Writing Forum

I'd be glad to lend a hand in anyway you believe it would assist you, LSO. And to be completely honest, I do practice fiction narratives quite regularly. I shouldn't have implied that I never engage in narrative fiction at this point. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am writing short narratives for characters intended for longer form projects.

Wait-- Did that make sense? I'm only on my second cup of coffee, and my writing motor is still a bit sluggish this morning. What I meant in that first paragraph is that I'm taking characters which are planned for a long-form narrative, either a novel or novella, and I'm putting these players in briefer, more condensed narratives for back story. It provides writing "practice" for me, as we've said, but it also works as a bit of world and character building. For example, one of my primary characters/protagonists is an attaché to a diplomat---sort of an ambassador in training, if you will. Of course, in the long-form project, this attaché is going to have a world of hurt and tragedy dumped on her head, but the short narratives I'm writing for her at this point are merely back stories which readers will never see---events in her personal history, things like, how she was pushed into such a role by her parents, how/why she chose or was assigned to her diplomat mentor, how she responded to the challenge of leaving her homeland and getting submerged at a tender, impressionable age into a wholly foreign culture, etc.

To me, this sort of "world-building," if you will, is the beauty and brilliance of epic fantasy---it's what draws me to the genre. I think the age-old metaphor is one of an iceberg---the reader sees only about 1/8th of the whole story sticking up from the water.

These back stories not only provide sufficient groundwork for further epic construction, but they lend me themes to work on and give me literary directions/choices to pursue as well. For example, I believe there are profoundly consequential moments in just about everyone's life where we cross personal rubicons---like stepping into a magic boat wherein when we push off from the shoreline, it vanishes. No turning back. For me, it was joining the military and moving overseas for a while---totally abandoning my childhood culture. For others it is marriage or going off to college. This magic boat theme with the disappearing shoreline is one that I hope to explore over and over again in my long-form project.

I realize, however, in re-reading this particular post and others, that I haven't answered the original question, not really. With the exception of my brief foray into the writing style and technique of Steinbeck, I've talked only about myself and my own writing. And I'm no prose master. Besides, that's a horribly self-indulgent way of "sharing" in a writing group. "I write like this, and I enjoy this, and I do this, and I think this, blah, blah, blah..." So, I am going to spend a little time this morning posting a few of my favorite prosesmiths. And yes, I just made up the word "prosesmiths." So it goes.