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I would be careful. Yes, there is much to be said for learning a complex skill by practicing in parts. But there is a real and pervasive danger of getting caught up in language when you should be f...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:51Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25773 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:51:32Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25773 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:51:32Z (over 4 years ago)
I would be careful. Yes, there is much to be said for learning a complex skill by practicing in parts. But there is a real and pervasive danger of getting caught up in language when you should be focusing on story. As Robert McKee points out, it is easy for writers for fall in love with individual scenes and be unwilling to throw them away when they don't fit the story they are supposed to be telling. The hardest skill to learn, and that thing that will make all the difference to your career as a writer, is story. To practice scenes apart from stories may therefore be to focus your effort in the place it is going to do the least good. And there is another trap here as well. The best way to achieve any effect in a novel -- to produce any emotion or reaction in the reader -- is through story. If you work on scenes divorced from story, you deprive yourself of this means of producing an effect, and this may lead you to try to hard to produce the effect in other ways, such as by florid language or an over-emphasis on describing how people feel or react to things. It is story that will make or break you. Figure our story and the scenes will come naturally enough.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2017-01-01T16:10:30Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 4