Archive for the ‘Stories’ Category
March 10th, 2010
Creating a fictional character can be a very simplistic task. However, creating a realistic fictional character requires a little more effort on your, the writer’s, part. It is more than just a matter of giving a character a name and description of his or her looks. It is a matter of giving a character personality, and working to make that personality come through the paper, so your readers can easily visualize the fictional person you have created. A well-developed character can either be liked or hated by your readers, depending on the characteristics and attributes given. If you can evoke strong emotions from your readers about your character, you have done a good job.
#1 Create a History
Every person has a past, so it is important to create a past for your character – even if you do not share the entire contents of that past. People evolve over the years because of their experiences and surroundings throughout their lives, and your fictional character is no different, so you need to develop a fictional past for him or her. When you are initially developing a new character, you are getting to know that character, just as your readers will get to know that character when they read your story. It is important to understand why your character will react or make decisions the way that he or she does, so it is important to have a back story that goes along with the personality that has been created for that character over the years.
#2 Show (don’t tell) His or Her Emotions
If you have not heard the phrase now, you will a lot throughout most of your English related courses: show, don’t tell. Simply saying that your character is feeling sad is not a proper description of a realistic character. People don’t feel the same emotions in the same way. Some people cry when they are sad, while others scream or go completely silent. You need to show how your characters are feeling, rather than just say how they are feeling.
Bad Example: Nora became angry after reading the letter. She just couldn’t stand it anymore.
Good Example: Nora’s face became hot after reading the letter. She viciously began to tear apart the envelope when she couldn’t look at its content any more.
Showing a character’s emotions through actions lets your readers get a better idea of what kind of personality someone like Nora has.
#3 Give Your Character Habits or Quirks
People are remembered for the little things they do that are different from anyone else, and everyone has something peculiar them that seems unique. Giving an interesting habit or strange quirk lends personality to your character. It can be as small as eating M&Ms all the time, but refusing to eat any other kind of chocolate. Or as big as having your character insist on eating at the exact same restaurant every day, and is thrown off if something disturbs this regimen. Whatever habit or quirk you give your character will allow your readers to get to know him or her better. Sometimes you can give an explanation for the behavior, but you don’t always have to. Either way, your readers will have another reason to think, “Hey, this character is interesting.”
#4 Show Relationships
We can learn a lot about individuals by the way they interact with others. If your character is very sociable, then you should show the character interacting with a lot of random people at work, talking on the phone, and even chatting with strangers on the street. But, if the character is more of a recluse and only has one or two friends, show the bond between those few characters, and maybe even show the uncomfortable feeling that character gets when dealing with new individuals.
#5 Reveal Character’s Hopes, Dreams, Aspirations
People live their lives with a particular purpose. They don’t just go through the motions of school or work without having some reason to do so. If you are going to show that your character is unhappy with his or her job, then be sure to explain why that character continues to keep that job – what is his or her motivation? Is she saving up for a car? Is he trying to pay off a loan? These are the kinds of questions that readers ask about characters who are interesting. And, if you are answering those questions, then your readers are going to enjoy your character and your style of writing that much more.
March 3rd, 2010
It’s cold and wet outside, so there aren’t many options for entertaining activities. Oh sure, you could turn on your television and sit on your butt for the next several hours, but there is only so much time you can spend watching daytime soap operas or court TV. Instead of just staring at a screen, letting your mind go sedentary, there are some exciting books to read that are just perfect for those stuck-in-the-house rainy days. One or two suggestions may be educational, but they are too fun to read to even notice that you’re brain is keeping active.
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher
Do not let the name fool, there isn’t anything about marine life in the book. The main character, T.J. Jones, is an adopted teenager who is smart, funny, and an all-around cool guy, who is incredibly humorous to read about. The story deals with a team of underdog swimmers, and T.J. just happens to be the only popular guy on the team. Acting as the wise-butt hero at times, this book had me stifling my own laughter because I was afraid someone would hear me guffaw too loudly.
