Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character.
From Janet Fitch
I send all my short fiction to 'Ontario Review' because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic.
I've always been concerned with what happens to children in our society when there's nobody left to take care of them.
I started writing when I was 21. I was going to become an historian. And then I realized there was more to the world than just the past. I didn't want to spend my life in the library.
I have a hard time with abstractions. I always go to the personal.
My thoughts about God are vague and abstract. My connection with the energy of the universe is shaky.
My father gave me Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' when I was in junior high; my junior high, angst-filled soul responded to that.
Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time.
You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.
I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.
3 perspectives
1 perspectives