Short Stories & Titles

Larry asked me a question in another venue. To answer his question and dispel any possible confusion, note well: You will be turning in your American folklore short stories to me on Monday at 8:25 am. They must be written or (preferably) typed in the standard format for essays -- yes double-spaced, on one side, etc. The title of the assignment should be the title of your story -- without quotation marks and without being underlined.

On the subject of short story titles, a few tips are in order. Consider:

Titles should not be dull. When you browse a shelf full of novels, or a collection of short stories, aren't you drawn first to the more unusual titles? Not that "The House" or "The Tree" won't be a good stories, but titles with a bit more originality stand a better chance. Examples: Gone with the Wind, The High and the Mighty, "The Tin Star," The Silence of the Lambs, The Maltese Falcon, Watership Down, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Fahrenheit 451, The Color Purple, Atlas Shrugged.

Titles should be easy to remember. It's hard to tell a neighbor or a colleague about a story if the title's too long, too complicated, or hard to pronounce. It's a good idea to keep things clear and simple. Avoid titles such as Murder on the Wzcyiubjekistan Express or The Tallahatchie Backroad Honky-Tonk Boogie.

Titles should be appropriate. Author Lawrence Block mentions, in one of his books on writing, a Charles McGarry espionage novel called The Secret Lovers. Block says its title (which refers to spies, who love secrets) led some readers to believe it would be a romance. Examples of titles that "fit" their subjects: Raise the Titanic, The Firm, "A Rose for Emily," The Caine Mutiny, Presumed Innocent In Cold Blood, Riders of the Purple Sage, The Amityville Horror.

But the question remains: How exactly do you find a good title? Where do you begin your search? Consider:

1. A title can be a popular expression. Gone for Good, Something's Gotta Give, The Horse's Mouth, The Usual Suspects, Good As Gold, The Whole Nine Yards.
   
   
2. A title can be a play on words. (Sometimes a "twist" of an existing expression.) Burglars Can Be Choosers, The Canceled Czech, You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die.
   
   
3. A title can have a hidden meaning, later revealed in the story. The Green Mile, Rain Man, Dances with Wolves, Catch-22, Hearts in Atlantis, Cool Hand Luke.
   
   
4. A title can come from an existing work. (The Bible, Shakespeare, etc.) The Grapes of Wrath, The Sound and the Fury, The Sun Also Rises, Absalom, Absalom, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
   
   
5. A title can be a person's name. Hannibal, Goldfinger, Carrie, Hondo, Rebecca, Doctor Zhivago, Shane, Forrest Gump.
   
   
6. A title can be a place name. Magic Mountain, Cimarron, Peyton Place, Jurassic Park, Lonesome Dove, Mystic River.
   
   
7. A title can be a possessive. Portnoy's Complaint, Angela's Ashes, The Optimist's Daughter, Charlotte's Web.
   
   
8. A title can be an association of ideas. Often these are words that have a "double meaning," and refer to more than one thing in a story. The Eye of the Needle, The Dead Zone, Misery, Silver Bullet, Lie Down with Lions.
   
   
9. A title can be an "event" or "activity." Pleading Guilty, Romancing the Stone, Waiting to Exhale, "Riding the Bullet," Raising Helen, Finding Nemo.
   
   
10. A title can be a memorable line from the story itself. To Kill a Mockingbird, Tell No One, Sleepless in Seattle, The Eagle Has Landed, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Usage Tip o'the Week: Bad vs. Badly

Question: Which sentence is grammatically correct?

a. I feel bad about leaving the dog outside all night in the thunderstorm.
b. I feel badly about leaving the dog outside all night in the thunderstorm.

Before you read on, write your answer on the back of your left hand (Soulof..., you may write it on the back of your right). Now consider the following:

To say "I feel badly" could imply that there's something wrong with your sense of touch, as if you're in a dark room having trouble feeling your way around with numb fingers. Here's why:

"Badly" is an adverb, meaning that it modifies a verb (An adverb may also modify an adjective or another adverb. So when you say , "I feel badly," the adverb badly relates to the the action verb feel. Since the action verb feel can mean "to touch things," feeling badly can mean you're having trouble touching things.

