This is important no matter what we are writing; nonfiction, fiction, drama, business writing, a letter, a tweet, a piece of promotional copy. Because it is so important, I find it helpful to review the basic guideline of choosing a subject from time to time.

What makes a good subject for writing?

• You truly understand the subject. It is familiar to you and can be related to your personal experience, observations, readings, or (depending on the type of writing) the limits of your own personal imagination.
• The subject is limited in scope to fit time or space you have.
• The subject should interest you, the writer, greatly. It should excite your imagination, bring forth a strong set of opinions  or emotions from you. If you don’t care, how will anyone else?
• It should be something you can be enthusiastic about for the whole length of time the writing process will take. A thank you to your aunt requires far less stamina than a dissertation or War and Peace length novel.
• The subject should be something that will interest your intended audience in some way.
• It is not enough that what you write about is a good subject to be discussed, it should be the best thing for you to express yourself. Sometimes you find yourself having to write something on a topic you did not choose. In that case, find the angle or tiny speck of a spark to carry you through. If you do not, and don’t develop enthusiasm, the chances are great that the writing will not work.

• Rapid movement. One key reason that varied sentences make a story better is that it enhances the sense of movement.
• How many sentences are there? Writing that is longer than necessary drags the story down.
• How many sentences begin with the subject? Lack of sentence variety is BORING.
• How many times do you find the word “and” used? How many of the sentences begin with “And”? With “Then”?
• Variety of and Careful Choice of Connective Words
• Find ways of moving a story forward with your connective words. Depending on the length of your story and the tone and genre, you will probably find that you need a variety of words and phrases to move things along. How could these words help or hurt your story?

and

very soon

after a while

then

in a moment

presently

finally

as soon as

meanwhile

after

though

however

but

since

yet

still

• Consider participial phrases. “After crashing through,” “about this time,” as I approached” are kinds of phrases that can convey movement. You can place less important facts and bits of exposition into such phrases, effective particularly at the beginning of the sentence.

Responsive Sight:

• Are you sensitive to the form or  structure of objects?
• Do you notice quickly varying shades of color?
• Do you have a vocabulary that can express those differences?
• Do you observe the “attitudes” of people, animals, birds?
• Do you notice the play of light and shade on objects?
• Do you notice the expressions on the faces you see around you?

“They walked back through the miserable muddy streets and among the porr mean shops, and were jostled by the crowds of dirty hucksters.” Charles Dickens, Little Dorritt

Responsive Hearing:

• Do  you take the time to get pleasure from music?
• Can you distinguish the tones of several musical instruments?
• Can you locate a note in a musical scale?
• Do you notice people’s voices?
• Can you distinguish bird calls?
• Do the footsteps of a person you cannot see suggest some of his or her physical characteristics?
• When you listen to the jumble of city noise, can you separate them and name most of them?

“The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers

the Woes of hopeless lovers.”

Responsive Smelling:

• Are you able to identify strong odors, both pleasant and unpleasant?
• If you were blindfolded, could you name various flowers from their smell alone?
• Does you sense of smell add anything to your appreciation of food?

“with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,

their eagerness

to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are

nothing, forever?”  Mary Oliver, “Peonies”

Responsive Taste Sense:

• Do you enjoy the food you eat for its flavor and texture, or do you eat mechanically to satisfy hunger?
• Can you recall sharply at this moment the taste of several kinds of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits?

Responsive Tactile Sense:

• Do you have finger ends that are sensitive to the feel of textiles, silks, wools, cottons, linens?
• Are you sensitive to the positive qualities of  the sensations of heat and cold?
• Do you remember how your muscles feel when engaging in various physical activities: playing sports, dancing, washing dishes, standing up riding a bus or subway train?

“Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine,

And sends a comfortable heat from afar.”

 Milton, Paradise Lost, Boox XL 1,076

If your sense are not finely trained, it is difficult to feel what others have felt, or  at least to express that feeling so others can understand it. If you had never really listened to someone playing the flute, could you understand the metaphor Dryden was using? If you have heard a flute before and been moved by it, reading Dryden’s poem awakens that feeling inside you again. The quickest way to larn to enjoy good description, and more to the point ot write good description, is to enlarge the boundaries of your sensory experiences.

Do not go on continually reading the same kinds of books, playing the same games, listening to the same music, walking or driving down the same streets, seeing the same people, the same scenery. GFiving yourself a change will help you to see your own life with more awareness.

