October 16, 2012

Hi writers:

I finished reading a powerful book called The Buddha in the Attic that is written in third person plural: we … we … The story follows the emigration of Japanese “picture brides” to the U.S. in the early 1900s, and I was struck by how the book’s voice pulled all of the women together, giving them both individual quirks as well as a shared struggle. I am thinking now about the many dimensions a writing voice can take, outside “I,” “he/she,” and even the less common “you.”

PROCESS: A GROUP PORTRAIT

Good advice to all writers who are creating a world for readers to live in: consider the environment. How do politics work? What is the population? What would a map of this place look like? Is it warm, cool, rainy? What do the trees look like? Do people live in houses or some other form of dwelling? What foods are likely to be found on people’s plates? Questions such as these give a group portrait of a given world. The main character (if there is one – in the book I just finished there is not) can be at once representative of these group ways of being, as well as his/her own person who questions some of these world’s ways.

Try this: Create a (unpublished) Wikipedia page for the world you are writing, as a way to brainstorm all of the fast-facts that influence the people living and playing out stories there.

FEATURED VENUE: THE GROVE REVIEW

The Grove Review does two things differently than most other literary reviews out there today: it accepts only snail-mail submissions, and it pays a small ($50) honorarium to the writers and artists it publishes. It is based in Portland and publishes work from everywhere.

Submission guidelines here: http://thegrovereview.org/?page_id=11

PROMPT

Find an earlier piece of writing in first person (I) and rewrite it to make it plural (we). (11min)