’s story. Feature Article: Generally, any article in a publication that is not deemed hard news. Fictionalization: The process of taking real life events or people and imposing imagination onto them to create a work of fiction. Figurative Language: The use of devices like metaphor, irony, and subtext to manipulate meaning. For example: The cat is the master of her domain and we are just the minions who wait on her. First Person Voice: Narrative written from the point of view of the speaker or protagonist of the text. For example: I put my sneakers on and walked down the street where I saw my naked reflection in the barber shop window. Focus: The key topic or point of a text. Foreshadowing: A literary technique of giving a subtle hint or an allusion at the start of a story of what the outcome of a particular plot line will be. Foreshadowing can help the reader or audience to feel more satisfied at the end of the story because something is resolved that was set up in the beginning. Form: In poetry, the categorization of a poem according to prescribed stanzaic, metric, and other technical rules. Form: The genre of poetry as delineated by formal constraints including meter, rhyme scheme, and stanza lengths. For example: the sonnet is a form characterized by its iambic pentameter, a b a b rhyme scheme, and three quatrains followed by a concluding rhyming couplet. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 14 03/10/2014 14:36 4. Glossary 15 Formality: Of or pertaining to poetic form. Free Verse: From the French Verse Libre; poetry which is not restricted by classical form. Line lengths, stanzas, rhythm, rhyme, and other sound devices are used at the creative discretion of the poet rather than to adhere to a prescribed structure. Free Writing: See Stream of Consciousness. Genre: A basis for differentiating texts based on their subject matter, style, and approaches to theme, plot, and charac- terisation. For example: romance, mystery, drama, comedy, creative nonfiction, autobiography. Ghazal: A form of Persian lyric poetry consisting of five or more couplets, usually with themes of mysticism and love. Haiku: A poem of Japanese origins consisting of three lines totaling 17 syllables, often on themes of nature. Headline: The title of an article. Hermeneutic Circle: Martin Heidegger’s concept of the challenge of interpretation of texts being the relationship between the whole text and its individual parts. Essentially, to understand the whole, one must understand the parts; paradoxically, to understand the parts of a text, one must understand the whole. Hermeneutics: The theory of the interpretation of texts based on the relationship between the author, the text itself, and the reader. Hermeneutics has its origins in the interpretation of biblical texts, but is now applied to a range of disciplines including literature and law. Hook: A narrative device at the beginning of a work of fiction or nonfiction which entices the reader to read on. Human Interest: Text that pertains to human desires and emotions, including the need to engage socially and to feel understood and not alone in our personal experiences. Hyperlink: A live, working link within a text published online to another website or article published online. Iambic Pentameter: A poetic meter with a regular five stressed syllables in each line. Identical Rhyme: In poetry, the repetition of both the stressed vowel sound and the consonant sounds of two words. For example: sum and wholesome. Improvisation: Impromptu creative processes, usually involving two artists, actors, or writers reacting to each other spontaneously. Intention: The author’s objective for the meaning communicated by his or her own text. Internal Rhyme: Rhyming in poetry which occurs within the line rather than at the end of the line. For example: The yellowing lime was a sign of the time spent at sea. Lead: The introductory paragraph in a news or feature article. In a news article, the lead gives the essential information of the story: who, what, when, where. In a feature article, the lead hooks the reader’s interest and the essentials are detailed later in the nut graf (or the billboard paragraph). Lede: See Lead. Literal Language: The use of language which does not deviate from each word’s actual meaning. (For example: The cat scratches up the furniture, malts fur all over our clothes, and only pays us attention when she is hungry.) Literary Theory: The philosophies that exist for the interpretation of literature. Literature Review: A text which elucidates the key findings and relevance of all the key texts on a designated topic. In creative writing scholarship, a literature review is often one of the earliest stages of proposing a research topic. A literature review demonstrates the viability and appropriateness of your thesis or exegesis topic to your examiners while serving as the starting point for your proposed research. Literature: The art of