Read And Reblog Please

A lot of fiction these days reads as if—as I saw Peter Raleigh put it the other day, and as I’ve discussed it before—the author is trying to describe a video playing in their mind. Often there is little or no interiority. Scenes play out in “real time” without summary. First-person POV stories describe things the character can’t see, but a distant camera could. There’s an overemphasis on characters’ outfits and facial expressions, including my personal pet peeve: the “reaction shot round-up” in which we get a description of every character’s reaction to something as if a camera was cutting between sitcom actors.

When I talk with other creative writing professors, we all seem to agree that interiority is disappearing. Even in first-person POV stories, younger writers often skip describing their character’s hopes, dreams, fears, thoughts, memories, or reactions. This trend is hardly limited to young writers though. I was speaking to an editor yesterday who agreed interiority has largely vanished from commercial fiction, and I think you increasingly notice its absence even in works shelved as “literary fiction.” When interiority does appear on the page, it is often brief and redundant with the dialogue and action. All of this is a great shame. Interiority is perhaps the prime example of an advantage prose as a medium holds over other artforms.

fascinated by this article, "Turning Off the TV in Your Mind," about the influences of visual narratives on writing prose narratives. i def notice the two things i excerpted above in fanfic, which i guess makes even more sense as most of the fic i read is for tv and film. i will also be thinking about its discussion of time in prose - i think that's something i often struggle with and i will try to be more conscious of the differences between screen and page next time i'm writing.

I get my media recommendations the old fashioned way: by watching someone I follow on here go on an unhinged reblog spree of media related content until I eventually decide to go "alright, what's all this then"

Your drunk father burnt down your house when you were a little girl. You cough up dollhouse plastic from time to time. It smells like your mother's garden where she is buried. When you chase down a bottle of Jack, smoke roils in your lungs. It still smells like your mother's garden.

Our dreams have been destroyed, and we have nothing left...😞

🫂You're our last hope in this life🫂

I'm Lama from Gaza, I'm 24 years old, and my husband is Mohammad... We got married in 2022 in a house full of love and happiness. Our house was beautiful, we chose everything in it carefully... We were waiting for the end of the day to go there after a tiring day of work, but the occupation did not leave us. 😔😭💔

This house was bombed with all hatred. Here we are after the genocide. We have nothing... We lost our house, our work, and our car.😭😞

We were displaced to Rafah in a tent that could not accommodate 5 people, and after the displacement from Rafah, we were displaced to Mawasi Khan Yunis again. It was a very difficult period... but now we are in Mawasi Khan Yunis in a tent that does not protect us from the cold of winter or the heat of summer.😞😭

This is our tent, its floor is made of cardboard, as you can see, and I suffer from severe eczema due to the pollution of the air and the materials used, and the medicine is very expensive.😭💔

Urgent: My husband needs a very necessary operation and medication. Please help my husband in order for his health to improve. He is in pain.😞😭🫂🙏🙏

Help us and donate to us. You are our last hope and the lifeline of this life. 🫂🙏

We need you...Donate to us and save what is left of us.😞🙏🙏

Link campaign ⬇️ ⬇️⬇️

https://gofund.me/8f634db2

..

✅️Vetted✅️

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dlxxv-vetted-donations

Lama is indeed vetted by association through @ayoosh-gaza (vet). I asked her and she confirmed that she knows Lama's husband. Proof under cu

@gazavetters

readings: essays, articles & short stories pt. 2

the winter of civilisation

fruits we'll never taste, languages we'll never hear: the need for needless complexity

emily dickinson and the creative solitude of space

the lost art of looking at nature

the bowl, the ram and the folded map: navigating the complicated world

ada limón on preparing the body for a reopened world

before it was 'bittersweet', nostalgia was seen as a parasite

why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine

the fig leaf, benjamin shane evans

cat pianos, sound-houses, and other imaginary musical instruments

of shark moves, shell shocks, and trash landings on the moon

as bright as a feather — ostriches, home dyeing, and the global plume trade

getting ahead, jonas karlsson

do these florida dolphins have a language?

the form of a demon and the heart of a person: kitagawa utamaro's prints of yamauba and kintarō (ca. 1800)

who needs ai text-generation when there's erasmus of rotterdam

when memories from fiction become part of who you are

how do transgender people remember their earlier selves?

Writing Snippet #1

Esther mused as the insomniac nyctophiles ambled underneath the moon, swooning by the promises of halcyon days framed by the stars and meteors and heartbreak. Days that stretched too long in its burning intensity and nights where rain draped lovers in midst of sweet kisses.

The warmth of Ivory's breath lingered down from ear to her collarbone, pressing a ghost of a kiss as she commented offhandedly about her day. Esther wondered if she hadn't spent days underneath the earth in its caves and stations, if she'd still have the sun-kissed skin of her mother when she looked in the mirror, missing her in the curve of her lip, the shape of her jaw, and the dip in her brows.  

She missed her terribly, the lilt in her lullabies, the firm frown laced with mirth when Milas burnt his mouth for the fourth time in the same meal.

She remembered the familiar weight of her hand that had now been replaced in her chest, uncomfortably tight around her throat and ribs. 

Her father would keep them safe, with his calloused hands that could lift her up and twirl her in a dance, with the rage and ferocity that rivaled her mother. 

She would gather their numbers, keep them safe- find them again. She dared to hope again.

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

A comic based on this poem

- Silas Denver Melvin @sweatermuppet, Grit Poetry Collection

📢📢📢