Miriam

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[lesbiaphrodite]

Thanks for posting this link, JBJ. What an excellent story this is. Capote is a true artist and his understanding of the craft is simply exquisite.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[lesbiaphrodite]

Yes. We're in agreement about the fact that the ability to write cannot be taught. It's one of those things, I believe, that one is born with or not. I definitely think that a writer can learn from other writers just by reading their work, but teachers can't teach it.

I like Harper Lee a lot, but she isn't anywhere near as good as Capote is. You really should see "Capote," starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who won best actor for his performance in the lead role). It is truly excellent.

 

[Verdad]

Exquisite story. Now my appetite is whetted for more Capote.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Yes. We're in agreement about the fact that the ability to write cannot be taught. It's one of those things, I believe, that one is born with or not. I definitely think that a writer can learn from other writers just by reading their work, but teachers can't teach it.

I like Harper Lee a lot, but she isn't anywhere near as good as Capote is. You really should see "Capote," starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who won best actor for his performance in the lead role). It is truly excellent.

To some degree, I believe it can. There would have to be an underlying talent for one to be a really good author, but things such as sentence sructure, grammar, etc. can be taught. A person might have great latent talent, but if that person is semi-literate, that talent will remain buried.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

To some degree, I believe it can. There would have to be an underlying talent for one to be a really good author, but things such as sentence sructure, grammar, etc. can be taught. A person might have great latent talent, but if that person is semi-literate, that talent will remain buried.

I didn't say that grammar, spelling and sentence structure couldn't be taught. I said, or at the least, implied that writing talent cannot be taught. There's a huge difference between being able to write: "See spot run;" and, say, Shakespeare's immortal words....

"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd, that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did." (Antony & Cleopatra)

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[Verdad]

James and LA, you're both right. It's often tempting to discuss writing for the pleasure of taking something apart and seeing how it works. God knows I can be guilty of that, yet I'm also struck by the ultimate absurdity of the discussions, at least in the sense of their helping with a new story. Each new story is an equation that has to be set and solved simultaneously, and really, no amount of 'advice' helps in advance. I'd take exception to the scorn for perfesserly types only in the sense that it's often voiced by people who want to believe any result is as good as any other.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[jomar]

Good little story there, JBJ, chilling. Thanks.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[jomar]

JOMAR

True story.

We get a lot of swindlers come here in the winter to prey on the really old guys, and one of their tricks is to get on the roof and destroy it unless the old guy pays them to leave. Usually $1000 cash.

But my grandmother came to this area in a covered wagon when it was wilderness, and she'd seen every varmint there was, and knew how to jerk knots in their tails or tales.

Yeah, I read that earlier. I loved how she took their ladder. Dumb criminals.

 

[DeeZire]

Slightly OT, but I have been advised by LIT writers that if you use parenthesis in a story posted on LIT, your score from other LIT writers will suffer. This is the opening sentence of Capote's story.

For several years, Mrs. H. T. Miller had lived alone in a pleasant apartment (two rooms with kitchenette) in a remodeled brownstone near the East River.

I don't hesitate to use parenthesis in my writing, (since I don't give a flying fuck about good scores,) but I thought it was curious that Capote would use a writing device that is looked down upon by other writers. Is this an example of a rule that was meant to be broken, or is the no parenthesis thing just a stupid rule?

 

[JericBuckley]

DeeZire, rules are made to be broken. All of them.

Also, the parenthesis is a dumb rule - I don't use many, but it's certainly not worth lowering a score over.

 

[Pure]

note to jbj

I dont believe most 'writers' know what a story is or recognize it if they see one. I think you should be able to tell the story in a paragraph AND be able to decorate it like a Christmas tree so that it does much more than simply provide a simple answer to 'the problem' or create a better understanding of something, which is what stories do. Lotsa people can spin a yarn, but the yarn contains no story.

fine story of capote's by the way. thanks.

i'm puzzled at your apparent claim that having/being a 'good story', is something that can be ascertained from a summary paragraph.

what do *you* think are the essential characteristics of a good story.?

let's take two paragraphs.

1) a successful high official, in an enterprise, is seized with the ambitious idea that the top spot, with the attendant power and wealth could all be his. his wife is more than a little enthused at the idea of doing something drastic, and they decide on murder, which with a little chicanery succeeds in giving the couple the top spot, and control. but the path they've taken backfires. the wife succumbs to psychotic delusions, and the husband faces a general rebellion, costing him everything.

for the story at hand.

