Word: plot
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...short story offers inherent advantages over the novel, stemming simply from the length, which imposes a certain focus and brevity on the author’s prose. The writer can simply offer an evocative scene, without the pressure of maintaining plot momentum and design over the course of a full-length novel. Perhaps the greatest strength of the form is that the story relies so heavily on what is left unsaid. Every gesture, every phrase, every detail in a great story takes on additional significance since it both signals the literal action and evokes everything that is left...
...famed (if essentially hypothetical) system, then, was and is the dissection of the motives and emotions of the character. One hundred years of actors have wasted their time in this pointless pursuit.” He proceeds to expound on why the emphasis on character over plot is a flawed method of theater making, but he never successfully validates his vitriolic reading of Stanislavski. To take on a figure so influential, one must do more than simply excoriate his work, but Mamet has an unfortunate tendency to make overstated claims without enough substantive proof or analysis...
...tell people the basic gist of the plot, and they say, ‘Oh, it’s fiction,’” said Schama. “And I say, ‘No, no it’s written like narrative history, and it’s kind of like biography, but it reads like a novel...
...Well, we don’t live life privy to all the expository information that we might wish to have. When we see fiction, we are not given that information either. Fiction films simulate life as it’s lived through acting and plot. Documentary claims not to be fiction and to therefore privilege human existence. The paradox is, it almost entirely consists of people after the fact telling you about their lives. If you asked me about my life, I would just lie through my teeth. Our aesthetic aspiration was about ambiguity, not about clarity. We didn?...
Because the novel contains many story lines, characters, and flashbacks, the plot can often lack cohesion, especially without the connections Ellison would presumably have made between characters and episodes. Trippy visions of talking buzzards and hitching-post men have startling force but seem disconnected from the central story line, and some of Hickman and Sunraider’s extended flashback sequences stall without a strong narrative arc to support them. Nevertheless, the intrigue of these two characters and the vividness of their stories—however disjointed they may be—is more than enough to make...