As Grammar Girl relates: This is a problem with most of the verbs that describe senses such as taste and smell. Consider the obvious difference in the meanings of these two sentences:

I smell bad.
I smell badly.

When you say, “I smell badly,” badly is an adverb that modifies the verb smell. You're saying your sniffer isn't working, just like when you say you feel badly you're saying that your fingers aren't working. When you say, “I smell bad,” bad is an adjective, which means it modifies a noun. You're saying that you stink, just like when you say “I feel bad” you're saying that you are regretful or sad or ill or wicked.

The reason people often think they should say they feel badly is that after most other verbs it's correct to use the adverb. For example, if you gave a horrible speech you might say, “It went badly.” If a child threw a fit in a shopping mall, it would be correct to say, “She behaved badly.”

So, let's get back to the original question about the dog you left out in the thunderstorm. Look at the back of your hand. If you wrote A, congratulations, you are correct. Have someone pat you on the back. In that sentence above, feel is used as a linking verb -- and bad is the predicate adjective (and not an adverb).

Oscar Wilde’s Personal Library

The Christian Science Monitor reviews a promising book on Oscar Wilde’s life as viewed through the prism of his personal library, proving that one can learn aplenty about a man through the books he owned, read, and digested. Wilde, it seems, truly "made his books his own." He went far beyond simply writing his name on the inside cover. Consider:

Wilde’s was a working library and its volumes were often stacked on the floor. Wilde scribbled in them, marked passages, and sometimes even chewed on them. (Literally – he would tear corners off pages and pop them in his mouth while reading intensely.) He dribbled crumbs and jam into them and sometimes used flowers to mark his place – all of which left an unusually personal imprint on his collection. He also borrowed widely from his books and perhaps even stole. (Plagiarism, he told a friend, “is the privilege of the appreciative man.”)

The book on Wilde's books is Built of Books:

Wilde was a brilliant scholar and droll, rapid-fire commentator. He was erudite beyond what most of us can even begin to imagine. Except that now, thanks to Thomas Wright, we can imagine. Wright, in a remarkable labor of love, has dedicated much of his life (about two decades) to a quest to intellectually reconfigure and read Wilde’s personal library. The result is Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde.

It could be argued that all of us are indelibly marked by the books we read. But there can be few people for whom this is as strikingly true as it was of Wilde, who became celebrated as a playwright, poet, author, and professional wit.

Books were the driving force of his existence, from earliest childhood on up, and later in life, when he was brought low by tragedy and disgrace, they were his last remaining comfort.

Wright has gone to great lengths not only to learn about the titles that shaped Wilde’s life, but to get his hands on as many of Wilde’s own copies of those books as possible. The result is an idiosyncratic yet insightful take on the man Wright refers to as “my hero.”

read on...

The Hook: Great Opening Lines of Short Stories

We've talked about the importance of a riveting first paragraph -- first lines -- designed to draw a reader into a short story and ultimately keep him there until the final lines. Known as the "hook," these opening lines needn't be obnoxious, overly sensational, or bizarre in order to garner attention; they just need to be strong and somehow gripping.

Consider some examples that spring to mind:

“None of them knew the color of the sky.” — “Open Boat” by Stephen Crane

“One day you have a home and the next you don’t, but I’m not going to tell you my particular reasons for being homeless, because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks.” —“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie

"Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. 'At our school,' said A., 'we had a ghost's footmark on the staircase.' " -- "A School Story" by M.R. James

"Young Goodman Borwn came forth at sunset into the street at Salem Village; but put his head back after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown." -- "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge driver, is all white like a ghost." -- "Misery" by Anton Chekhov

"On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card." -- "The Cop and the Anthem," by O. Henry

"A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck." -- "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce

Opening lines are of great importance to novels, too. Check out these "100 best first lines from novels" from American Book Review.

Sleuth at Playhouse in the Park

Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer is being performed at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park from now through October 3.

