Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fundamentals of Creative Writing
    Fundamentals of Creative Writing
    Fundamentals of Creative Writing
    Ebook143 pages1 hour

    Fundamentals of Creative Writing

    By Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    DESCRIPTION AND PRAISE:

     

    Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE WRITING  is a marvelous textbook that combines useful technical advice on craft with beautiful practical examples in her own stories. Brainard's treatments of writerly voice and left brain/right brain theory as it connects to writing are among the best available in today's writing textbooks. Her story examples cover a variety of story types, techniques, points of view, and historical as well as contemporary topics and themes. This book will indeed help writing students write strong stories and improve their craft. Brava, Ms. Brainard."  ~ Vince Gotera, Editor of North American Review, Professor of Creative Writing, University Northern Iowa

    >>>

     

    Fundamentals of Creative Writing is a powerful resource to encourage students and/or aspiring writers to strive for excellence in their writing skills. Not only does it guide readers through the basics of setting, scene, character, conflict, dialogue, plot, point of view, voice, style, theme and tone but it also provides useful activities that challenges the writer to get their creative juices flowing. I would highly recommend this excellent book to anyone who wants to improve and enhance their creative writing skills. ~ Jacqueline Gullas-Weckman, Vice-President, Academic Affairs, University of the Visayas 

    >>>

     

    Cecilia Manguerra Brainard has written a wonderful resource for students of creative writing.  This book, Fundamentals of Creative Writing, provides students with practical steps that truly work. The strategies presented in this book are a product of the authors fifteen years of teaching creative writing. She is also a prolific writer who has written numerous short stories, novels, and non-fiction books. ~ Edmundo F. Litton, Ed.D., Associate Professor of Education, Loyola Marymount University

    >>>

     

    This book describes the "essentials" of creative writing, not only from a technical perspective, but also by unveiling how creative writing leads us to imaginatively engage and act upon the world. Brainard's structure reminds us that, above and beyond technique, the most important thing a writer needs is a genuine love of story and a respect for the power of words." ~ Rocío G. Davis, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Navarre, Spain

     

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPALH
    Release dateDec 1, 2022
    ISBN9781953716354
    Fundamentals of Creative Writing

    Read more from Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

    Related to Fundamentals of Creative Writing

    Related ebooks

    Composition & Creative Writing For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Everything I Don’t Know About Swords: On Teaching Creative Writing

      Mar 19, 2018

      1. One evening in grad school, half-drunk and Googling my own name, I found a blog run by one of my fiction students. I shouldn’t have read it, but of course I read it. “I already hate this class,” she wrote. “My teacher is a stuck-up snob who won’t

      7 min read

    • Article

      Better writing NOW

      May 6, 2021

      Better writing NOW
      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Writing Tips from Mark Bowden

      Apr 8, 2019

      The question most in my mind when writing is: What exactly are you trying to say? A clear answer to that question will help you avoid confusion and cliché. The post Five Writing Tips from Mark Bowden appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Personal Essays: What Should I Write?

      Sep 18, 2019

      The most frequent mistake newcomers to nonfiction make is picking a subject that’s lackluster, self-congratulatory, or just a diary-like rendering of something mundane they went through. Sorry, but no editors I know want to publish a piece about how

      8 min read

    • Article

      Polishing Your Prose

      Oct 30, 2019

      So you wrote your article or essay and feel ready to click send. Not so fast. Once you have written a piece, it’s important to edit yourself and revise. As an editor, writing coach, and adjunct writing professor at New York University, I teach my stu

      4 min read

    • Article

      The State Of It

      Sep 12, 2021

      The State Of It
      6 min read

    • Article

      Tiny Doable Things

      Dec 15, 2021

      IN THE prologue to her novel The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 2021), Ruth Ozeki writes, “A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and

      6 min read

    • Article

      Min Jin Lee Still Believes in Truth

      Sep 6, 2023

      "I think my career is this series of humiliations where I feel so stupid all the time." The post Min Jin Lee Still Believes in Truth appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Tommy Orange

      Feb 12, 2024

      Tommy Orange
      12 min read

    • Article

      Water

      Dec 13, 2023

      Water
      7 min read

    • Article

      Kanishk Tharoor on Writing Outside of Western Traditions

      Mar 16, 2017

      For years I knew Kanishk Tharoor primarily as the author of thoughtful essays about history, in the broadest sense: not just what happened in the past but also how humans have explored the past, made sense of the past, contested the past. So when I s

      6 min read

    • Article

      Ada Zhang

      Jun 14, 2023

      Ada Zhang
      5 min read

    • Article

      Celeste Ng

      Nov 2, 2020

      Celeste Ng
      12 min read

    • Article

      Being Different

      Mar 5, 2020

      It is estimated that over 286,000 children in the UK (age 0-17) have a learning disability1, and over 1.3 million children have special educational needs2 (14.9% of children). In addition, 10% of children and young people aged 5-16 have a clinically

      4 min read

    • Article

      On Changing Genres

      Feb 15, 2021

      On Changing Genres
      6 min read

    • Article

      Getting Creative With Reality

      Oct 1, 2020

      What do H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Notes on a Small Island by Bill Bryson and Tall Stories and Wee Tales by Billy Connolly have in common? They all belong to the increasingly popular genre of creative non-fiction writing. When creative non-fic

      6 min read

    • Article

      Exploring The Boundaries

      Oct 2, 2018

      I have been babysitting my student’s two-year-old boy for the last three hours, while my student and his wife go out for the night. The boy is bubbly. He has the habit of bouncing on his toes when he is excited, and he is excited about everything. He

      8 min read

    • Article

      How to Write the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay

      Sep 4, 2019

      The classic comp exercise is often thought of as facile—the opposite of mature, fully realized work. That's exactly why Rion Amilcar Scott took it on. The post How to Write the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Motherhood Is Life-Shattering: The Millions Interviews Kirsten Lunstrum

      Oct 18, 2018

      Ten years ago, Kirsten Lunstrum was leading a life many young writers would kill for. Having published two well-regarded story collections before she turned 30, Lunstrum landed a tenure-track teaching job in the creative writing program at State Univ

      8 min read

    • Article

      Imagination Under Pressure

      Dec 13, 2017

      BY GRANT FAULKNER PEOPLE generally want more—of everything. More money, more space, more time, more love, more recognition, more fun. Our “more mind-set” is spawned by many things: the thirst to maximize our self-fulfillment, the seductions of furthe

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fundamentals of Creative Writing

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Fundamentals of Creative Writing - Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

      1 - SETTING AND SCENE

      Setting is the time and place where your story takes place, for instance, a story may be set in contemporary Manila in the summertime.

      Scene is a specific place where action happens. Your character will move and act in specific places, and each place is a scene. There could be a scene, for instance, where your character is walking down the street to the market; this could be followed by a scene in the market itself; and so on.

      It is said that the basic unit of story — telling is the scene. You the writer will have to imagine this specific place within which your character moves, and you will have to use words to describe it. Some writers use a lot of words in describing their scenes; others are very spare. It is a matter of style.

      Once you know how to write a scene, you can write an entire book, because, as the saying goes, the basic unit of story-telling is the scene. You have to think visually; try to see the scenes in your imagination, and use words to let your readers know what is going on in those scenes. As if by magic, your readers will be able to see these scenes too.

      Here are additional points to consider about scene:

      1. Each scene should move your story forward in terms of both plot and character. A scene should be motivated by a previous scene and it should motivate the next scene. There is a cause-and-effect relationship.

      2. Scenes should direct us to the high point of the story. Ask: What is the payoff in this scene? Why do I need this scene? What is my purpose for this scene? At the end of this scene, does the audience want to know what happens next?

      3. Scenes should be as visual as possible.

      4. Do not rely on your characters talking about the story; let them act — Show, don’t tell.

      5. Every scene has a beginning, middle, and end. Scenes should culminate in something dramatic, a decision made perhaps, or some kind of revelation. Maintain suspense.

      6. Strive to create smooth transitions between scenes. Transitions are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs that ease the reader from one scene to the next, to avoid confusion. It can be as short as, Later that day... or The next place he visited was...

      7. Each scene should have an emotion or mood. Focus on that emotion. Ask: what is my character’s intention or goal in this scene? What is my character’s feeling? What is my character’s attitude?

      8. Focus your scene on well-motivated conflict. Conflict is important in story-telling.

      *

      ACTIVITIES:

      Write a scene from your own life when you felt a strong emotion such as anger or joy.

      Write one perfect scene.

      Identify some scenes, with beginning, middle, and end, in the stories that follow.

      THE DIRTY KITCHEN

      My favorite room was the outdoor kitchen, which we called the dirty-kitchen. It was a separate structure in the back of the house, a place with a huge cooking hearth, a place where the servants sat around, talked, and ate.

      The main house was huge, Spanish-style, with marble floors, crystal chandeliers, very formal. My mother ruled the main house, and she shouted a lot. The dirty-kitchen felt like another world. The floor was simple cement; the roofing was made of corrugated sheets that threatened to blow off during the typhoon season. It always smelled of fried garlic.

      I enjoyed my visits there. Sometimes the driver would play the guitar, sad songs full of longing for home or a loved-one. The servants liked to discuss the Big Dance, an outdoor affair open to the public, which was held across the river. Friday nights I’d hear the loud music coming from the Big Dance. They also talked about the Amateur Hour, a talent show open to the public, which was held at the Fuente Osmeña. 

