The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings In Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, one of his characters says: Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made. The big question being asked in this teaching is this: What happens when you cannot be taken away because you are too confused by the structure? (From Publisher): The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer...
How Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Demon Copperhead’ Transforms Victorian Social Critique into a Modern Appalachian Tragedy https://blackbirdstudiopdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Copperhead-2.mp4 Concentrated Focus on Demon Copperhead Refresher on Dicken’s version: Previous teaching “What Dicken’s Can Teach You”: HERE Characters David Copperfield: The protagonist, who narrates his life story from childhood to adulthood. Clara Copperfield (David’s mother): A...
From Demon Copperhead to Bridget Jones: How Modern Authors Breathe New Life into Timeless Tales “Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, “See, this is new!” has already existed in the ages that proceeded us.” (From Vanities of vanities/Ecclesiastes 1. “All is weariness”) https://blackbirdstudiopdx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Copperhead-1-2024.mp4 Introduction – Define Literary reimagining also known as retellings or adaptations, refer to works of literature...
Too often they [teachers] don’t give a systematic view of a writer’s work, and train him to develop a thick skin instead of a sensible one. ~ The Artful Edit by Susan Bell by Cevia Yellin, our in-house editorial expert It’s my delight and pleasure to introduce Cevia Yellin, a long-time student in SIV working on a novel based on the restaurant her parents owned for ten years of her childhood. As luck would have it, Cevia is also a professional freelance writer and editor and has...
Creative Writing Workshop: Consecution is a fancy way of saying “sequencing” “Consecution” (is a) re-describing (of) the compositional process, how the repetition of words and sequences of events progress toward a naturally developed story with a coherent plot structure…(which is not)…different from the advice of the classicists — …good writing is, after all, good writing. Lish’s genius is in making it strange that we might see it better. ~ From The Consecution of Gordon Lish by...