writing. Log Line: A one- or two-sentence synopsis which encapsulates the major theme of a screenplay. The log line is useful at all stages of the writing process, from clarifying the intention for the script, to pitching the script to funding bodies and producers, and finally as potential copy for the promotion of the produced film. Manifesto: A document which explicates the philosophical and practical artistic beliefs and intentions of its author or authors. Map: A plan which outlines the major plot points of narrative or the intended trajectory of a nonfiction text. Maps are a great way of making sure your macro-structure is sound and logical (or appropriately illogical) before you get too deep into composing the work. Map (Fantasy Fiction Genre): A visual representation of the fictional or imagined places where the protagonist’s journey takes place in a work of fantasy fiction. Often this is a hand-drawn map which features at the beginning of a fantasy novel for the reader’s reference. Memoir: A literary representation of all or part of the author’s own life story. Metaphor: The communication of meaning by likening one concept to another more dramatic or more tangible concept. For example: instead of literally describing the feeling of depression, explaining instead that one is being followed everywhere by looming dark rainclouds. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 15 03/10/2014 14:36 18 The Bloomsbury Introduction to Creative Writing Synopsis: A page-long summary of the plot of a novel, screenplay, or other literary text written in engaging prose. Syntax: The principles that govern the rules of grammar, linguistics, and the construction of sentences and phrases. Tercet: Also known as a triplet, a tercet is a stanza of three lines in poetry. Tertiary Research: Researched derived from sources which collate information from secondary research, such as encyclopedias. Thematic Question: The theme expounded in terms of a question which the characterization and plot seek to answer. For example: Do single women in their thirties have a chance at finding true love in contemporary New York City? Theme: The central idea in a story which the characterization and plot development seek to examine. Themes can be described in both general terms (for example, romantic love) and in specific terms (for example, finding romantic love in a big city). Thesis Statement: The proposed premise of an argument or central point of discussion posed in one clearly articu- lated sentence in the introduction of an essay, critique, or other scholarly document. Thesis: The general point made in an essay, exegesis, or critique. Thesis: The proposed premise of an argument or central point of discussion. The object of a dissertation is to rationally prove the validity of the thesis proposed in the introduction. Third Person Voice: Narrative written from the point of view of a ubiquitous narrator who is external to the story. For example: Barak put his sneakers on and walked down the street where he was shocked to discover his naked reflection in the barber shop window. Three-act Play: A longer play written and presented in three acts with a discernible rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. Tone: The overall dynamic mood or manner which characterizes a narrative. Topic Sentence: A sentence which summarizes the central idea of the paragraph it introduces. Transitions: In a paragraph, transitions are the phrases which lead from one point to the next. Transitions usually occur at the end of one paragraph to simultaneously conclude that paragraph and introduce the beginning of the next paragraph. Treatment: A piece of prose which is a scene-by-scene first draft of a screenplay. The treatment is longer and more detailed than both the synopsis and the outline. Verbal Communication: The use of language in its various forms to convey meaning. Verbatim: Quoting a source word for word. Villanelle: A poetic form consisting of five tercets and a concluding quatrain and a rhyme scheme, aba aba aba aba aba abaa. A villanelle also contains two repeated refrains, the first of which is introduced in the first line of the first stanza, and the second in the third line of the first stanza. Voice: The unique complex characteristics of language use that helps to distinguish one author from another. Writers’ Block: The much-talked-about mythological state of being irrationally unable to write. 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 18 03/10/2014 14:36 5. Online Media Walken, Christopher. Pokerface. YouTube, 1.14. 2009  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy5JwYOlgvY Schmid, Michael. Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate. YouTube, 16.59. 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXtDkAnJx7o Mutabaruka. Dis Poem. YouTube, 3.17. 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn-f8PgLVjU 9781472578440_txt_online.indd 19 03/10/2014 14:36