One of the greatest stage thrillers and a masterpiece of suspense, Sleuth won the Tony Award for Best Play and inspired two film versions. When an aging mystery writer lures his wife's lover to his mansion, the younger man becomes unwittingly drawn into a tangled web of intrigue and gamesmanship, where nothing is quite as it seems. This edge-of-your-seat mystery full of cunning plot twists is not only an exciting "whodunit" but a fascinating "whodunwhat."

The play is set at the manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing. He lures Milo Tindle to the house and convinces him to stage a robbery of his wife's jewelry, a proposal that sets off a chain of events that leaves the audience trying to decipher where Wyke's imagination ends and reality begins.

Info at the Playhouse...

Word of the Day: Twitterpated

Today's "word of the day" comes courtesy of Soulofdiscretion:

Twitterpated: (adj.) -- characterized by feelings of excitement, anticipation, high hopes, recent memories of interludes, giddiness, and physical overstimulation which occur simultaneously when experiencing a new love. These feelings take over without warning, usually at odd times (such as at a check-out line), with or without the partner present, and make it difficult to concentrate on anything but romance. They interfere with work and safe driving, but should be experienced at least once in every person's lifetime.

By the way, seeing the handle "soulofdiscretion" reminds me to remind you that there's a difference between the two homophones discrete and discreet:

"Discrete" means separate, distinct, or individual.

Example: They worked as discrete individuals with their own agendas rather than as a team.

"Discreet," on the other hand, means to be prudent or show good judgment, to have, well, discretion.

Example: I’m too discreet to mention which of my colleagues got these two words mixed up.

Nine times out of ten, students and adults will misspell discreet, when used in the sense of "discretion." Don't let this happen to you!

Growing up with your favorite fictional characters

On today's London Guardian book blog, Wayne Gooderham asks an interesting question: "Does anyone else find themselves measuring their own age against the people they read about in novels?"

I was 29 when I first became interested in the ages of literary characters. Re-reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22, I made the shocking discovery that somehow I was now a year older than Yossarian. How did this happen? Rebellious, wise-cracking Yossarian should be forever my senior, someone to look up to and secretly admire. An older brother or dodgy uncle almost. I shouldn't be able to overtake him. It didn't seem right. I was too young for such revelations.

Shaken by this, I got to thinking: not only was I a year older than Yossarian, but I was two years older than Hans Castorp when he came down from the Magic Mountain (and as readers of the Thomas Mann novel will confirm, he was up there for a very long time). Worse still, I was 13 years older than JD Salinger's Holden Caulfield. This was all very worrying to say the least. I went back to Catcher in the Rye and was relieved to discover that while I still enjoyed the book immensely, some of Holden's attitude and behaviour did strike me as a tad immature. Perhaps not quite as immature as they should appear to a 29-year-old, but enough to make me feel I was heading in vaguely the right direction life-wise.

Suddenly I was acutely aware of time moving on and dragging me along with it while Yossarian and his peers stayed youthfully behind. It was obvious that I needed to find a new yardstick to measure myself by. Measure myself how exactly? I'm not entirely sure. If part of the reason we read literature is to find out how to live, then I suppose I just liked the reassurance that someone reaching the grand old age of twenty-nine could still be living a life deemed interesting enough to be written and read about (Holden Caulfield hadn't quite lost his grip on me yet).

read on...

Tips: Writing Short Stories

As you're thinking about penning your American folk tales, you might take a moment to read through this tip sheet from Seton Hill on crafting short stories. Here are some salient excerpts:

What Is a Short Story?
A short story begins as close to the conclusion as possible, and grabs the reader from the very first line. It conserves character and scenes, typically focuses on just one problem, and drives towards a sudden, unexpected revelation.

Write a Catchy First Paragraph
In today's fast-moving world, the first sentence of your short story should catch your reader's attention with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict. Begin with tension and immediacy. Remember that short stories need to start close to their end.

Choose a Point-of-View
Point of view is the narration of the story from the perspective of first, second, or third person. As a writer, you need to determine who is going to tell the story and how much information is available for the narrator to reveal in the short story. The narrator can be directly involved in the action subjectively, or the narrator might only report the action objectively.

Set Up the Plot
Understanding these story elements for developing actions and their end results will help you plot your next short story.

