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This week's readings, I found especially useful for my style of writing. I tend to write on the more...emotional side and I use many of the techniques that were covered in chapter ten. I especially found it useful to read about the use of flashback and the employment of fantasies. I had always thought that my use of flashbacks would be seen as lazy and unnecessary but it is outlined in this chapter that it can be useful for the plot and it is okay for me to use it. As for the fantasies, I had never thought about using this technique. I usually stuck to more concrete ways to push the plot along which I had been having trouble with anyway. This chapter sort of helped me understand that it's okay to use some of these tecniques. It didn't exactly me tell me anything I didn't know but it reassured me that I was on the right track and am indeed improving on my writing.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the short story for this week, I want to say that I liked it better than last week's. At first I thought it was a little boring but as I continued to read, I found myself entranced by the writing. I really enjoyed the way that the author wrote about grief. It was underrated but it almost felt like it should be that way. I coulda lost feel the tone as if numb which would make sense for someone who suffered a tragedy. I enjoyed they style and the characters were interesting enough to keep me invested.
Valeria Jaime
This week’s chapter really helped me understand some fundamentals I feel I missed out when I started or I felt flew over my head when developing characters for a story. The idea of the “general in the particular” carries over to character writing, being able to create the image of a character can help the reader to understand what they are thinking about or what they are going through. I tend to write in the first person as that is how I understand the world, through my own eyes and I tend to observe people and try to understand what they are like outside of a situation based on how they talk, look, and their actions and I think about how they view me. I do like a bit of clarification on page 328 that sometimes there is no need to flesh out every single character, “Sometimes the waiter needs to just bring the food…” I also like the potential of being able to set a tone and mood by a narrator’s description of the world and their attitude towards certain people.
ReplyDeleteThe reading was excellent in setting this somber and depressive tone, the narrator seemed very indifferent but still holds hope and a willingness to press on after her family’s passing. I was able to visualize the scenes described as well as the traditional Indian clothing the narrator and other women were wearing.
-Marc Fuentes
I really enjoyed this chapter because when I write a story, my characters that I come up with and create are the ones I care about the most. I know one thing I struggle with is describing my character’s physical appearance. I’ve even noticed times in my writing where I don’t describe the physical appearance much because I don’t know how to describe it in a way that makes it interesting. I don’t want to bore my reader. As I look at the three examples given under that section, I noticed that Raymond Carver’s description of his character was simple, straight to the point and even interesting. This made me feel a little better because it showed me that sometimes you don’t have to go all out to describe what a character looks like. It can be short and straight to the point. On page 32, under “what the character thinks or feels” I also found interesting because I know for me, I hesitate a little bit about what my characters are thinking when I write in third person. It’s almost like I overthink if should or not for some odd reason. I do it anyway, but somehow it still feels awkward to me, unless I write in first person, then I don’t feel that way.
ReplyDeleteI actually couldn’t get a connection with the story The Management of Grief. I thought some parts were interesting, but overall, I was kind of lost of what was happening and I was also getting confused with the characters in trying to keep track of them in my head. I don’t know why because I do feel like it can grow on me, but for now it wasn’t for me.
Megan Cavazos
I like how LaPlante really goes into depth about crafting characters. I like how in the beginning she stated “characters are supposed to be human beings” (p. 326) It really made me come to the conclusion that every time a writer attempts to craft a character, it’s much better and easier to do it based on a person in real life. For example, if you already know a person in real life that you think might make a good character for story, you could do a character inspired by that person. It doesn’t have to be an exact replica of that person, but it can possess a lot of the attributes of that person and you can add your own. Like adding your own twist to it.
ReplyDeleteManagement of Grief was a good short story. It was very well written, I liked how the author characterized the narrator through her grief. I feel like that is something that is very hard to achieve. The only thing that I didn’t like was that I felt that it was really long, but overall, I liked the theme and the message that the author was trying to convey. I liked her style of writing as well.
Ivanna Zamudio Trevino
I have to say that “The Management of Grief” was a story I enjoyed from start to finish. It instantly caught my attention just by looking at the title because grief is something that we all go through.
