Critique of Dance Lessons by Zoe J. Osik

 

Dance Lessons

You or your character are learning how to dance. What brought this about? Are they [GJ1] dancing with a partner? Is the partner a friend, a stranger, or an instructor? How do you or your character feel about this? What dance is being taught and how familiar is it[GJ2] ?

Inspiration

Are there any dances you like to watch or have always wanted to learn? Look at videos that can help you visualize the movements. Ask people you know about their experiences with dancing, or pull from your own! There are many dances to choose from—why not learn a new one, too[GJ3] ?

Diction

Diction plays a large role in the interpretation of our writing. Will you use technical language to be exacting, or will you use flowery language to capture the feeling? How would you or your character feel executing dance moves to a specific rhythm? Is it choppy or are the movements timed like clockwork[GJ4] ?

Pacing

Is this a slow dance or a rumba? Will it leave your character breathless or anxious? How does this affect the structure of your story? Is there time to show interactions between movements or is there hardly enough time to think?

Does the story end when the dance does or does it continue on[GJ5] ?

Form

Will you write a scene with descriptive narration, a poem with its own movement,[GJ6]  or a script that shows each character’s tension? Whose perspective will the story be told from? Will there be more than one point of view?

You could even write the story strictly from the perspective of the dance partner! This gives you the chance to observe how your character reacts to the scenario from an outside perspective[GJ7] .

Happy writing[GJ8] !

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 [GJ1]I find it a little odd how you change person. I actually think that the second person throughout would work rather well.

 [GJ2]Indeed, asking questions of the reader is quite effective.

 [GJ3]Inspiring

 [GJ4]This seems an odd change of topic.

 [GJ5]So, you are comparing dancing with writing. I think this needs to be made a little clearer.

 [GJ6]A key word – it belongs both the dancing and writing?

 [GJ7]A very good idea – and this does bring the two disciplines together.  

 [GJ8]The concept here is intriguing – comparing dancing and writing. You need to be bolder in saying this. There ae some good ideas but you are a little tentative. You make some good points. 

 

About the author

 After studying European literature and fairytales, Zoe J. Osik decided to make magic of her own. When not delving into a new book, she enjoys illustrating, cooking Italian food, sewing stuffed animals, and binge-watching her favorite shows with her husband and their bunny.

Dialogue – how it works

 

Writers are curious creatures.   A good job too – or they wouldn’t know what to write about. Your curiosity may have prompted you to listen to conversations in cafés, on the bus or at the bus stop or in the shopping queue. This sort of eaves-dropping may provide you with some rich snippets.  It may also clarify that a lot of time is wasted on small talk.

There is no place for small talk in a script or in a piece of fiction. Therefore, dialogue shouldn’t sound too natural.

On the other hand, it should sound like the person who is talking. Would they use those words? Do the words they speak reflect what is in their head?

Dialogue is an important part of narrative balance. But it must earn its keep. Therefore it must:

·         Push the plot forward

·         Represent the person who is speaking

·         Create an atmosphere

·         Preferably do more than one of the above at a time – and in some cases all of the above.

 

What about dialect, accents and swearing?

If you try to replicate an accent completely you may make your text virtually unreadable. Just a few words here and there may be enough to suggest the accent. Dialect words can give a clearer picture but make sure that you give them enough context so that the reader can understand what they mean – particularly the first time they meet them. And does your character swear? Well go ahead and put a few expletives in your text. However, you probably don’t need to make them swear as much as they would in real life.

 

A couple of things to try

 

BBC Writers’ Room

Go to BBC Writers’ Room: https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts and download a script. Look at the balance between a slightly stylized speech and the words sounding as if they belong to the character.

 

Test out your own dialogue 

Is it true to each character? Take all tags out of your dialogue.  Print you work out in a large font. Cut up the speeches and hand them to a writing friend. Can they work out the order of the speech? Can they work out what each of the characters is like?  

 

Manipulation - prompt

 

We all know about cookies when we visit Internet sites. It’s feels totally uncanny how Amazon and Facebook know what we’re interested in. Advertising in the media influences us enormously. It’s probably highly logical.  

Is AI taking this further?

Here’s a spooky example. A friend died recently and I made a note of his address so that I could send his widow a card. I actually wrote the address down on paper with a pen.  I did have a printed copy of it elsewhere and this had been created as a spreadsheet on the computer of someone with whom I often exchange emails. A few days later, when I was using the newly created Greater Manchester BEE app to find the next bus that would take me home a Google map appeared, showing me the bus route to his house. His house as well as his street was shown.

Perhaps a little more simple and understandable is that I keep getting junk email about investment possibilities. I have recently sold some properties’ and decided to invest the profit. I’ve been using the internet quite a bit to look for possibilities.   

But what happens if this goes to extremes?

Write an article, poem, script or story about someone who falls prey to this and maybe how they get out of it.

 

Character: archetypes

 

Several of the gurus who have come out with story theories have also suggested archetypes that are found in stories.  You may have started with four basic characters: hero, enemy, friend and mentor but you may find looking at these characters useful.

Christopher Booker’s archetypes

Good old man

Innocent young girl

Rival or “shadow”

Temptress

Dark Father

Dark Mother

Dark self

Joseph Campbell’s archetypes

Hero

Ally

Enemy

Trickster

Shapeshifter

Guardian

Shadow

Christopher Vogler’s archetypes  

Hero

Shadow

Mentor

Herald

Shapeshifter

Trickster

Allies 

Vladimir Propp’s archetypes 

Hero

Helper

Villain

False hero

Donor

Dispatcher

Princess

Other fairy-tale familiars (as found by the brothers Grimm)

The Guileless Fool

The Meddlesome Fairy

The Wicked Crone

The Charming Prince

The Beautiful Damsel

As you will see, there is a lot of overlap between the different gurus. I haven’t gone into a lot of explanation here;   let them be what their name suggests. If you are really interested in archetypes you may like to look at Jung and also the work of Carol Pearson and Margaret Mark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype     

Why work with archetypes?

They can give each of your characters a function within the story. It’s important to ask why characters are there at all and this may be especially important for minor characters.  And readers love archetypes, even if they can’t name them. They recognise them as familiar.

Your turn

Use a work in progress and see if you can fit one of these characters in or build up one that you already have to become one of them. Can you pinpoint the role of any other characters you have there?  Or maybe in something you’re currently reading?