 Drama: July 22, 2015 Issue [#7095] |
  Drama
This week: The Use of Vignettes in Storytelling Edited by: Joy  
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“...these vignettes I sketch for you - what are they? watercolors ..yes and dreams blurred with tears ...”
John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
"She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn’t be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window."
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
“There’s nothing that makes you more insane than family. Or more happy. Or more exasperated. Or more . . . secure.”
Jim Butcher, Vignette
"There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea."
Howard Thurman
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about writing vignettes for exploration of ideas and as an aid in story construction.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she. |
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Welcome to the drama newsletter
Vignettes are a form of storytelling or the partial telling of a story. I first read about the possibility of using vignettes for familiarizing oneself with the elements of one’s story in a WdC writer’s blog. This is a useful practice especially if the story has the inclination of being a long one. Before I read that blog, I was taking vignettes at their own face value. Now I use them quite often, since they provide some valuable exercises as well as forming a part of my free-writing and pre-writing practices. Writing several vignette-like scenes or sketches about characters, settings, in essay or sketch form, be it literary or not, not only eases the planning of a story, but also helps the writer to get unstuck while in the middle of a story.
What are vignettes, then? They are snapshots in words or tiny details of life shown as sections of action, feelings, a full piece of dialogue, or a scene or parts of a scene. In short, vignettes are open forms as motifs from life. Vignette’s word meaning is: Something that can be written on a vine leaf.
Vignettes can be written from any point of view, and they don’t necessarily need to correspond to the selected POV of the story. Depending on the need of the story or the writer, they can be short, impressionistic scenes about the theme, setting, object, prop, idea, or a character. They not only help deepen the writer’s understanding of his story, but they also satisfy the readers in regard to the writer’s knowledge and thoughts. Sometimes a vignette can turn out to be just what the story needs, for the writer to copy it as is into the main text.
A good measure of a vignette’s quality is if it evokes some emotion or shows something hidden inside the conflict or a character. A vignette can be as short as a paragraph and as long as a 1000 word text. It could show or tell, but showing is always more desirable when capturing a specific moment, especially while using the five senses.
An informal distinction of a vignette is that it does not need to fit in with any specific plot or story structure. This characteristic gives it an unfinished, unresolved feature, which may even be desirable.
At times, during your personal conversations, you may come across several vignettes when your friends and family tell you about the incidents in their lives. You can easily use the vignette in any style, type, or genre: be it as a poem, a prose piece, an advertisement (for example for the house of a character), bulletin, interview, dialog, scene etc. The language of the vignette can be what you want it to be: Simple, minimal, or lavishly crafted prose.
I didn't try this yet, but it is possible that sometimes, a set of related or loosely connected vignettes could create a plot-driven tale or story. A good example to this is Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. In addition, if you are a blogger, even your certain blog entries can form an article, an essay, or a story in your portfolio. Selected parts of letters, journals, and memoirs, too, can act as vignettes for a story or a prose piece.
I also found out that I can create tiny vignettes when I freewrite, which is one of my favorite pastimes. I usually write at the top of the page a topic or three or four unrelated words and just write away without lifting the pen, regardless of comma flaws and other mishaps. Later on, if I see any value in them, these pieces can be weeded out, or if not, I leave them alone.
A vignette can be written anywhere as it can be made short and sweet. Even if it doesn’t create a plot or a fully developed character, it may hint at its facets. Sometimes, this is all a writer needs for inspiration.
Until next time... |
 Enjoy!
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It's the little things, that don't make any sense.
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 This Issue's Tip:
Trick endings and surprise endings are two different things.
Surprise ending is usually called the O'Henry ending, in which what is revealed surprises the characters, but is along the line of the events of the story.
Trick ending is also called a cheat ending and is not regarded as literary.
In a trick ending, the writer cheats or fools the readers by carrying them along a storyline, then suddenly adds a totally different color to it. An example to a trick ending could be when the writer involves the reader's attention in so many related events in the same setting and time to send a man to guillotine, yet at the last minute, it is not the guillotine the man walks up to but a modern-day restaurant.
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Feedback for "Thrill and Drama in Writing about Sports"
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ENB
Great newsletter! I've never really been involved in sports, but this article gives a fascinating look into how I could possibly use sports to show drama in my writing. It's nothing I had ever thought of before. I'll have to dig deeper into this.
Glad you liked the newsletter. Thanks for the feedback.
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Quick-Quill 
The build up of conflint in motion is what suspense is. Will he save the girl tied to the railroad track before the train runs her over? Will the villian stop the hero from reaching the woman in time? It's an old story. Break down the old vaudeville villain silver screens and you have the perfect suspense drama.
Yes, that's suspense all right. Thanks.
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