The Serious Pleasures of Suspense

The Serious Pleasures of Suspense

Author: Caroline Levine

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780813922171

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Scholars have long recognized that narrative suspense dominates the formal dynamics of 19th-century British fiction. This study argues that various 19th-century thinkers - John Ruskin, Michael Faraday, Charlotte Bronte - saw suspense as a vehicle for a new approach to knowledge called "realism".


The Man in the Blizzard

The Man in the Blizzard

Author: Bart Schneider

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2008-08-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0307450120

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If Marlowe lived in Minnesota . . . If Spade spouted poetry . . . If the Big Lebowski were a small-time private eye . . . Meet Augie Boyer, private detective “Once upon a time, Sam Spade, Miles Roby, and Bill Maher all went to Bart ­Schneider’s laboratory. There was an accident—a spill, a flash of lightning—and only one character came out. Schneider named him Augie Boyer. You’ll love the big lug.” —Sean Doolittle, author of The Cleanup Private eye Augie Boyer is out of sorts. He’s been smoking too much Pontchartrain Pootie, his favorite varietal herb, and scarfing down an excess of fried food. He can’t stop thinking of his ­therapist wife, who left him for another therapist, and despite his new girlfriend’s best efforts, Augie’s testosterone levels have sunk lower than the winter temperatures of Minneapolis. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, a beautiful, blond violinist with multiple personalities walks into Augie’s office. She draws him into a complex case that involves neo-Nazi violin collectors, mind-control specialists, and thousands of antiabortion activists who’ve come to the Twin Cities for a rally that will bring new meaning to Labor Day. But when Augie uncovers an assassination plot, he must scramble to prevent a deranged act of political violence that strikes dangerously close to home. With wit, compassion, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, Bart Schneider creates a lovable yet flawed character and delivers a thrilling contemporary tale.


The Stuff of Fiction

The Stuff of Fiction

Author: Douglas Bauer

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2006-08-09

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780472031535

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A master storyteller and teacher talks about the tools of the fiction writer's craft


DIY MFA

DIY MFA

Author: Gabriela Pereira

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-07-08

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1599639343

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Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.


Narrative Suspense

Narrative Suspense

Author: Eric S. Rabkin

Publisher:

Published: 1973

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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"When Slim Turned Sideways . . ."--this is narrative suspense, and if well done propels the reader on into and through a novel, or folktale, or printed play, or epic poem. How does it work? Is it a matter of plot only? Why do some works rivet our attention from the first page, while others obviously do not? These are among the deceptively simple questions taken up in Eric Rabkin's seminal study of narrative suspense. Using the insights afforded by structuralism, linguistics, and modern criticism--and basing his discussion on close readings of many well-known works--Rabkin provides at once an original work in literary theory and a remarkably practical account of how successful narrative establishes and sustains interest on several levels. Suspense, Rabkin shows, is involved not only in the plot of a narrative, but in its thematic development, character development, and style as well. This broad understanding enables the author to develop a coherent theoretical description of suspense, using the terminology of rhetoric. The most startling result of this approach is a schematic representation for literary genres that, though arrived at theoretically, corresponds almost exactly to our intuitive categorization of literary works. Narrative Suspense can be read with ample profit by interested layman and professional critic alike. With wit and intelligence, the book clarifies an oft-perceived phenomenon--the fundamental importance of suspense, broadly defined, in all great works of literature.


Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot

Mastering Suspense, Structure, and Plot

Author: Jane Cleland

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1599639696

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Enthrall Your Readers! Suspense is one of the most powerful tools a writer has for captivating readers--but it isn't just for thrillers. From mainstream fiction to memoir, suspense creates the emotional tension that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Mastering Suspense, Structure, & Plot is your hands-on guide to weaving suspense into your narrative. Award-winning author Jane K. Cleland teaches you how to navigate genre conventions, write for your audience, and build gripping tension to craft an irresistible page-turner. Inside, Cleland will show you how to: • Implement thirteen no-fail techniques to construct an effective plot and structure for your story • Use Cleland's Plotting Road Map to add elements of suspense like twists, reversals, and moments of danger • Write subplots with purpose • Improve your descriptions, character development, sentence structure, and more Packed with case studies, exercises, and dozens of examples from best-selling authors, Mastering Suspense, Structure, & Plot is the key to writing suspenseful, engaging stories that leave your readers wanting more. ------ "Indispensable! For newbie authors and veterans alike, this terrific how-to is your new go-to. Don't write your book without it--it's a treasure." --Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author


Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Author: Ioannis M. Konstantakos

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-02-22

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 3110715589

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The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.


