Nouns and Verbs at Work, pt. 1

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Creative Writing: The Craft of Style

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Wesleyan University

Creative Writing: The Craft of Style

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Курс 4 из 5 — Specialization Литературное творчество

Your style is as unique and distinctive as your face, your voice, except that you can choose it, you can can work on it, enhance it. In this course we will introduce aspiring writers to the art of putting pressure on written language. We will study the use of metaphor and imagery, and demonstrate how clarity, grace, and inventiveness in word choice are imperative to a story’s success. Writers will emerge with the revision skills essential to all writers of good stories and good prose.

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Writing with Nouns and Verbs

In the second module we look at the various parts of speech and how two of them—nouns and verbs—are the building blocks of good style and good narratives. By relying on nouns, we make the people, places, and things of the narrative world vivid. By relying on verbs we keep the story alive and in motion.

Nouns and Verbs at Work, pt. 12:44

Nouns and Verbs at Work, pt 2.4:32

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Salvatore Scibona
Frank B. Weeks Visiting Professor of English

All right.

Let's do some close reading.

We're going to see some of this at work in a really

terrific very short very dense novel that many of you will have read.

It's called The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by the British novelist Muriel Spark.

You might remember the 1969 film starring Maggie Smith,

who played Miss Jean Brodie, a little context,

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel set in Scotland in the 30s,

it's about an extremely charismatic teacher, who has a little group of six or

seven girls who are completely magnetized by her and

her methods are effective on them.

But they're not very welcomed by the administration of the school.

I'm going to read this section but as before we'll leave a couple of important

words out and then at the end of the segment, we'll go to our little game and

I'll ask you to guess what the noun was, what the verb

was and then you'll be able to see what other people in the class have guessed.

Then we'll come back and talk about it in a little more detail.

This section comes form the first quarter or so of the story and

we are listening to Miss Gene Brody herself talk to the girls.

"It has been suggested again that I should apply for

a post at one of the progressive schools

where my methods would be more suited to this system than they are at Blaine.

But I shall not apply for a post at a crank school.

I shall remain at this education, noun.

There needs must be a leaven in the lump.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

The Brodie set smiled in understanding of various kinds.

Miss Brodie forced her brown eyes to flash

as a meaningful accompaniment to her quiet voice.

She looked a mighty woman with her dark Roman profile in the sun.

The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail.

As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at crank school as Miss Brodie.

She would never resign.

If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be verb.

Okay, now it is a game.

Guess the noun, guess the verb and we'll see you in the next segment.

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