A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.
Saul BellowTag: americans characterization
Off the bike she was like a smoker without cigarettes, never sure what to do with her hands. As soon as she got off the bike, her heart was expected to perform all these baffling secondary functions like loving someone and feeling something and belonging somewhere - when all she'd ever trained it to do was pump blood.
Chris CleaveTag: characterization training cycling
Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.
Roman PayneTag: sex fiction feminism characterization roman literary-theory making-love payne roman-payne women-writers plot-suggestions panting
If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.
Bernard KnoxTag: purpose writing fate meaning characterization plotting
I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!
Roman PayneTag: life truth happiness education writing inspiration literary-criticism writing-craft paulo-coelho leonard-cohen fame happy excitement paradise novels writing-advice educational islam koran craft birth fortune critique inspirational-life publishing imperfection life-and-death grammar reincarnation inspiring characterization faults authorship roman novelist born-again literary-theory dialogue cohen sentence-structure writing-art craftsmanship writing-from-the-heart writing-and-art critique-of-modernity inspirational-attitude human-potential islamic payne roman-payne narration coelho humaneness famous-authors islamic-quotes inspiring-quotes fame-and-fortune art-of-literature writing-as-a-profession aleph literature-quotes happiness-positive-outlook advice-for-writers phrasing grammatical
The way she looks right now, you have to think about multiple car pile-ups. Imagine two bloodmobiles colliding head on. The way she looks, you'd have to think of mass graves to even log thirty seconds in the saddle.
Think of spoiled cat food and ulcerated cankers and expired donor organs.
That's how beautiful she looks.
Tag: characterization
Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.
J.R.R. TolkienTag: characterization
I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather:that man is called 'I' and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only 'station' and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city.
Italo CalvinoTag: reading writing literature characterization setting point-of-view
There is tremendous life and personality in a name. It should be at least as agonized over as any character trait.
Travis BeachamTag: writing names characterization
He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few.
Stephen R. DonaldsonTag: people self-perception description characterization
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