Narrative Absorption

Narrative Absorption

Author: Frank Hakemulder

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 9027265135

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Narrative Absorption brings together research from the social sciences and Humanities to solve a number of mysteries: Most of us will have had those moments, of being totally absorbed in a book, a movie, or computer game. Typically we do not have any idea about how we ended up in such a state. Nor do we fully realize how we might have changed as we return for the fictional worlds we have visited. The feeling of being absorbed is one of the most illusive and transient feelings, but also one that motivates audiences to spend considerable amounts of time in narrative worlds, and one that is central to our understanding of the effects of narratives on beliefs and behavior. Key specialists inform the reader of this book about the nature of the peculiar state of consciousness during episodes of absorption, the perception of absorption in history, the role of absorption in meaningful experiences with narratives, the relation with related phenomena such as suspense and identification, issues of measurement, and the practical implications, for instance in education-entertainment. Various fields have worked separately on topics of absorption, albeit using different terminology and methods, but having reached a high level of development and complexity in understanding absorption. Now is the time to bring them together. This volume will be a point of reference for years to come.


Truly Madly Guilty

Truly Madly Guilty

Author: Liane Moriarty

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: 2016-07-26

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1250069815

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THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, FROM THE AUTHOR OF BIG LITTLE LIES, now an HBO series. Winner of Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction “Here’s the best news you’ve heard all year: Not a single page disappoints....The only difficulty with Truly Madly Guilty? Putting it down.” —Miami Herald “Captivating, suspenseful...tantalizing.” —People Magazine Six responsible adults. Three cute kids. One small dog. It’s just a normal weekend. What could possibly go wrong? In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty turns her unique, razor-sharp eye towards three seemingly happy families. Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit busy, life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job, and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other. Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last-minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger-than-life personalities there will be a welcome respite. Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question: What if we hadn’t gone? In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm. Entertainment Weekly's “Best Beach Bet” A USA Today Hot Books for Summer Selection A Miami Herald Summer Reads Pick


Suspense

Suspense

Author: Peter Vorderer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-16

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1136687688

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This volume begins with the general assumption that suspense is a major criterion for both an audience's selection and evaluation of entertaining media offerings. This assumption is supported not only by the popularity of suspenseful narratives, but also by the reasons users give for their actual choice of media contents. Despite this, there is no satisfying theory to describe and explain what suspense actually is, how exactly it is caused by films or books, and what kind of effect it has on audiences. This book's main objective is to provide that theory by bringing together scholars from different disciplines who are working on the issue. The editors' goal is to reflect the "state of the art" as much as it is to highlight and encourage further developments in this area. There are two ways of approaching the problem of describing and explaining suspense: an analysis of suspenseful texts or the reception process. Researchers who follow the more text-oriented approach identify the uncertainty of the narrative outcome, the threat or danger for the protagonist, the play with time delay, or other factors as important and necessary for the production of suspense. The more reception-oriented scholar focuses on the cognitive activities of audiences, readers' expectations, the curiosity of onlookers, their emotions, and their relationships with the protagonists. A correspondence between the two seems to be quite difficult, though necessary to determine. Both perspectives are important in order to describe and explain suspense. Thus, the editors utilize the thesis that suspense is an activity of the audience (reader, onlooker, etc.) that is related to specific features and characteristics of the text (books, films, etc.). Their question is: What kind of relation? The answer comes from finding out how, why, and which elements of the text cause effects that are experienced as suspense. Scholars from semiotics, literary criticism, cultural studies, and film theory assess the problem from a text-oriented point of view, dealing primarily with the how and which. Other scholars present the psychological perspective by focusing on the cognitive and emotional processes that underlie viewers' experience of suspense; that is, the reception theory tries to answer the question of why suspenseful texts may be experienced as they are.