Hypnagogia — A Reflection
Tag: Prose Style
The Visionary and The Writer
The Visionary. To me, a Visionary is someone who sees the entire picture at once and can intuit numerous, distinct ways of presenting it. As a writing professor in college put it, before you begin writing draft two of a story, you should reflect on the story within the story.
Is such-and-such really a short fiction about a home invader, or is it actually a story about a negligent father who suffers for not paying attention?
Also, consider the scenes we don’t get to see in a character’s life. There is the story the reader has privilege to experience, and then there are events that characters experience (for them in turtle-paced real time) but we don’t see or sometimes even hear about.
An example would be a story that chooses to show a character’s morning routine, their commute to work or school, a scene while their at work, and then it’ll skip to the next day, without showing their commute home or what they did that night.
And even if we got scenes in a character’s home, their commute, work/school, their commute back home, and dinner, those scenes take place within a few pages, not several hours like for us in the real world.
A Visionary looks at these reader-hidden details and can add them to a story to enhance it. A Visionary can alter or cut scenes. A Visionary is an excellent developmental editor. Essentially, a Visionary is one who practices the art of plotting, outlining, character creation, and theme.
Visionaries are necessary for earth-shattering storytelling. A favorite example of mine is season 3 of the Marvel show Daredevil. Not only did each episode leave me hooked, but also the conclusion was unpredictable. I also felt this in the prison story arc in the novel “Live By Night” by Dennis Lehane.
The Visionary paints the most excellent blueprint. Elegant. Immaculate. But it is the Writer who assembles the conception. Brick by brick. Word by word. And while the Writer must scoot up close and only see pieces of the blueprint at a time, only the Writer can put the house together, can add the style. The literary devices. The sentence length.
An example would be the short stories and microfiction of Lydia Davis. They often have simple plots, but it’s her masterful sentences that makes readers chuckle or awe at her work.
To be a fiction writer, one must balance visionary thinking and granular thinking. Be sure to find joy in both.
Goodbye, Tarantula
Tarantula skittered from the snowy window into the dust-ridden bedroom. She paced left and right. She could sense the termites eating away at the bedframe, and the carpet beetles shimmying out the closet. But overlapping those signals was the mouse family’s squeaks: the voice of a mother comforting her children from the hailstorm. Tarantula left the room.
* * *
After several hours exploring the nooks and crannies of the house, Tarantula found a cubby-hole on the floor beside the kitchen sink. She crawled in and allowed herself to get comfortable.
* * *
The footsteps of an ant colony. She detected a line of them trooping past her. She swiped them into her mouth without hesitation. They scattered, and she lunged after a few more.
When they were gone, she remained standing. Still as a stone.
Minutes passed. Then she crawled back into her den.
* * *
A high-pitched screech alerted her. It was followed by a second, crackly voice. She exited the den. The sound was laughter. Tarantula traveled to its location.
She entered the living room and found, on the knotted carpet, a turtle lying on its back, and two ravens standing before it.
“You buffoon!” One of the ravens said. “What, did you think you could run from us?”
The living room was bustling with traffic. Tarantula could sense it. The roaches congregating under the furniture. The flies hovering by the molded wallpaper. She saw a stinkbug stroll past the turtle and the ravens.
“If only we could rip you out of your shell,” the raven said.
“Had our beaks been sharper,” the other raven said. “We’d pierce that meaty head of yours.”
One of the ravens turned its gaze directly at Tarantula. Tarantula stood motionless. For minutes. Then she skittered back into the kitchen, back into her den.
* * *
From a window, white light poured into the kitchen. Hail was replaced by snow flurries. From a hole in a tree, the cheerful chirps of sparrows. Remarks at the prettiness of the snow. The desire to fly out among it.
Tarantula could sense this. Just as she could sense the presence of the ravens, still somewhere in the house. Just as she could deduce the turtle was still on its back.
* * *
Hours passed before Tarantula left her den. When she did, she went straight to the living room, and flipped the turtle right side up again. At this, the turtle beamed.
“Golly, thanks!” the turtle said. “Thank you so much! I thought I’d be scrambled like that forever!”
Tarantula stood motionless. The snow continued outside the house. Tarantula turned. The turtle tried to mouth something, but couldn’t think of more to say.
A blast of wind sounded and the turtled leaped into its shell. Angry caws echoed in the room. Then silence.
When the turtle poked its head out, Tarantula and the ravens were gone. The turtle stood and walked toward the open window.
“Goodbye, Tarantula.”
How to Say Something Unique – The Parts of Speech
One of my favorite parts of writing is creating awesome sentences. To really get the reader unexpecting on each line—to the point where they’re hooked cuz they just HAVE to read the next line—you have to break some conventions.
Here’s a convention: the parts of speech. Nouns are nouns, verbs are verbs, etc. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
I mean, you could sneak inside a building, but you could also patience your way to the front of the line. And you get the same results—one’s just more fun better than the other.
Similarly, you could skip school, but you could also skip eating (this second example uses what’s called a gerrund, which is when an “-ing” verb functions as a noun).
There are many parts of speech and many ways to mess around with them. What will you come up with?
My Dream Creative Writing Club
When I was in Temple University, I was part of a campus lit mag called Hyphen. It published annually. Meetings were weekly, and anyone who attended was considered an editor, able to cast a vote for the acceptance or rejection of a piece. Pieces included art, poems, and short stories, and while editors could read in advance, time was given during each meeting to review a piece before casting a vote. Hyphen had a fun and simple formula, one fruitful for socializing and for keeping the creative juices fresh. The submissions we reviewed enlightened me on new ways to use prose, as did hearing the critiques from my fellow members. And the memes we’d share amongst each other? Priceless.
But even at the time, despite my love for Hyphen, I knew more could be done. For example, we could’ve had guidelines on how many of each submission type we’d accept. Regarding what got put in the magazine, we pretty much went with what got the most votes, and poetry was super popular; little room was left for short stories. We also could’ve had punctuation, formatting, and style guidelines, maybe even a word count, to keep pages visually consistent. At the end of the semester, once all the pieces are selected, editors transition from voting to grammar repair. Having a style guide would give editors more to do, more skills to practice, and also more to put on a resume.
But this is my dream club, right? So anything goes? Cuz I’d LOVE to have workshop sessions, for editors and potential submitters for their poetry, prose, and artwork submissions. Imagine a feedback and critique session, with the chance to submit again later on.
How about having themed issues of a lit mag? That would be cool. Open mic sessions to perform/practice poetry. Drawing sessions. Writing sprints.
Oo! Here’s a good one. Analyzing grammar in excerpts of prose or poetry, picking paragraphs apart for literary devices and syntax tricks like a ravaging grammar wolf🐺
There could even be sessions where we read short stories and analyzed them on the macro scale—plot, character, theme instead of writing style.
A writing club that combined all these things would be the best writing club ever. Who knows. Maybe I’ll be the one to start it…
The Fiction Writer 