Earlier this week, we discussed framing devices, and how they can determine whatever a past-tense, first-person narrator can die or not. Today, we conclude with the other factors: time frames, and the broadcasting theory.
It’s said that when Harriet Beecher Stowe visited the White House to meet President Lincoln, he looked at her and said, “So, you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War.”
All writers want their work to have influence. I wanted my writing to move people, evoke emotions in them, and, most of all, call them to action, but I didn’t believe it was possible. Before I could believe, I needed to find the answers to a couple questions.
Stowe’s writing can start a war to end slavery, but what can my writing start? How do I write to start a change?
Every once in a while, I hear a writer say something like, “I don’t need to read. I’m too busy writing to read.” Stephen King would have something to say to this, but I keep quiet. Writing is hard enough. I don’t want to make it harder.
For me, though, reading inspires, instructs, and helps me connect with other authors more than any other habit.
Some books on writing claim that a past-tense, first-person narrator can’t be killed off during the story. The reasoning is that if your narrator is narrating in the past tense, he has to be alive at the end of the story, or he wouldn’t be telling it.
Is that true or false?
It’s complicated, but it’s not 100% true.
In short stories and novels, fantasy in particular, readers want to be present or transported to the scenes of the story. One of the best ways to do such a feat is to ‘Evoke the Emotions and Employ the Senses.’
Poetry should be no different.
