In Sam Ligon’s interview regarding flash fiction, Sam has quite a bit to say about how he feels about writing flash fiction stories, or short-short stories. Mostly, he talks about the main reason why he like writing short stories, which is that it gives him the opportunity to create powerful diction and syntax, that one doesn’t normally get out of novel-length works. He explains that the only way to make flash fiction work is by using powerful diction, because there is no time to do it by using a vast diversity in characters and creating an intricate journey. In flash fiction, the author must pack the punch and make the story worth reading by using syntax and voice that pulls the reader in, and as he says it, “demands that the reader must read …show more content…
Thus, when writing a longer work, the author is able to use that voice to strengthen the story, and as Ligon talks about with his own work, develop characters at a more in depth level. An excellent example of how short stories are able to quickly pack in a punch using syntax is “The Bed You’ve Made” by Sam Ligon. In the story, Ligon uses excellent diction to help paint a very clear picture in the mind of the reader about what is happening, but it does this in a piece that is not more than three or four hundred words. For example, Ligon uses the phrase, “It broke our hearts to sing such mournful words, tears staining our cheeks as we sang our haunting hillbilly harmonies,” (Ligon, The Bed You’ve Made), when he just as easily could have said “The song was sad.” However, the word choice paints a clear image to help one understand what is happening in the story so much more in depth than it would to say that the song is sad and why it’s sad. It cuts out the fluff, and makes the writing significantly stronger. When an author learns to pack this kind of a punch into a sentence, they can take the syntax, and use it in longer works, and make something that is truly a masterpiece. In long works, like novels, authors are more focused on telling the story, whereas short-short authors are like a grandfather telling a story from when he was young around a campfire, attempting to make a story grand and captivating by using imagery and
By choosing strong and well-thought out words, it allows the readers to better pay attention to detail and recollect more material. Influential diction causes the readers to become reeled in and intrigued in the novel. The narrator writes, “You’d fine the high school phenoms running circles around the overweight has-beens, guys who’d effortlessly played above-the-rim years ago now trying to catch their breath and salvage what was left of their once-stylish games” (Moore 44). Using words like ‘phenoms’ and ‘has-beens’ causes the author and the reader to relate. The narrator creates a connection between himself and his audience by using words his readers can understand and empathize with. Wes says, “You’d find the drug dealers there...smelling like a fresh haircut and with gear on that was too fine for sweating in” (Moore 44). Moore uses imagery and tugs at our senses to allow his audience to better picture the situation he is explaining and describing. Imagery, along with strong diction, generates a more engaging novel. The storyteller’s sentence structure varies from short to long. This allows the reader to stay interested and keeps the author’s sentences flowing easily. Wes Moore, the narrator, is guilty of inspiring and influential diction and
Why do the words that authors use in their writing help set the overall atmosphere of the story? In the story, "What Do Fish Have to Do With Anything," a young boy named Willie and his cautious mother, who were abandoned by their father, come across a beggar, and Willie grows curious of his character, thus leading him to question him. After a series of encounters, Willie learns that the homeless man was not what he seemed, but a man of wisdom. In the story, “Dark They Were, And Golden Eyed” by Ray Bradbury, a party of humans arrive in Mars and try to build their new lives there after an apocalypse on the Earth. One of the humans, Harry Bittering, is skeptical about Mars and how living there may not be the best idea. In both “Dark They Were,
In an essay written by Amy Schalet, titled “The Sleep Over Question,” the author provides data from a research experiment she conducted regarding teens sexual behavior and their relationship with their parents about it. Schalet, interviews 130 white, middle class, Netherlanders about their sexual openness with their parents and how their parents react and feel toward their sexual activity. Schalet uses many crucial forms of logos, pathos, and ethos in her paper to better explain the outcomes of teens and their parents being open about sex.
Authors write to be understood and to show others their beliefs. They want to color a picture for you in the words they are writing. John Steinbeck used word choice, parallelism, and foreshadowing in Of Mice and Men in the same way a great artist creates a scene.
Unlike Dillard’s use of long sentences to create large amounts of description, Woolf uses short sentences to express her emotion. Beautiful adjectives and verbs, such as fluttering, flood Woolf’s writing, compared to Dillard’s gruesome verbs, such as sputtering, and jerked. Adjectives such as insignificant set up a depressing, emotional, and pensive tone. Using shorter sentences, such as, “The struggle was over,” (Woolf, “The Death of the Moth,”) and, “What he could do he did,” (Woolf, “The Death of the Moth.”) allows the reader to think and reflect about it. In Dillard’s writing, the reader often can imagine what they are reading from her blunt descriptions. In Woolf’s piece, readers reflect more on the meaning and the impact of the piece through the use of short sentences.