Darwin Awards Books
For those who are not familiar with the Darwin Awards, they are a comical competition that relay the odd, stupid, and funny things people do in life, as well as the interesting outcomes of these actions. There are at least seven of these books by now, so the options are wide and the hilarity of man’s stupidity just continues to entertain readers. If for some reason you cannot finish one of the books, there is no harm in putting it aside to come back to it on another rainy day. The chapters do not have a sequence of events, so there is no plot to keep up with. You can read one funny story after another. Or, if you somehow finish one book in a day, there are more to read out of the series.
A Bad Beginning, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett
Yes, it is part of a series, but what better day is there to try out a new series of books than on a rainy day? And, there is never a dull moment in A Bad Beginning, not to mention it is a relatively shorter book, which also makes it a quick read. Funny, exciting, and sometimes creepy, the Series of Unfortunate Events relays the story of the cruel Count Olaf, who is trying to take the inheritance of three incredibly talented orphaned children. Don’t knock it just because it’s in the young adult section; this book even has adults enthralled to read the whole series.
Short Stories by Nikolay Gogol
For those who want a fun, yet slightly more sophisticated read, the short stories by Nikolay Gogol never seem to disappoint. Although most short stories are a good pick for rainy days, Gogol’s are both deep and amusing at the same time. Stories like “The Nose” is so incredulous to have a nose as the supporting role, while “The Diary of a Madman” is so funny, I almost felt guilty as I laughed at the poor narrator. Gogol’s short stories are a bit longer than others, but you can still several with a day’s time. And, with a collection of shorts, it is easy to just put the rest of the book aside once you have finished a particular story. There is no commitment to reading all of the short stories if you do not have time.
Psych – A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read by William Rabkin
If you are a fan of the show, you are going to love the books, particularly this one. Although many popular shows are providing a series of books alongside their show, Psych is one of those shows that is both smart and funny at the same time, which is exactly what the books are like, too. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read happens to be only 273 pages, which makes for a quick read with all of the dialogue and humorous activities.
February 25th, 2010
On February 1, 2010, President Obama wrote an official Proclamation describing this month as National African American History Month. Here’s how our first African-American President describes the theme this year:
“In the centuries since African Americans first arrived on our shores, they have known the bitterness of slavery and oppression, the hope of progress, and the triumph of the American Dream. African American history is an essential thread of the American narrative that traces our Nation’s enduring struggle to perfect itself. Each February, we recognize African American History Month as a moment to reflect upon how far we have come as a Nation, and what challenges remain. This year’s theme, ‘The History of Black Economic Empowerment,’ calls upon us to honor the African Americans who overcame injustice and inequality to achieve financial independence and the security of self empowerment that comes with it.”
Well said, Mr. President. And just how do we recognize these leaders in business, in the arts, education, science—those who are showing just what it means to be “economically empowered?” And just what does it mean to set aside one month of the year to recognize the achievements of African-Americans? Today in Eduify we’ve chosen 5 Notable African-American Leaders whose accomplishments have informed not only other African-Americans, but other Americans and citizens worldwide.
Perhaps one of the greatest American poets of his generation, Langston Hughes wrote lyrically about the black experience in Harlem, New York, as well as commentaries about race and society. His work, which has often been associated with jazz and blues rhythms, laid the groundwork for what later became performance and slam poetry. More important than the form itself, his desire to describe his experience as an African-American set a precedent in American literature. He put it best in a 1947 essay entitled “My Adventures as a Social Poet”:
“…certainly, racially speaking, my own problems of adjustment to American life were the same as those of millions of other segregated Negroes. The moon belongs to everybody, but not this American earth of ours. That is perhaps why poems of the moon disturb no one, but poems about color and poverty do perturb many citizens. Social forces pull backwards and forwards, right or left, and social poems get caught in the pulling and the hauling. Sometimes the poet himself gets pulled and hauled—even hauled off to jail.”
