Fiction Packet 11/6/13

Fiction Packet #3

Brandon Lazovic

                So we had a few packets to read for our creative writing class this week. The first set of stories was from the book The Singing Fish by Peter Markos. My interpretation of the stories would have to be a mixed response. It feels like tribal myths, the way it is written, the elements, the way things happen and are all explained are a lead example of this. The last story that was written could also justify how children age and grow up, learning and how they try and explain things in life. The word ‘mud’ is used in large amounts throughout the stories, which could allude to that tribal age of misunderstanding about the world, or possibly refer to skin color and African culture. It would make sense because of the way the stories are written in an unlearned dialectic, but it’s just a shot in the dark.

                The next story is called The Falling Girl by Dino Buzzati. The story begins with a girl falling down a skyscraper. The story itself, I feel, alludes to life. At the top of the skyscraper you are young, and when most people are young they try to grow up as quick as possible, passing by all the imagery of life (evident as this girl moves quickly from all the people she passes as she falls). There is a sense of freedom and independence that young people tend to have. It isn’t until the age begins to creep on someone that they realize that they aren’t alone and there are people out there with better things than them, better looks, better material objects, better lives. This stage is similar to a mid-life crisis, and this girl experiences that as she sees other women dressed in better clothes falling just like she is. Then the story alludes to only seeing old women fall to their deaths at the bottom of the skyscraper, which reinforces the transitional stages of life as they make their descent. They tend to hear thumps at the bottom, which I feel represent someone’s worth in life. In this circumstance, however, they don’t hear anything as this girl hits the cement.

                The story August 25^th, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges is about a man finding himself in his hotel room, aged. I feel as though the man is a representation of himself, the younger of the two being the optimist and the older one being the pessimist. A reference to the stoics was made, adding to a philosophical aspect to the story that might support the split personalities of the narrator. The pessimistic side died the night in the story, but it took a piece of the optimist with him. In this sense maybe the pessimist won out in a duel of the personalities, influencing the other half more than the other half influenced it.

                Lastly, The Fifth Story by Clarice Lespector is actually quite interesting. It describes various scenarios in which to kill cockroaches. However, with each story the thought process into killing them gets more intensive as the narrator puts more thought into their actions. It likens the cockroaches to Pompei as the volcano buried the town alive. This story might actually be explaining the human psyche and how we think into things so heavily. Everything is intrinsic, the pathways into thought every branching away as every action that we take has a reaction and another action. It kind of makes me think of Nietsche where nothing matters, having a nihilistic attitude. There’s also a theory that for every action somewhere in another parallel world you perform the opposite choice, so nothing you do technically matters. Not sure if this correlates with this story, but it makes me think of those two things.  

Fiction Packet Analysis

Blog Response 10/30/13

Brandon Lazovic

               

                To begin with, we were given three packets to introduce us to fiction. The first packet that I read was Writing Fiction by Burroway. Fiction is all about show vs. tell, and we are to tell through our own personal experiences and make the reader feel. The purpose of fiction is to allow the reader to feel things in which there is no negative price to pay for feeling them, such as love, condemn, condone, hope, dread, hate, without risk. We are to rely on the five senses to convey these emotions to the reader, as well as provide definite and concrete details to add to the validity of the story being told. Those details, however, must be relevant and significant. If we were to write about every single detail throughout the day it wouldn’t relay to the reader at all. In the end, emotion is the physical reaction of the body to react to information. In the packet it’s also touched upon that verbs can add to writing, but can also detract from the energy in using them with what is known as the pathetic fallacy (attributing emotions to man-made objects) if used too often. Adverbs can also express emphasis or suddenness, but slow the sentence down so it dilutes the force of the meaning in the sentence. Rhythm, prose, and punctuation are used to great effect as well when writing as it helps take the reader beyond just the words on the page. In the packet the story Everything that Rises must Converge by Flannery O’Connor demonstrates everything that the packet stated, tying it all together.

                The next packet, Polaroid, discusses characters and plot. It states that no one really knows how a draft will go, or what twists and turns it will take, but eventually a story will come out of it. The author discusses a special Olympics meet that they went to and eventually got an idea for their story. Again, emotional output is important to flesh out a character. Each person gets their own acre of land in an emotional sense, and we use that to make them come alive as we write about them. No person is exactly the same. It also says in the fiction packet that a likeable narrator is key in a story, and to this effect I’d have to agree. They use the analogy of, ‘if you enjoy someone’s company, even if they ask you to a garbage dump you couldn’t think of anywhere else you’d want to be, as opposed to having a boring or annoying person ask you on an expensive dinner date that they would pay for and you would rather stay at home.” Narrator’s also must be reliable and trustworthy. We have an obligation to telling the truth even though we are making up characters. We have to listen to our characters and give them justice on the page.

                The packet then moves on to plot and the main rule that I got out of it was write about the characters first, and the plot will soon follow. Don’t work so specifically on the plot scheme because in the end it just won’t work. Keep it vivid and continuous and have people read it to work out the kinks from a neutral standpoint. Dialogue becomes a topic and for me I consider dialogue to be extremely important. In a sense, having bad dialogue in an otherwise good story is like watching a B-list movie with horrible writing and acting, but the exposition is good. It just takes the reader out of the story and dissolves a character. Again, time will help flesh out the character. Dialogue requires a little finesse, only because you can’t jam words into the characters mouth. It has to come naturally, which will happen once your familiarity with the character becomes realized. The final packet, syntax by Goldberg, I feel ties in a lot with the previous two packets and reiterates the same things to varying degrees, so I’m not going to go in depth about that packet. But in all these three packets are a lot to take in, but really give good advice to aspiring writers that I’ve never thought about before when I’ve wrote stories, and I’ll come away from this with a good amount of writing tools to help expand my stories. 