ReplyDeleteIn page 327, it mentions the famous Hemingway iceberg theory, “ with characters, only 10 percent of what the author knows about the character actually appears in the story—but if he or she doesn’t know the other 90 percent, then that will be apparent to the reader: the character will appear lifeless, not believable, flat in some way.” If the author had not allowed us to see what emotions and feeling Mrs. Bhave was truly feeling, the character would have appeared flat to me. On the outside, Mrs. Bhave shows no reaction on the tragedy that turned her world upside-down. However, once we get past her calm and collected exterior, we can finally see the overwhelming emotions that are constantly rushing through her over the loss of her sons and husband. For me, this short story embodies grief that many people can relate too. Mrs. Bhave goes through the typical emotions that grief can make someone feel, depression, denial, anger, and hope. She may not show it on the outside, but we can see the journey she has taken with grief by looking deeper into the character.
Angela Milan
I thought that this week's chapter was really interesting. I enjoyed the part where LaPlante said that characters are driven by wants and needs that is something that I find to ring true in any work and I always find it interesting when characters confuse their wants and needs. One thing that I did disagree with was when she began to talk about flashbacks. I do agree that they can be used for character revelations and establishing a character, but I would never recommend using them for that purpose because it feels cheap to me, I always feel like why use a whole scene for something that you can use to build tension and further your story and your characters to new places and heights. That and I feel that because flashbacks are so easy to use, they are also so easily done wrong or improperly. A lot of the time it feels like X character has some trauma or something so instead of using the character to explain they use the flashback as some kind of cheap dramatic ministory within a story. But that is just my personal bias against the usage of flashback.
ReplyDeleteThe reading really did exemplify the chapter because the characters were really fleshed out. They felt real because when the author described them, they were people who went through a tragedy and I bought that. I think what I liked the most about this reading was the interaction between Kusum and her daughter and I was fascinated that she could so easily hurt her daughter in her grief. Like I wanted to learn more about their relationship how it got to the point that the daughter could tell there was some form of favortism going on in the house. The main character was so interesting to me because of the odd calmness that she experienced throughout the whole story and how everyone was praising her for being a pillar of the community when she was breaking apart on the inside and trying to piece her life back together after the death of her two sons and husband. I was horrified, reading about the men being forced to marry again so soon after they lost their families. Like their families really did not give them that time to grieve, they just followed the custom that a man should not be without a wife, and never once thought of their feelings throughout it. I felt especially bad for the Sikh couple who's denial was their only way of hoping that their sons would return to them. I was both frustrated and sorry for them because they wanted to believe so badly that their sons were okay that they were also saying that if their sons were gone than they would be too. I felt horrible thinking about that but it was like a prison of their own making, the grief that they had trapped themselves in.
Tiffany
When I first started reading “The Management of Grief” , I wasn’t interested in the slightest. I thought it was over descriptive, and if I’m being frank, a bit boring. In the beginning i thought maybe it was because I couldn’t relate, therefore I couldn’t connect. Once I got to the part about Shaila identifying her sons, & she denied it, it peaked my interest. I couldn’t tell if Dr. Ranganathan was just saying that those two boys were different ones because he could see that Shaila was in denial, and they just had the conversation about her sons possibly swimming to safety. In my opinion Shaila was an example of a round character on pg. 327 LaPlante says that round characters are “capable of surprising us...but a round character also convinces us.” I think that the main character surprised me by being so strong for those around her, and help them deal with their grief and then when it came to facing her own grief she almost rejects it, because she wouldn’t be able to cope with facing the loss of her sons. It was surprising but convincing, and in that instance, at least to me, she became a round character. LaPlante, on pg 329, says “we won’t believe in a character whose behavior is all over the map yet any character who fails to surprise us at all will also fail the test of being a believable, round character.”
ReplyDeleteAisha Teegarden
In chapter 10 of "Method and Madness," the section that caught my eyes ended up being "What the character looks like." Characters have always been a bit of a weakness of mine, even though I have a complete plot, it's always difficult for me to write compelling characters that aren't just a jumble of tiny personality traits, and don't even get me started on character appearances. I supposes I never realized that there are different ways to describe the way a character looks like. For whatever reason, I just assumed that there's only one way to mention their appearance through rarely pulled off exposition. That's simply one method of doing so.