Dr. Benjamin Carter is a contemporary African-American doctor whose long list of achievements include being the first person to successfully separate Siamese twins in 1987. Dr. Carter was born in Detroit in the early 1950s, and was raised by a young single mother who, after noting his poor behavior and bad grades in school, assigned him her own homework assignments and encouraged him to participate more in school. Dr. Carter later went on to get degrees at Yale and the University of Michigan, where his dexterity as a neurosurgeon was first noticed. He became the first Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital at the young age of 32. Dr. Carter’s success has inspired a new generation of health professionals, many of whom he and his wife Candy support through their Carson Scholars Foundation.
Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to be elected to U.S. Congress in 1968, is best described in her own words (and the title of her first book): “Unbought and Unbossed.” Chisholm served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat from New York, and she championed causes such as education, daycare, inner city youth and city works programs. She became the first African-American woman to run for President of the United States in 1972, which became a revolutionary year in the world of politics, not only for African-Americans, but for minority groups in general. She ran against Patsy Mink, an Asian-American Congresswoman from Hawaii, and together the two women represented a new movement in American government: that of empowered, educated, intelligent women fighting on behalf of their states and the greater American community as well. She published The Good Fight in 1973, and was later the subject of the PBS documentary Chisholm ’72—Unbought and Unbossed.
Angela Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1944—a time and location that set the stage for her future involvement in the civil rights movement. Davis grew up in the South, but later won an opportunity to attend high school in New England. During her college years at Brandeis University, she seized opportunities to study French, philosophy and politics in France, Germany, and Switzerland. She was studying in France during the 1963 church bombings in Alabama, hate crimes that affected not only her personal and political ties home, but also triggered her activism in civil rights groups. Her political leanings and involvement with the Black Panthers later affected her career as a professor and academic. She was listed on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list in 1970 for an incident involving Judge Harold Haley, an accusation that was later lifted when there was not enough evidence to convict her of anything. Davis went on to become a prominent civil rights leader in California, working specifically within what she called the “prison-industrial complex.” She has lectured at UCLA, San Francisco State University, Bryn Mawr College, Stanford University, Syracuse University, and UC Santa Cruz.
At 27 years old, Shani Davis has already flown around the world and the ice rink several times over. Just this past week, the Chicago native beat the world record for both the 1000 meter and 1500 meter speed skating events. Before Vancouver, Davis already had a gold and a silver medal from the Olympics in Italy in 2006. Although his focus is athletics, he has broken records not only in terms of his speed and technique, but also as the first African-American to place on the Olympic speed skating team in 2002. Davis represents many young African-American athletes of the twenty-first century, who aims not to be the first of his race to succeed in his chosen field, but simply to be the best, and leave it at that. He’s not done yet; the 2010 Olympics have just started!
There are African-Americans achieving great things in every field, just as there are people of every ethnicity, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation achieving just as much. That being said, February is a time to recognize leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Alice Walker, Richard Wright, and so, so many more, because it is crucial we remember their contributions to their fields, as well as to our country. Who inspires you? Let us know!
December 29th, 2009
by Julia H. Jackson
Remember back in the day when the only way to get the news was in a newspaper? No? Neither do I. Or when the three main media of journalism were print, television, and radio? That not-so-distant memory has quickly evolved into an entirely new system for international human communication. We are members of a digital generation. So many of us spend most of our days plugged into something: mp3 players, iPhones, laptops, and now even Kindles. The advent of podcasting, or broadcasting via the web in downloadable forms, has reinvented how people get their news, and given us more freedom in choosing what we want, when we want it. Today we bring you 5 Podcasts That Will Make You Smarter, brought to you for free via iTunes or via the producers’ home pages.