A very old story about William Shakespeare says that when he was young he used to take walks with his mother, and she was in the habit of pointing out to him all the beautiful details of the scenery around them. Whether this story is true about how Shakespeare developed his visualizing power, we could adapt this strategy. When you go somewhere new, try to go with someone else and point out all the unfamiliar things you notice to one one another.

“Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair. The sun will not tolerate it. If he can he will pry under your eyelids and prise them apart, and if you hang blak curtains at your windows he will lay siege to your room until it is so stifling that at last you stagger with staring eyes to the window and tear back the curtains to see that most terrible of sights, the broad daylight outside a room….” From Under the Net, Chapter 16

“Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear.” The opening of The Bell

“‘Gracie darling, will you marry me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Yes.’

Ludwig Leferrier stared down into the small calm radiant un-smiling face of Gracie Tisbourne. Was it conceivable that the girl was joking? It was. Oh Lord.

‘Look, Graqcie, are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I mean—’

‘Of course if you want to back out of it—’

‘Gracie! But– but– Gracie, do you love me?’

‘Can you not infer that from what I said just now?’

‘I don’t want inferred love.’

‘I love you.’

‘It’s impossible!’

‘This is becoming a rather stupid argument.’

‘Gracie. I can’t believe it!’

‘Why are you so surprised?’ said Gracie. ‘Surely the situation has been clear for some time. It has been to all my friends and relations.’

‘Oh damn your friends and relations– I mean– Gracie, you do really mean it? I love you so dreadfulkly much—…” From The Accidental Man

“I daresay, an unfashionable thing to say nowadays, I am not ‘very highly sexed.’ I can live perfectly well without ‘sexual relations.’ Some observers have even thought I must be homosexual because I did not have perpetual mistresses! I hate mess. Perhaps my morally hygienic mother somehow taught me to. And I have never liked he complicit male world of foulmouthed talk and bawdy. Of course I have had not a few love affairs. But I never bribed a woman into bed.” From The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch is known for creating complex novels that delve into the interior lives of characters while carrying a plot and making statement about contemporary (Twentieth Century) life. Her use of elements from a range of styles and genres– fantasy, gothic, thriller, historical, psychological, mythological– give her novels interesting layers that give each novel a distant feel. She is able to borrow elements from these diverse styles without adopting them wholesale or falling into thier traps and cliches. No, her novels are decidedly realistic, perhaps tinged with a bit of melancholy, but her essentially flawed characters are seen as whole people. Comic touches, with human foibles and discrete descriptions of thought and physicality.

As you read through her novels, they seem to become more and more complex, just the western society did throughout her career. Political passions never seem far from the surface. Murdoch proves that entertaining stories do not have to be simplistic or bland.

As  the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety, it merits study as a representation of a whole ancient culture that has profoundly inspired so many modern writers. It is especially compelling because the novel has its own quirky style, blending elements of what today we might call magical realism with fairy tale elements and a healthy dose of the bawdy humor of Roman stories. It relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into an ass.

And yet such an outrageous premise is handled in a matter-of-fact narrative style. It calls to my mind German fairy tales and eighteenth century first-person experience novels (such as those written by Defoe). And the element of supernatural and suspense anticipates some of Edgar Allan Poe’s themes.

Structurally notable is  the Cupid and Psyche section, which has the main novel’s narrator overhearing another character tell a story completely unrelated to the narrative thread of the rest of the novel. While obviously no writer trying that kind of thing today would have  a shot at getting published, it is remarkable that three chapters in the middle of the novel are a self-contained story within themselves.   his break from the narrative flow might be useful to modern writers (on a much smaller scale0 to break tension, to change the tone or mood, or to introduce back story or other non-narrative exposition. The key to adapting such a device would be to keep it short, and to keep it at least  thematically related to the overall story.

The narrator spends a good part of the novel as an animal, describing the difficulties of this, his mistreatment, his frustration at being unable to speak, his being thought stupid. And the crazy plotting somehow seems more believable because you are in a fantasy world where a man can be changed into a donkey. This work is an example of appropriateness in writing that keeps all the elements and devices on the same tone, in the same realm of consistent conceivably possible for the world if the novel. Many lesser works can fail by asking the reader to believe too much, to put aside too many gaps in logic. This work is logical and believable even as it isn’t able to happen in he real world.

Another perhaps more successful change of pace in this work is the resolution. An abrupt change of style, in this case bringing in a discussion of initiations and religious conversions, can help make the point or theme of a piece of writing. Here it works to drive home the writer’s theme, and is a refreshing break from the incredibly fantastic litany of events that came before.

