What's In Your Character's Pocketses?

Riddle Game by Tim Kirk

Ever watch The Dark Knight? When they bring the Joker in, there's a quick scene where Commissioner Gordon checks the notorious villain's pockets. What does he find?

"Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint."

Also, what about The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit? What does Frodo carry in his pocket, on a chain, from the Shire to Mordor? And why is Gollum so infatuated with what Bilbo has "in its nasty little pocketses?"

What our characters carry in their pockets

Hearing Voices: Authors and the Imagination



Yevgenia Nayberg

Here is an article on Virginia Woolf which inspired me to think about the imaginary voices we all hear, whether we're an author, or some other creative-type, or none of the above.


When I say imaginary voices, here're some examples (from the article) of what I mean:

[Imaginary voices] might include a bereaved person comforted by the voice of the departed; a mountain climber who intuits a felt presence; a child talking to imaginary friends; an athlete whose attentional focus tunes in to self-talk; the inner voice of a coach or trainer.

Effective & Efficient Writing — Binti, by Dr. Nnedi Okorafor

I'm late. This novella came out in 2015 but I'm just getting to it. In any case, this Nebula and Hugo award-winning novella packs a punch for its short length and that's why I consider it a prime example of both effective and efficient writing.

Effective:

Effective writing can be summed up as writing that simply gets its job done. For fiction writing, in particular, effectiveness can have many different facets to it. But I'll focus on just two:

1. The writing gets plot and character across, i.e. the reader understands what's happening, who the character is, and so on. And...
2. ...the writing flows. Drawing the reader forward, not requiring them to stop and reread sentences.

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, and the Secret of Sentence Structure

Her diction is simple.


Her story is simple.


Her protagonist is a simple man trying to get rich, though we learn how complex even the lives of simple farmers in pre-revolutionary China can be.


Her sentences also appear simple, but they are not. They are elegant. Other online analyses of this novel (here and here) explain the sagalike, biblical quality of Buck's sentences. As Nasrullah Mambrol pointed out in his article on literariness.org:

Most of Buck’s sentences are long and serpentine, relying on balance, parallelism, and repetition for strength.

The Good Ol' The Giver, by Lois Lowry

Anyone remember reading this in middle school? While still figuring out whether to love or to condemn this brief, quickly-read, little jewel of a novel, I have figured out what it is about The Giver written by Lois Lowry which fascinates readers so much.


It's the old guy on the cover. That dude's face, whoever he is, will haunt me to the day I die. Kudos to whoever designed that book cover! I can feel him standing behind me pressing his hands into my back and transmitting memories...creepazoidal.