Mechanical

Mechanical

Brandon Lazovic

               

                His heart was throbbing in his chest, the steady beat pounding against his rib cage. Thump thump. Thump thump. Thump thump. Blood was rushing throughout his body as he moved rhythmically without much thought. It was almost emotionless, without much passion. The only sound that he could hear were his own ragged breaths intermingled with her pleasure filled ones. Her nails dug into his bare back, leaving red marks that he would never see. His body was stiff, tense, focused on that one motion. Their hips grinded into each other more forcefully with each and every thrust, the creaking of the bed joining into the moans uttered from her mouth. A cacophony of passion fallen upon deaf ears. She tilted her head back, lower lip clenched by her pearly teeth, eyes tightly shut as pleasure flashed upon her imagination, painting a silent picture on a black portrait. He continued to look on, his mind completely blank. The only thing that he was aware of was his phallus, pulsating and hard. Even the shallow pleasure that he could feel was numbed by his indifference. He pushed harder, the rocking of the bed and louder moans adding to the impromptu melody being created.

                They were both coming close now, her hips moving up and down in a more erratic pattern. He tried keeping pace, but couldn’t quite match hers. They were arrhythmic, no longer one. Separate entities vying for their own gains. The little enjoyment that he had was now gone and the thought of taking hers away flashed upon his mind. He didn’t go through with it and pressed harder, his hands gripping into her shoulders just as hers sank into the flesh of his back, pulling him closer. She screamed in bliss, colors flashing across her vision, all sound distant and her mind focused on the singular, immense pleasure that she felt. As she was lost in her own world he felt a sharp climax, his phallus distinct for one final moment before softening. He stared off into the corner, unfeeling, devoid of emotion. Just as quickly as it had begun it ended and her grip slackened, her arms plopping onto the bedspread without control. He rolled off beside her, his hands tucked behind his head. As her breathing returned to normal she nestled up beside him, her head in the crook of his shoulder, arm wrapped around his chest and leg crossed over his thighs. She could feel his heart beat and he could feel hers. She was everything that he could never be, but loving was the most prominent one. Where she was light, he was darkness. Where she was whole, he was broken. Where her heart still vibrantly beat, his died long ago, shattered beyond repair. In a way they were two sides of the same coin; she was alive, while he was mechanical.

Poetry vs. Fiction Blog Response

Poetry vs. Fiction Blog Response

Brandon Lazovic

                So for my Blog Response this week since we are transitioning from poetry to fiction I want to bring up the question: what are the differences and similarities between the two? I think it’d be a good topic since we’re beginning to write micro stories (or rather we started last week). To begin with, I feel as though poetry and fiction are very distinctive counterparts to one another. Both can be written about literally any subject, but the word ‘literal’ can’t be used to truly describe poetry. It’s very subversive, vague, and written in a way so that the reader has to go back and reread the poem multiple times in order to uncover what the poem is actually about. The entire poem is a landmine field, with clues about the actual meaning of the poem littered throughout the entire page that it is written on. They just have to be uncovered first and that can be a messy process. Sometimes poetry can be misleading in its clues, contradicting what it said earlier in the poem to add emphasis to the topic that it is written about.

                Everything has to be analyzed in a poem, and I mean everything. The word scheme, layout, rhyme scheme, pacing, the very last sentences of the poem, the title, everything contributes to the poem. Poems tend to be short, not spanning over too many pages. I feel as though longer poems detract from the meaning that they output if they are beyond a few pages. It’s extremely hard to study and puzzle out if it spans very far as poetry can be very ambiguous. Sonnets are my favorite type of poetry to read as they keep it short, concise, and each quatrain or sestet has an underlying meaning to the entirety of the poem that must be realized. It’s also very pleasing to read based on the pacing. Some poetry utilizes a ‘jazz style’ to keep with the pacing, making it almost into a song rather than a poem. But it works and is pleasurable to read.

                 Fiction is a stark contrast to poetry. It focuses primarily on descriptive detail, character development, plot detail, and a more clear focus on what it’s about. Personally I enjoy writing fiction more than poetry. There isn’t so much emphasis on a word limit, line pacing, or finding that perfect word to fit the line you are currently writing. The descriptiveness paints a very clear picture in the reader’s head and holds them in its embrace as it takes them on a journey, telling them a story and painting a picture. That picture is the start as the camera pans out and it’s like watching a movie, only with so much detail about everything in the setting. Fiction stories can be as long as they want to be as there are different classifications of stories. There are micro stories, spanning no more than a few hundred words, short stories, novellas, novels, it continues on.

                I enjoy the characterization as it makes me feel as though I am right there, watching in a ghostly perspective where they can’t see me, but I can see them with an omniscient presence, knowing everything going on with each character. The writer takes you on a ride, revealing plot twists, minute details that play a role later on and are re-explained to add emphasis, and gradually reveals his or her message that is being explained in the book. It has to be delved into and is more time consuming than a poem’s message is (provided a book is much larger) but it just isn’t as vague as a poem. Because of the time consumption into the novel, however, the message has a much deeper impact since the reader has been involved in the story for hours or even days. It’s just like a movie, but not as chopped up and condensed.

                At the end of the day I enjoy writing both pieces of literature, but am more of a fiction guy than anything else. There are stark contrasts between both, in my mind being opposites in a lot of categories. I’ve learned a good amount about what poetry really is, and just as I’ve learned a lot in that section of the course I’m sure that I’ll learn just as much as we jump into the fiction portion. My final thought: what do you prefer to read or write? Poetry or Fiction?