The editors of “Flash Fiction” asked themselves the question, “How short can a story be and still truly be a story?” (11). With this in mind, they settled on a maximum word count of 750, with a minimum of 250. They debated keeping it as “one story to a page, just a little book of little stories,” but soon realized that, without the turn of a page during a story, the reader is easily bored (13). Instead, they allowed the stories to begin and end naturally in the book’s layout.
A good example of this is King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, which is used to move the audience. King uses charged language throughout the speech, like in paragraph 15 when he says “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.” (King Pg 263) King also uses Pathos in “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Throughout paragraph 14, King uses the same sentence structure repeatedly to form a rhythm and add emphasis to his words (King Pg 275). King uses this literary device to add rhythm, structure, and emphasis to his
The way the writer communicates is through their style. It appeals to the audiences emotions, it can make the message more artistic and memorable.
The short story, as with other literary forms, is not defined by its actual parameters. Subject and theme may be as varied as those within full-length novels, just as the author's individual style plays an inevitable role in shaping the work. That said, there is a common element uniting short stories; they usually create impact due to the brevity itself, which authors typically rely on to make a more direct impression. Condensed, the form offers more overt power, and this is evident in how William Faulkner and Edgar Allan Poe employ it to achieve distinctly Gothic effects. “A Rose for Emily” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are very different stories set in very different worlds, and the tone of the narration in each is equally
The length and the plot play a big role in the flash fiction requirments. According to our class fiction requirements, a flash fiction should
In voice and rhythm they talk about changing in sentence length in a sentence you need sentence structure which is a good technique in voice and rhythm along with structure there is manipulation. Sentence expansion takes a short blunt sentence and gives it life for example taking the sentence “ the campers roasted marshmallows” ( 25-2) and adding modifies: phrases and clauses to the sentence making it better the sentence after the changes “The twenty starving campers from boy scout troop 46 eagerly roasted marshmallows over a roaring fire at camp winnetonka last week” you can also add independent clauses in the writing. These are sentences with a subject and verb they can stand alone or two or more can make a complex sentence. The core of
Sam Ligon, is a great writer. Not only is he able to create novels, but he has also written plenty of short-shorts. Most authors, they write with the voice they have and say everything they need to within their novels or stories. However, Ligon has something else to say. Novels are a way to dive in deep and really get into a story through a longer period of time. Short-shorts are nearly entirely different. They push you into the story within the first few sentences and just when you think the story couldn’t get any more intense, it ends. Just like that, boom. Sam Ligon, says this, in his own words, basically so we understand not only the difference between them, but the difference an author must do to make a piece they truly think is complete.
How can a few words tell a whole story? The author Gabriel García Márquez wrote a short story titled “A very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children.” While reading the title of the story people tend to start to process and predict what's the story is about before reading it. The title of the story has to be able to tell someone about the story without giving away the suspenseful, intense cliffhangers. When the author picks out the title for their story they put a lot of thought into it, for example, how are they going to make it intriguing, how will it connect to the story and things in the story. In this short story the title gives away a strong important element in the story while still making it a page turner for the readers, even though the readers already know it has to do with an old man with enormous they still read it to gather the rest of the contextual items in the story that fully relate to the title of the story. Marquez’s choice of title for this short story connects directly to the main characters, the historical context of the story, and the contemporary experience the story brings.
Before the 20th Century, literature was pretty straightforward; the narrators were reliable, the timelines were linear, and the perspective was clear, but then somebody got the idea to mix it up. This is how we got books such as The Great Gatsby and one of our class texts, Orlando. For some, this was a startling and uncomfortable transition from what used to be considered the, “normal” format which was very up front in terms of structure and voice. Others found it to be more exciting and, while it was still weird and unsettling for those people, it forced people to think more about what the books were trying to communicate, instead of just being handed the message; they had to work for it. This has become one of the leading reasons that societies are encouraged to read; if you read a book that forces you to think, your mind becomes stronger and this promotes an increase in intelligence and creativity.
There are so many different things one can learn from reading a story. Stories vary in length but it seems that your appetite for reading will gauge the kind of stories you elect to read. People who enjoy long thought out complex reading will enjoy much longer published works than what a short story has to offer. However there is a large population in the world of people who do not want to spend days on end reading a novel that is several hundred pages long and takes days to convey a simple message. In fact, many people want just the opposite in their reading. Many readers want a story that is short, sweet, and to the point. Something that they don’t need to spend hours or weeks on end reading but instead can get the exact same message or meaning from instead of having to spend a ridiculous amount of time reading a much larger work. Authors often want readers use the Formalist approach when reading these short stories as authors use words to convey the same message or meaning in less text than a much longer published work with hundreds of pages, it does this by using the text itself as a canvas for creativity. The Formalist approach is a great tool when it comes to writing short stories, and its use in Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor is classic example of how the Formalist Approach can be so effective in such a short story. Authors are incredibly