“Osbert, for greater security, was conveyed from the tower into a more centrical part of the castle, to an apartment spacious but gloomy, whose gothic windows partly excluding light, threw a solemnity around, which chilled the heart almost to horror. He heeded not this; his heart was occupied with horrors of its own. He was now involved in a misery more intricate, and more dreadful, than his imagination had yet painted. To die, was to him, who had so long contemplated the near approach of death, a familiar and transient evil; but to see, even in idea, his family involved in infamy, and in union with the murderer, was the stroke which pierced his heart to its center.” from The Castles of Athlin and Dunbagne, Chapter VI

“The light now enabled him to take a more accurate survey of the place. He perceived that some few stones of the steps which had fallen still remained attached to the wall, but he feared to trust their support only. He observed, however, that the wall itself was partly decayed, and consequently rugged with the corners of half-worn stones.” From A Sicilian Romance, Chapter 4

“The spreading dusk at length reminded Adeline of her distance from the inn, and that she had her way to find through a wild and lonely wood: she bade adieu to the syren… and pursued the path with quick steps. Having followed it for some time, she became bewildered among the thickets, and the increasing darkness did not allow her to judge the direction she was in. Her apprehensions heightened her difficulties: she though t she distinguished the voices of men at some little distance, and she increased her speed till she found herself on the sea sands over which the woods impended.” From The Romance of the Forest

“The room was dark, but a light glimmered through some panes of glass that were plced in a the upper part of a closet-door. Emily believed her father to be in the closet,and, surprised that he was up at so late an hour, apprehended that he was unwell, and was going to inquire…. On looking through the pane of glass, she saw him seated at a small table, with papers before him, some of which he was reading…during which he often wept and sobbed loud…. Presently he kneedled down, and, with a look so solemn as she had seldom seen him assume, and which was mingle with a certain wild expression that partook more of horror than of any other character, he prayed silently….” From The Mysteries of Udolpho

“Every object, on which his eyes rested, seemed to announce the presence of Ellena; and the very flowers that so gaily embellished the apartment, breathed forth a perfume, which fascinated his senses and affected his imagination.” From The Italian, Chapter 2

“The King’s great chamber was marvelous to behold. There were twenty-five wax-lights held by esquires og the household, all in the King’s livery, gentils as they were; also twenty-five wax torches were fixed high up over the tapestry. The walls were, that night, gorgeous with the story of Troy-town in ancient tapestries; there you might see the flames burning and the towers falling, and old King Priam, with beard as white as snow, his crown upon his head, and his Queen Hecuba tearing her dishevelled locks for grief.” From Gaston de Blondeville, “The Second Day”

Ann Radcliffe was a novelist and poet who wrote in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century. She is firmly associated with the Gothic novel, and attributed to be one of the creators of the suspense genre. She influenced many Nineteenth Century writers such as Keats (who called her “Mother Radcliffe”), Scott (“the first poetess of romantic fiction,”) Shelley, Austen, Poe, the Brontes, and countless others.

Literary scholars have debated the intent of her stories, whether they were tedious time-waster stories or reflected a deep, highly rationalized system of belief. J.M.S. Tompkins seems to fall in the former category when he describes the pattern of her plots as “a beautiful and solitary girl is persecuted in picturesque surroundings,and, after many fluctuations of fortune, during which she seems again and again on the point of safety, only to be thrust back into the midst of perils, is restored to her friends and marries the man of her choice.”

The “picturesque” Tompkins describes is used to help build suspense and to create mystery. Heightening the unknown is a great way to build reader interest. And that is the key to what Radcliffe offers the modern writer: a case study in the use of description. The settings, scenery, natural areas surrounding the characters are an integral part of the storytelling, and in fact the story. It not only sets the mood, but clearly helps illuminate character and plot.

Resources: The Literary Gothic website has a compilation of online resources relating to Radcliffe’s life and work: http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/radcliffe.html

Some information, including the photo and Tompkins quote, taken from Wikipedia. All of Radcliffe’s novels are available in free eBook editions which can be found by searching for their titles in your web browser.

List of Contractions in English

“To Be”

 “To Have”

The Future

Conditional “Not”

Poetic Contractions

Other

Aside from everything else, this is largely due to its matter of fact treatment of homosexual themes and characters. This comes off as both refreshing and bawdy, I even found myself thinking it was “dirty.” It could be a contemporary story for all of the kinds of relationships that go on: three ways, gay hookups, bisexual characters, hustlers, and prostitutes. For readers who think gay culture began in the 1960s, this is a great read to see how many elements of gay life existed in ancient Roman times.

