LIVE! #2
5 September 2018
Agenda
- Why We're Here
- Literary Forensics
- - What do I bring?
- - What do I feel?
- - What do I notice?
- - What do I study?
- Next Month's Reading & Study
Why We're Here
We Writers want to improve our craft
by Reading like a Writer
through Literary Forensics training
we learn from each other
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
We practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
What do I feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do I notice?
- • Language and Grammar
- • Context
- • Point of view
- • Character & character development
- • Pacing
- • Horizontal structure
- • Layering of themes
- • Overall effect
Less - Stats
- Marketing: Literary, Satire, Humorous, Gay Fiction
- Genre: Realistic Present-Day, Archplot, Long-Form Comedy
- Word count: 72,697
- Print Pages: 273
- Tense: Present
- POV: Narrator: 1st & 3rd
- Publish date: July 18, 2017
- Imprint: Lee Boudreaux Books
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.
- Seller: Hachette Book Group
- Awards: Pulitzer Prize 2018
- 7 possible Plot Types:
- Overcoming the Monster
- Rags to Riches
- The Quest
- Voyage and Return
- Comedy
- Tragedy
- Rebirth
- 4 possible Story Types:
- Milieu
- Idea
- Character
- Event
Ulysses (Odysseus the Cunning) - Homer
- King of Ithaca
- Father: Laërtes (or maybe bought from Sisyphus)
- Grandfather: Hermes
- Wife: Penelope
- Son: Telemachus
- 1. Tries to avoid the Trojan War
- - Feigning madness: yokes an ox & ass behind a plow
- - Sanity revealed when he avoids killing his son
- 2. 20-year Odyssey
- - Trojan War: 10 years
- - Trying to get home: 10 years
- - Kalypso captivates him for 7 years
- - Avoids Sirens' song, navigates between Scylla and Charybdis
- - Fools Cyclops, pretending his name is 'Nobody'
- - Hermes gives Ulysses drug 'Moly' to counteract Circe's magic
- 3. Upon return:
- - Not recognizable at first: known only by his dog, Argos
- - Then the housekeeper recognizes him by scar on foot
- - Bends the bow of Apollo, knows wife's bed's construction
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922)
- Leopold Bloom wanders around Dublin in a single day, June 16, 1904
- - Stephen Dedalus = Telemachus = James Joyce
- - Leopold Bloom = Ulysses
- - Molly Bloom (Marion Tweedy) = Penelope
- - Molly's lover: Blazes Boylan
- In 3 Parts
- - Telemachia (Episodes 1-3)
- - Odyssey (Episodes 4-15)
- - Nostos (Episodes 16-18)
The Old Capital - Yasunari Kawabata (1962)
- Twin sisters Chieko and Naeko, separated at birth
- Themes: old versus new/young, the souring illusions of love
Guliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)
- Voyage to Lilliput (midgets); Voyage to Brobdingnag (giants)
- Brobdingnag is 6,000 wide; sits between Japan and California
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne (1873)
- Englishman Phileas Fogg and French valet, Passepartout, vie for £20,000 prize
- Misses by a day, but Aouda wants to marry penniless Fogg anyway, for love
- Because of International Dateline, they recover a day and win the prize
Contour Map - Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
Word Cloud
Writers Who Read: Coming Up
October 3: Mrs. Fletcher - Tom Perotta (USA, 2017)
November 7: Origin - Dan Brown (USA, 2017)
?? 2019 ??