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Managing Fictional Narrative Flow - Prose Style
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 9
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Beyond Strunk and White, probably the best way for a student to develop facility with prose styles is through imitation. There are any number of ways to learn prose style through imitation, the most straightforward being to simply type out passages by writers whose styles you admire. Actually typing out the words forces you to confront in a very physical way the rhythms and tendencies of the author. You will begin to develop a feel for how the writer structures her sentences, when and how she includes description, and what word choices she makes. Almost invariably, these decision made by the author will be at odds with your own tendencies as a writer, and careful attention to these moments of conflict as you write can provide clues about your own habits and insight into how you might better control them.
Once you have a feel for an author's style in a particular work, it can also be a useful exercise to imitate that style in a piece of your own. Imitation, as I said before, often gets a bad name, but there are worse ways to polish your style. Even the best imitation will not be a carbon copy of the author's work, and your own tastes and interests will naturally draw your writing away from the models you choose.
You've already typed out a number of passages from your selected story. If you feel you need it as a warm up, go back now and type out another passage or two. Once you are comfortable you've got a sense of your chosen author's style, try to write out a one-page passage in that writer's style which dramatizes two characters--Alexis Gray and Robert Dean--who have just discovered that they are pregnant after a casual encounter. This may be difficult for those of you with first-person narrators, but do your best. Please post this exercise in the style section of the class craftbook on the discussion board so we can compare different versions of the scenario.
Style Exercise 1 (Req.) - Submit response
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