 Short Stories: July 23, 2014 Issue [#6444] |
  Short Stories
This week: The Circular Nature of History Edited by: Jay's debut novel is out now!  
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This Short Stories Newsletter is dedicated to readers and writers of short fiction and to those who want to know more about the art of telling big stories in small spaces.
This month:
The Circular Nature of History
If history repeats itself, what does fiction do? Using nonfiction to fuel storytelling. |
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So I am coming back out of a long rut in my own writing habits, wherein I was feeling really uninspired and unmotivated. One of my good friends asked me while we were talking about this:
"I know you read buckets of fiction, but what nonfiction have you read lately?"
And this was a great question, where suddenly I had that horrible going-to-fail-this-pop-quiz feeling... It got me to thinking about how nonfiction is incredibly important to fiction writers-- whether as an overt inspiration or one step above a literary reference.
So, I sought out some new sources of reference, in varying degrees of historical fancies-- picked up a bunch of books and magazines, and then stumbled upon the Stuff You Missed in History podcast, which I've spent the better part of a month going through the backlogs of the podcast, listening to all manner of interesting and unusual anecdotes from a wide range of history.
It's interesting to me how cyclical some of these stories tend to be. There are some themes which recur consistently-- tragic love stories, wanton betrayals, struggles for change... and these stories play out differently depending on what technologies are available, what personalities are involved, what machinations go on behind closed doors... it starts to open up more suggestions and makes me feel reassured that there are not so much new stories as there are new ways of telling them.
It's interesting to look at what pieces of very old fiction (old enough to essentially be history) can do to supplement this as well-- it's easier to see the patterns, the more of them you choose to incorporate. For example, a recent (not actually that recent) episode of Missed in History involved Jane Austen, and it was fascinating to look at the history of her life and contrast it with the dramatics of her books-- the way her values interplayed with the fiction she crafted. Fascinating stuff.
I'm feeling a lot more invigorated already. How about you? What stories from history could you see as a reflection of something you've created? How has history inspired you?
Until Next Time,
Take care and Write on!
~jay
Stuff You Missed in History is available at http://missedinhistory.com or through your podcast app of choice! |
This month's picks!
A neat article I found, for your perusal:
Submitted by our readers:
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Feedback from "Kishōtenketsu" :
brom21 writes:
I suppose that a story with no plot would then hinge on a journey into the senses and concepts. A good example might be Dante’s Inferno. It is simply about imagery and the concept of hell, or at least that is how I see it. This all seems to evoke nostalgia and feeling which I find tantalizing. Thanks for the newsletter!
That's pretty much how it works. Kishotenketsu has a cadence of sorts which is built on very minor contrasts, but it's much more subtle than overt conflict.
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