The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.
Marlon JamesRead
If your depiction of loss doesn't make the reader feel loss, then you didn't depict it right.
Interpretation
Effective storytelling should evoke genuine emotions in the reader.
Marlon James emphasizes the importance of creating an authentic emotional experience in literature. If an author's portrayal of loss fails to resonate with readers, it suggests that the depiction lacks depth or authenticity, highlighting the critical role of emotional engagement in storytelling.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop about creative writing techniques.
The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.
I'm not a writer on a mission, and I'm very suspicious of writers on missions, but I'm also not living a false life.
I always tell my students to complicate your characters: never make it easy for the reader. Nobody is ever one thing. That's what makes characters compelling.
Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.
In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.
Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
We worked the medley on side two of "Abbey Road" out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine.
As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.
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