5. RadioLab
Ever wonder about the psychology of memory? Or maybe the science of sleep? RadioLab, produced by WYNC’s Jad Abumbrad and Robert Krulwich, dissects such topics as race, mortality, sperm, and space. The producers present each show as a unique soundscape, combining interviews with funny, thoughtful dialogue. Their voices are unique, even in the world of public radio: Abumrad’s work as a composer and Krulwich’s background in broadcast media (ABC, NOVA) influence both the nature and style of show production.
Suggested shows: “Stochasticity,” “War of the Worlds,” “Placebo“
Kurt Andersen’s weekly WYNC radio program has a little something for everyone: film and theater reviews, interviews with writers, musicians, directors, and artists, and profiles of designers and architects. Andersen has featured such talent as animator and director Tim Burton, director Pedro Almodovar, author Barbara Kingsolver, and singer Yoko Ono.
Suggested shows: “Artists and Obama,” “Ben Hong, West Side Story, Sufjan,” “Gay Flag, Hip Hop. Spektor”
New York City’s Symphony Space hosts a weekly reading of short stories, hosted by Isaiah Sheffer. The stories are introduced and read by a number of well-known screen and theater actors, and often share a similar theme. In addition, Selected Shorts has inspired an adult literacy program, All Write!, and hosts the annual Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story writing contest.
Suggested shows: “Confused Couples,” “Indian Country,” “People With Problems,”
The New Yorker’s Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman hosts this monthly podcast, which features a notable writer reading their favorite short story, and a subsequent discussion. This is a great choice for creative writers and literature majors, not only because the featured readers sometimes choose surprising stories, but because the conversation afterward reveals a lot about literary influence and style choices. Previous readers include Junot Diaz, Yiyun Li, Tobias Wolff, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Suggested shows: “Luck of the Draw,” “The Dating Game”
This cult classic has steadily grown in popularity and exposure in the 15 years since it was first created at Chicago’s WBEZ station. Ira Glass and his team of producers curate shows that follow unusual, surprising themes every week, sometimes experimenting with new forms and methods for finding stories. Regular contributors include David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and David Rakoff.
Suggested shows: “Testosterone,” “Break-Up,” “This I Used to Believe”
These podcasts represent about 10% of the quality programming available for free online. National Public Radio offers many of its programs online, as does Public Radio International. But podcasting does not need to be sponsored by a major organization; anyone with the proper technology can create, edit, and post podcasts. So what are you waiting for?
December 24th, 2009
by Adam Krause
One of the best pieces of advice about writing comes from William Faulkner, who said, “I only write when I’m inspired. Fortunately, I’m inspired at 9 o’ clock every morning.” If you wait for an otherworldly message from the Muse to hit you before you sit down at the desk, you may have the same odds of being inspired to write as you do of being struck by lightning. It often helps to have some specific, small challenge to meet that gets you to think about the writing process in a new way. In this, the first installment of a series, Eduify presents five ideas to help you start writing fiction.
1) Surprise your characters.
At some point, almost every writer produces a story about a jaded young person who makes cynical, knowing comments about everything around her, but has no challenges or obstacles to confront that she isn’t already prepared for. This is wasting an opportunity to draw in the reader with tension and conflict. Often, the most interesting scenes in fiction are those in which a character is knocked off guard and has to adapt to the situation.
For instance, you might write a scene in which a character has to pretend to be someone they are not, in order to negotiate a set of tricky circumstances. In the process, they might grow into the new identity with more confidence. (This is a variation on the many identities everyone assumes in the course of a normal social day: to quote Indian author Vikram Chandra, “It is very common for a person to speak one language at home, use another on the street, do business in a third, and make love in a fourth.”) Or you might take a cue from Douglas’ Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which one sodden, unhappy character is always followed by rain clouds. He is a rain god, and doesn’t know it. Create a character that causes trouble, or some other recurring event, wherever they go, and has to deal with the consequences.
