Teachers Notes
on Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, by Janet Burroway
by
Geraldine Cannon Becker

I love the exercise on pg. 42. It reminds me of the information we discussed the night we talked about foul language, and I said comets could spew forth from the mouths of cartoon characters, or a character might say: that hurt so much that comets shot from his mouth like so many expletives. That was the way it used to be, and still is sometimes for humor. Some writers still use the old asterisks *** or the dashes ---- after an indicative letter or letters, or between a set: sh**, or sh--, or s**t, or s--t, for example.
That kind of thing has been done forever. Gosh, darn it! That expression came about to help people avoid the more colorful GD phrase that is so commonplace today.

Chapter 2: Voice
Choice of language is important to discuss when we talk about voice. As JB says, Literature is made of words (44).
Voice: a particular recognizable style and tone that lets us know, as if wed picked up the phone, that this is so-and-so talking (44).
*Id highlight process and practice on this page,
and the fact that voice develops over an extended period of time. I love the idea of exploration and expansion in this chapter. Content provides shape, in many cases, and when we seek to voice our voice will follow (44).

I wonder how many writers listen in on conversations all around them, and how many try to record this for later use, participating in the conversation in ways the people may have never expected. It isnt a bad idea. Ive heard this called leaves-dropping instead of eaves-dropping--listening in with the intention of writing on a leaf of paper. We can expand our voice this way. We do have many different voices of our own, as JB says (45), and we can expand our own by listening and learning from others.

**A try this exercise from me (not necessary, but perhaps helpful):
Try to write the same paragraph for three different audiences.
Heres a sample topic and sample intended audiences:
Write about a party you have recently attended. Who was there? What happened? What didnt happen that you thought should? Who wasnt there that should have been? Make it so interesting your audience regrets not being there or so terrible your audience is glad you survived and is ecstatic that he/she didnt go after all.
Write this for your mother or sibling for your friend or child, and for your writing teacher.

Did you find that you put on a persona: a mask adopted by the author, which may be a public manifestation of the authors self; or a fictional, historical, or mythological character to write to the different audiences (45)? When were you most true to yourself?

**Another try this from me: Try to write the same paragraph about the party, but this time take on the persona of someone you have overheard in a conversation recently.
This would be you in character voice (47).

There can be great distance between author and speaker (48-49).
Do we trust the speaker/narrator? Refer to earlier chapter one notes on
purpose and audience.

Point of view is shaped largely by purpose and audience.

An authors view of the world, as it is and as it ought to be, will ultimately be revealed by manipulation of point of view, but not vice versa--identifying the authors beliefs will not describe the point of view of the work (49).

The author may believe that abortion is a sin, for example, and write from the point of view of a woman who has had an abortion and regrets it. The author might have little concern for the speakers position--regrets or no regrets, but the author could have a great deal of concern about audience influence, and his/her efforts to show that abortion is a bad thing with bad consequences all around. If you knew this persons strong beliefs in advance of reading the work you might say that the person could never write from the point of view of a person who had experienced abortion and be trustworthy. But if you read the work before you knew the author, you might be suprised by the realism displayed through a realistic, believable character created by someone with such strong beliefs.

Some questions to ponder:

How close do you as a writer want to be to your reader?
How close do you want your reader to be to you?

Notes of your own: