Forget Plot
"You would probably do just as well to get that plot business out of your head and start simply with a character or anything that you can make come alive. Wouldn't it be better for you to discover a meaning in what you write rather than to impose one? Nothing you write will lack meaning because the meaning is in you."
- Flannery O'Connor, in one of a newly-discovered cache of letters
- Flannery O'Connor, in one of a newly-discovered cache of letters
posted by PrufrockTwo at
7.6.07
3 Comments:
Nice quote.
By
Unknown, at 11:12 AM
I'm not too sure about this advice... Have tried it, in fact, and achieved nothing but self-indulgent rambling.
How about you?
By
Anonymous, at 3:46 PM
Perhaps you're being too harsh on your prose? The trick is probably to keep on regardless, and then, from the pages and pages of "self indulgent rambling" will emerge a coherent narrative, or at least ideas/characters that can be taken forward. Philip Roth, for one, says that he has to keep on writing and discarding -- sometimes for months -- before it becomes clear to him what his book ought to contain. All the best.
By
PrufrockTwo, at 11:58 AM
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