Finally, you could write a scene between two characters that do not speak the same language, but urgently have to communicate. You do not necessarily have to be bilingual to write such a scene. The important thing is not what the characters, initially unintelligible to one another, say; it is their conflict or cooperation as they deal with the unusual situation that could make the scene into compelling fiction.
2) Stretch your style.
French experimental author Raymond Queneau wrote a book called Exercises in Style, in which a mundane encounter on a bus (an older man tells a young man in a tall hat to move aside, and the narrator later sees the same young man in a tailor’s shop having a button on his coat raised) is written in 99 different and increasingly wild prose styles. For instance, one of the entries is written from the point of view of the inanimate objects in the scene, who naturally see themselves as more important than the people. Another narrator, who uses the anecdote to lodge a complaint against the government, substitutes “taxpayer” each time a person is mentioned.
As a reading experience, the book sometimes feels like it is spinning its wheels. However, as a writing exercise to imitate, it is excellent. Take notes on a public encounter that you witness (something involving at least two characters) and write the same scene using five or more writing styles. If you can’t think of five styles, try taking on the mantles of different authors that you admire. How is the way that hard-boiled detective author Raymond Chandler would see a scene different than the way that free-associative, lyrical James Joyce would see it? Knowing that the author’s palette of words, or how they choose to write about something, is at least as important as what they choose to write about, should always keep you from complaining that you don’t have any writing material.
3) Make headlines. 
Now that supermarket tabloids are all about celebrity gossip and unflattering photos captured by paparazzi, it makes one nostalgic for the bygone age of Weekly World News and the old National Enquirer, whose stories were primarily composed of supernatural nonsense. “Bat Boy Endorses Al Gore” was a typical headline, accompanied by photos of a Nosferatu-faced feral creature standing next to the smiling vice president at a campaign rally. “A Baffled Scientist” was often the source quoted for expert opinion.
Make up your own outlandish headline and then write an accompanying fake newspaper story, or other short work of fiction, to go along with it. Or go the opposite route: look in a more legitimate newspaper for a local, national or international story that tells what happened, but not why it happened. Making up the background – the nuanced relationships between characters that eventually led to a newsworthy occurrence, which might be the climax of your story – is part of the fiction writer’s job.
4) Family ties.
One of the deepest seams a writer can mine is their family. But you don’t have to be limited to your own experiences, with your parents as parents and you as the child. You can go back in time and show, with all the clarity and immediacy of fiction, the origin stories of how people became the way they are.
For instance, you might write a scene in which your parents meet for the first time. Did they have a memorable first date? What details of another time and place could come out when you imagine that scene in detail? Or you might have an eccentric uncle who collects rare fish and seems to prefer their company to that of people. What paths in his life may have led him to that state? Pick anyone in your family over the age of, say, forty, and just from anecdotes you have half-listened to, you probably know enough about their past to make them a complex and compelling fictional character. If you don’t know something in their history, make it up. They never have to read it, and you might now be halfway to creating a character of your own.
5) Personal inventories.
There are many ways into a character, but one reliable and deceptively easy way to figure out the person you are rendering on the page is through the objects around them. Some objects reveal a person’s profession and standing in the world: a student’s private school uniform, a musician’s jazz trumpet, a police officer’s badge. Others reveal their personal tastes and quirks: a collection of swizzle straws, a fridge full of condiments but no food. What do your characters have in their sock drawers, duffel bags, coat pockets, locked safes, space shuttles?
Make a list of at least a dozen items each of the characters in your story keep with them. Try to keep these objects physical and tangible so that you can describe them, and stay away from using digital possessions – iPod libraries, and the contents of Facebook photo albums – to sum up your characters, unless their music tastes and embarrassing photographs are absolutely key to who they are. Even if little or none of this information ends up in the story itself, it will make the characters seem that much more real, since the author has gone to the work of imagining their inner lives. And, most importantly, it might be a simple enough project that it breaks your mental block and gets you writing in the first place.