• Explosion or "Hook." A thrilling, gripping, stirring event or problem that grabs the reader's attention right away.
• Conflict. A character versus the internal self or an external something or someone.
• Exposition. Background information required for seeing the characters in context.
• Complication. One or more problems that keep a character from their intended goal.
• Transition. Image, symbol, dialogue, that joins paragraphs and scenes together.
• Flashback. Remembering something that happened before the short story takes place.
• Climax. When the rising action of the story reaches the peak.
• Falling Action. Releasing the action of the story after the climax.
• Resolution. When the internal or external conflict is resolve.

Create Conflict and Tension
Conflict produces tension that makes the story begin. Tension is created by opposition between the character or characters and internal or external forces or conditions. By balancing the opposing forces of the conflict, you keep readers glued to the pages wondering how the story will end.

• Mystery. Explain just enough to tease readers. Never give everything away.
• Empowerment. Give both sides options.
• Progression. Keep intensifying the number and type of obstacles the protagonist faces.
• Causality. Hold fictional characters more accountable than real people. Characters who make mistakes frequently pay, and, at least in fiction, commendable folks often reap rewards.
• Surprise. Provide sufficient complexity to prevent readers predicting events too far in advance.
• Empathy. Encourage reader identification with characters and scenarios that pleasantly or (unpleasantly) resonate with their own sweet dreams (or night sweats).
• Insight. Reveal something about human nature.
• Universality. Present a struggle that most readers find meaningful, even if the details of that struggle reflect a unique place and time.
• High Stakes. Convince readers that the outcome matters because someone they care about could lose something precious. Trivial clashes often produce trivial fiction.

Build a Crisis or Climax
This is the turning point of the story--the most exciting or dramatic moment. Jane Burroway says that the crisis "must always be presented as a scene. It is "the moment" the reader has been waiting for. In Cinderella's case, "the payoff is when the slipper fits." While a good story needs a crisis, a random event such as a car crash or a sudden illness is simply an emergency --unless it somehow involves a conflict that makes the reader care about the characters (see: "Crisis vs. Conflict").

Find a Resolution
This is the solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.

Read the whole article...

Word of the Day: jiggery-pokery

jiggery-pokery: (n.) -- deceitful or dishonest manipulation; underhand scheming or behavior; hocus-pocus, humbug, subterfuge, hanky panky, skullduggery, slickness, trickery.

Interesting tidbit: jiggery-pokery is a classic example of what’s called a double dactyl, a dactyl being a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables; it’s named after the Greek word for finger, whose joints represent the three syllables. Other examples of double dactyls are higgledy-piggledy and idiosyncrasy.

Dystopia -- District 9

We discussed the fact that Fahrenheit 451 is, along with 1984 and Brave New World, one of the most well-known dystopian novels of the 20th century. The recent release of the docu-spoof film District 9 has spawned a spate of articles and reviews explaining the dystopia genre (e.g., in Current). In its review of the movie, London's Independent concludes:

This dystopian thriller's attempt at social comment is hijacked by extraterrestrial crustaceans with a craze for cat food.

The entire review is worth reading. I haven't seen the film myself, but have heard generally positive (though qualified) assessments.

Stunt Rumors of the 1959 Ben-Hur

Was Stephen Boyd's stunt double really killed and his death left in the final cut?

You can read all about it on snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/benhur.asp

The rumor that Stephen Boyd's double was killed during the chariot race is false. According to second-unit director Yakima Canutt, the "Messala" that was run over, a Roman soldier standing on the center island who was hit by a chariot and the driver of a spilled rig who jumped out of the way of one chariot but was immediately run over by another one were all articulated and weighted dummies (made with movable arm and leg joints), so when they were hit they "reacted" the way a normal human body would in that situation. A combination of adroit placement and expert editing made the dummies look like real people being run over.
If you watch Massala being thrown out of his chariot and trampled in slow motion you can clearly see that the figure pitched out of the chariot, dragged and trampled is a dummy. A close up of Stephen Boyd being dragged is cut into the sequence, but the distance shots are all done with a stiff figure.