2) a woman is trapped in a very rigid, orderly life. seemingly by accident she encounters a strange girl, while waiting in line at the theatre. then the girl pays another couple visits, and each time unsettles the woman more, initially by simply demanding her favorite piece of jewelry. though the girl's moves are not obviously menacing, the woman feels unable to resist, and eventually becomes terrified, and has a neighbor ask the girl to leave after she's managed to get to the point of saying she's moving in. the neighbor cannot find any girl and the woman becomes unhinged with weird imaginings. then the girl reappears. [end] in a sentence, an ordinary, but rigid person, is haunted (visited) by a demonic entity, which oddly, at first appears in the form of an innocent, friendly young girl; she seems unable to resist control; she is terrified, perhaps justifiably, with the feeling her very life is threatened (the reader is not told, directly), but can do nothing to avoid her fate.

===

i do not think the above paras really enable one to tell the merits of the final product. do you?


the analogy of a xmas tree being decorated, with the one para being the tree, seems not apt. i'd say the story is more like the skeleton of a horse, which one finds in the desert. the nature of the beast, his speed, strength, beauty, disposition, etc. are not obvious. shakespeare is generally considered to have taken a number of stories and used them, sometimes in combination, in the plays. the genius is all in the telling, esp. in creating characters with some depth, tension, and so on., something the one para cannot tell you.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[Pure]

thanks jbj for your thoughts,

as to your capsules:

MIRIAM in a nutshell: A preteen girl comes from out of nowhere and creates fear to dominate and trap an older woman. (In horror stories the monster is always the complication).

Your story: Using murder to achieve their goal, a couple conspire for wealth and power in the business world. But they are undone by the woman's madness and a revolt by the man's employees.
==========

but you do agree that from the paras and even moreso the capsules you gave, one cannot tell, 'good story', or ascertain the merits of the elaborated end product. right?

you description of 'story,'

A story has complications, a climax, and a resolution. A story illustrates how to solve problems or it provides a better understanding of something. Something happens to someone and they find a way to solve the problem or come away with enlightenment.

while fair enough, does NOT very well fit Miriam, though there is a kind of action climax in the woman's going to the neighbor for help. it would be better characterized as a story of morbid decline-- like "The Fall of the House of Usher". or, if you want the other side, it's the story of a demon's subtle but successful attempt to control, terrify, and likely kill. i see no problem that is solved, in either case.





someone must've figurd that first para.?? name it!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[Verdad]

I think James' point is not to denigrate the "it's all in the telling" part, which of course it is. Else everyone would be a writer and equally good, and there'd be like, five stories in the world.

Rather, he's pointing out that no amount of pretty prose leads to a satisfying result if the story doesn't work in its bare-boned form. With rare exceptions, perhaps, of something very postmodern or something atmospheric and so masterfully written that it's more prose poetry than anything else, he's right.

That's really the problem you most often come across in amateur writing. Some are, of course, hopeless in every way; some, like me, find fiction writing about as easy as banging my head against the wall, which is another form of hopeless; but there are many, too, who have the flow, the talent, the craft, yet what's most often missing is the story.

Whether one can uncover the story along the way or has to have that one paragraph thingie clear in his mind in advance is probably a controversial question. If Doc were around, he'd probably be fervently on the side of starting to write and seeing what comes out, and he wouldn't be alone in that. Eudora Welty, for one, said something along the lines of setting out to write because she was "curious what will happen." The processes, I suspect, can be as many as different writers, but the end result almost never works if it doesn't conform to what James said.

 

[slyc_willie]

The reason I first began writing science fiction was because I liked the idea that the great masters of the craft (Welles, Vance, Asimov, Dick, Heinlein, etc.) crafted a story around a current and powerful sociological, political or moral theme. Science fiction isn't as much about the future as it is about our perceptions of the present.

What I consider my best sci-fi short story is boiled down to two soldiers from opposite factions discussing how right they both are in following their orders -- which means fighting one another. After long philosophical arguments about the rights and wrongs of their actions and their views of the opposing factions, one kills the other just before they are rescued. While there is resolution to the initial conflict, the greater one remains unresolved.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[Pure]

jbj

//I'm sitting here reading a newspaper article and the article triggers a story in my head. Like...what if the wife thinks youre out of town but youre really spending the night with your boss, a powerful politician, and someone steals your car to use for murder. What's more, youve been set up to either take the fall or take the heat for implicating the mayor as an alibi, until someone offers you a way out of the dilemma....commit a murder.//

yes, i love those stories, the tricky plots and the unforeseen, even mortal dilemmas.

a favorite of mine is in the song, 'long black veil,' old country song:



"Long Black Veil"

Ten years ago, on a cold, dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the Town hall light
There were few at the scene, but they all agreed
That the man who ran looked a lot like me

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave while the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

The judge said Son, what's your alibi
If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die
I spoke not a word thought it meant my life
For I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife

(Refrain)

The scaffold was high and eternity near
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear
But sometime at night when the cold winds moan
In a long black veil she cries over my bones
(Refrain)


that said, the plots of macbeth and othello are rather straighforward.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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[JAMESBJOHNSON]

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