      Every night, they switched on the transistor radio to listen to the evening soap operas. Sitting on the wooden bench, legs swinging, I got lost in the dramatic stories that involved infidelity, out-of-wedlock children, lost loves, every twist and turn in the human drama that one could imagine.

      I listened until it was time to return to the main house for supper. Before opening the door to the main house, I often took a deep breath to brace myself.

      BUTTERSCOTCH MARBLE ICE CREAM

      Friday night Mark wanted to go to Swensen's. I need butterscotch marble ice cream, he announced.

      I was eight months pregnant and wanted to stay home. The night before I hardly slept. I was so big that finding a comfortable position in bed was impossible. Changing position was a major production; getting out of bed was a task. It was depressing; everything was depressing, like the old woman hanging clothes from a line that stretched from one end of the building to the other. 

      I had seen her earlier that day after I finished scrubbing the thrift-store-bought bassinet with Clorox. The apartment reeked, so I opened the living room window. I spotted her then. She must have been sixty with chin-length white hair whipping around her hair. She was leaning out a window — her kitchen window I guessed — and she had some clothespins dangling from her mouth. The way she stooped — or maybe it was her scraggly hair — gave her a defeated look. She hung her laundry then pulled the line towards her, hung some more, and pulled. The entire line rotated slowly and the clothes swayed back and forth rhythmically. Underwear, nightgowns, pants, shirts, sheets, and towels wavered in the air; and for some reason they all looked gray. The whole scene looked bleak. As I watched her I had the feeling that years from now I would be doing exactly the same thing, hanging laundry from my fifth-floor apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco.

      Our apartment was very small: a bathroom, a walk-in closet, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a living room. Accordion doors separated the living room and bedroom. The bathtub was the free-standing kind with claws from legs; and the kitchen had an unused icebox. Mark jokingly called them antiques, but that Friday they appeared simply old to me. Our dream was to buy a Volkswagen bug before the baby was born; Mark had already sold his Kawasaki motorcycle for seed money.

      My mother's warning went through my head like a tape recording. Hija, it's easier to marry a Filipino, she had said. We have our own ways. Why marry someone different? And to live in another country — why leave home? In America they don't even take care of their old people; they put them in homes. What future will you have there?

      For the first time I felt the gravity of my marrying an American and giving up my life in the Philippines.

      That Friday, Mark had no idea of the doubts floating through my head. He was happy.

      Aren't you tired? I asked. He was a senior law student at Hastings. Four nights a week he sorted mail at the post office.

      I feel great! he said.

      We can't afford it.

      C'mon, don't be a stick-in-the-mud. He put on his coat, grabbed mine, and stood by the door.

      We don't have the money. I wanted to go to Sears to buy T-shirts for the baby, but I only had seven dollars and fifty-five cents.

      I've got a few bucks. Let's go, let's go, they're going to close, he said.

      Reluctantly I got up and walked to him. I wanted to tie-dye the baby's shirts. Elizabeth taught me how. You use rubber bands. That's how you get the pretty rings. You can use several colors. But I didn't have enough money for the shirts and dye.

      Buy them next week. Tuesday's payday.

      I wanted to make them now. I want to get the baby's things ready.

      Move it along, move it along.

      What's more important anyway, the baby or your ice cream?

      Right now, my ice cream. Everything will be all right. He grinned encouragingly.

      All right, all right — how can things be all right? We have cockroaches. Three ran out of the garbage chute. I stepped on one; there was this loud crunch. It was disgusting. Then this afternoon, I heard gunshots and ambulance.

      Firecrackers and a fire truck, that's all.

      He always said that even though the next day's news reported some killing in the Mission District. I wanted to cry. I was so enormous, I waddled. It was cold and my coat wouldn't go over my stomach. I was still struggling with the first button as we got on the cable car.

      I want to get the baby's things together, then I'll cook some food and freeze it for you for when I'm in the hospital.

      You worry too much, he said.

      That made me even more cross, and I kept quiet. He went right on about his pinochle game with Chun and Ross and how Able didn't know demur from demure and Dean Prosser said, Young ladies are demure; in law it's demur.

      I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted to tell him how afraid I was. I was feeling very pregnant; I was feeling very alone, very foreign in this country; and I felt very uncertain about my future. Where I came from you knew the cycle of life: babies were born, they grew up, they courted and got married; they had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and they died. Everyone knew where everyone's family crypts were in the cemetery. You knew where they'd bury you. 

      I hope we're not late, Mark said. I think they close at ten.

      We hopped off the cable car, hurried to Swensen's, and saw the closed sign.

      Shoot! Mark said. It's not even ten yet.  I really wanted butterscotch marble. He paused, shoved both hands into his pockets and sighed. Well, c'mon. Let's go. It's foggy and you didn't really want to go out.

      Some of that energy,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1