ReplyDeleteCharacter dialog is also something I'm not very good at. I always end up either having fluff conversations that has no meaning to the story, or overly formal dialog that is just too stiff. I suppose that's more my fault since I never had a high friend count, nor do I bother watching other people's conversations, but the "What a character says." section helps me understand at least the basics of what a character says should be like. Rather than trying to make the dialog fit the plot, I should be more focused on how the characters would say things, what their thought processes are that would get them to say what they say. I guess this also means that I normally don't have the best grasp on my characters.
—Airam Sandoval
I feel that this week's reading was exactly what I needed. The story I'm working on is very much based on characterization. I've been trying to develop characters that the reader falls in love with so much that they try to look over and in a way excuse their very "immoral" actions. Reading through chapter 10 the thing that stood out to me the most was the idea of using subtext. I want to work on implementing that in my writing and letting a character show who they are by the things they don't say rather than heavily relying on what they do say. Another thing I loved was the example of “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford and how used the different ways both characters viewed misfortune to define them as individual characters. I loved this idea because I to think that it's those things that really help one get to know a character. One other thing that I believe will not only help me in my writing but also in critiquing and giving constructive criticism, is the idea that a character acting “out of character” can be good and bad. In a way its good because surprising characters are desirable, but it can also be bad if it feels to forced.
ReplyDeleteDavid Hermosillo
Chapter 10 gave me a deeper understanding and a guideline to not fall into the trap of flat characters. It’s so easy to give a character stereotypical personalities and just be given a singular purpose. I agree with the line in this chapter that only 10% of a character is revealed in a novel because of the work needed to create a three-dimensional character. Giving a sense of imagination, thoughts, memories, and feelings are excellent examples given that I had not thought about in length. All in all, the entire chapter provided great tips for writing interesting people.
ReplyDeleteMoving on to the reading, I really liked what I was reading and getting to know the narrator as the story moved forward. The tone is very depressing and in grief, there is a lot of that. Nothing felt out of place, the plateau described from depression to acceptance is the representation of Shaila. She’s trying to move on but others seem to still be grasping on to their loved ones. Through flashbacks and her own feelings, we do not see her as just a widow. Her memories help understand what her place in the world is and in turn, the side characters are humanized through her.
-Monica Olvera
The point about flashbacks in Chapter 10 is something I'm particularly fond of when done well in stories. For example, the protagonist of a story revolving around revenge can take their justice at the start without the action appearing out of the ordinary (if they're law enforcement, they're after a criminal) while later on in the story it is revealed through flashbacks the reason why that criminal is so important to the character. Maybe the criminals former actions lead the character to change their previous plans of a career to law enforcement. It's more much subtle and you are allowed to see the human side of the character before their motives or sense of justice is highlighted. Meanwhile, the opposite would be focusing entirely on the character's revenge from the start and having them follow a breadcrumb trail until they finally take revenge at the climax of the story.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Management of Grief", a paragraph that caught my eye was the first one on page 360 that highlights the previous methods Shalia's family has coped with grief and how those currently affect her same management of it now. Appearing calm on the outside, but suffering internally. Her deciding to not continue assisting Judith is the culmination of Shalia's grief.
-Nathan Smith
I read somewhere that the best way to make a character feel alive is to give it a life. A past. I remember their advice went: "A character does not stop living once the story ends". They meant, of course, that a character must continually grow and have grown. Give it successes, failures, desires, habits. In LaPante, I feel the quote by Gustave Flaubert is most helpful. "Show me that grocer...their attitude, their whole physical appearance,...their moral nature, so that I cannot confound them with any grocer." That level of complexity must be convincing, not just surprising. Often times, it must seem easier to work simply in contradictions and to have that provide the spark needed to make stories ignite. But a writer must give the reader a reason to believe in their characters, to believe in their changes and behaviors. When reading the short story "The Management of Grief," I found it believable how at the beginning Shaila didn't resist Judith, the appointee, because of the "terrible calm". However, as the story progressed, Shaila is presented with a set of stubborn parents but they prove to be the catalyst for her taking control and ditching Judith and her unwanted ignorance. These changes are reasonable and convincing and as the reader, we are moved to care (which is what you most want as writer).
ReplyDelete-Sandra Martinez