The section “Dinner with Trimalchio” is especially masterful, written so that a set of details carries the story forward. Loads of details about life and culture then, filled with showing up ex lovers, showmanship, pretensions, and many examples of human nature contemporary readers cannot help but identify with. The story is built on a large number of specific smaller stories strung together, one after another , in some cases literally one climax of action following in a sentence directly after another.

The whole thing tends to read as one extended , convoluted plot that is interesting, but becomes tedious in the way it unfolds with large passages of all dramatic action with no breaks. And yet, unlike so much of the accumulated literary conventions that have developed since this work was written, this book has an honesty and integrity that is hard to find.

A novel disguised as an account of a public health scare that happened sixty years before the book was published. I would expect a book on this subject to be full of emotional appeals and specific fleshed- out characters suffering and being generally emotional. First, because we have gotten so used to the emotional appeal when dealing with tragedies and especially illness. Second, because the writer was only a toddler when the events happened so we know that writing over half a century later it is reasonable he would have to fabricate far too much detail to convincingly write a factual account.

And yet… Defoe writes a surprisingly fact filled book that is almost chillingly detached. A first person narrator identified only as “H.F.” and that on the last page of the novel, recalls the terrifying months of the Bubonic Plague that swept through London in 1664-1665. Calmly relating facts, symptoms, death figures, public policy, burial procedures, and his own movements through the ordeal, Defoe paints a more realistic effect by being entirely devoid of emotion than all the moody dramatic wranglings of contemporary fiction writers on similar themes. Indeed, he has more effect than most journalists today because he presents things in such a detached manner.

“These objects were so frequent in the streets that when the plague came to be very raging on one side, there was scarce any passing by the streets but that several dead bodies would be lying here and there upon the ground. On the other hand, it is observable that though at first the people would stop as they went along and call to the neighbors to come out on such occasion, yet afterward no notice was taken of them; but that if at any time we found a corpse lying, go across the way and not come near it….(p.60). “

Another interesting thing to be taken by contemporary writers from this novel is its structure: it is a spiral structure. That is,the story keeps coming around and around to the same ideas again and again. Throughout the book one gets the feeling you have already read a certain passage because it is so similar to a previous one. And while this gets tedious for the reader, it imparts another level of realism in that when people tell stories orally they often go back over the same points and examples again and again. The discourse in a story is often jumbled up, events narrated remind the storyteller of something else and that leads them back to a point already partially covered. In this way, with patience, the listener (or reader) can discover the points the storyteller finds most important.

Journalists today covering a tragedy like to point out the examples of goodness of human nature, of people coming together and helping one another out; Defoe here discusses many more examples of the selfish, greedy side of human nature. And that seems very real, especially considering the source of the disaster was a highly contagious disease that not much was medically known about. Certainly interesting to wonder what would happen in a city like London today if such an outbreak occurred.

Defoe here continues to marvel me with the way he can pack so much reality, detail into a straightforward, at times bland, style. His prose is worth studying closely for the way he captures a reality without authorial intrusion. That is a lesson many of us writing novels today could certainly stand to learn.

This story has incredible use of narrative movement, especially considering it is one man by himself for the largest part of the story. It is his focus, his thoughts, his point of view entirely that drives the story, and it is entertaining because there is as much real jeopardy as one finds in a novel, even if the narrator is telling the story long after it happened, and we know he must have survived. And though perhaps a bit far-fetched for most of us, we can relate on a human level. I can imagine being stranded and alone; I can place myself in his isolated place, and I marvel at his ability to meet the challenges he faced.

His religious swings and moral/ethical deliberations are real as well, although I wonder if a modern person would stick to his moral compass so solidly after twenty-plus years away from civilization.  Of course, without the distractions and temptations of society, maybe he would.

As to narrative drive, a great balance has been achieved between giving minute details of an incident or place versus letting large lumps of time melt away in three words. It is the strict narrative and editorial viewpoint that keeps the novel moving, keeps it readable. All the other usual trappings of the novel are unnecessary because their is such strong focus on the central character’s perceptions. Because the descriptions are so vivid early in the book, especially when Robinson arrives on the island, they aren’t needed later on. the reader has a mental picture of the setting that carries him through.

Because it is one character by himself for a large part of the story, it breaks most of the “rules” contemporary writers are taught to follow, and yet I think that stripped down circumstance allows Defoe to create a stronger, more intimate connection between Robinson Crusoe and the reader. It is something for us to think about: are we putting too many bells, whistles and distractions into our stories and therefore placing unnecessary distance between our characters and readers?