Great Fire Compendium

Strategies/Techniques

• Brian Talbot said, “I’d like to see places before I settle down.” The settling taken for granted. Down, down. Distant, poetic reflection on character’s dialogue, clearly in the protagonists POV without identifying it explicitly as his interior thought.

• Throughout the coming months of their acquaintance, Captain Dench never did look Major Leith in the eye. Leave present moment to offer future information that reveals an aspect of a minor character and his relationship to the protagonist. What does everyone else think about this strategy? Take you out of the present moment/ momentum of the story?

• the place itself, had it been de-Driscolled, was a paradise. But that, of course, applied to all the world. Apply the specific to the global in a short pithy afterthought.

• Leith had salvaged immediacy; had kept faith with the fugitive vow of every man in battle: If I get through this, the hours will be made to count. Put the character’s feelings in a broader socio-historical context. He felt the… of every person who…

• “If Westerners had contributed shades of expression to the human face, Peter wondered, were they to be praised or blamed? Was responsiveness in itself something to be proud of.” Makes the protagonist sympathetic when he considers whether he is a positive force or not (and whether his culture is a positive force or not). Not too self-congratulatory or self-loathing, keep the interior struggle up always.

• Look at page 81, the retelling of the Gigliola affair. Half the anecdote told in dialogue, the other half told in interior thought. Switching back and forth, when the speaker doesn’t want to reveal part of the story, part of he past, to the listener.

• He wondered what Tad’s age might be. 1 sentence paragraph. All that’s needed to express protagonist’s insecurity/jealousy/ worry.

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Loved Phrases and Ideas

• “Finality ran through the train, an exhalation.”

• “Peace forces us to invent our future selves.” Nice way to phrase a truism. ________ forces us to _________.

• “coaxing the bones together.”

• “But the pleasure would keep, and was best enjoyed alone.”

• “Since love, like influenza, leaves a huskiness.” The concrete effects of love on the body.

• “the three men standing in their silent geometry.”

• “Seeing these young people, I am thinking that a child can be born fastidious into cruelty and can hold to reason and a sense of justice. There is, thank God, no explaining this.” The mystery surrounding the source of moral urges, the impossibility of predicting how someone will turn out, the idea that it is a blessing that we will never be able to explain some things.

• “a poetic pair who live in literature and make free with it.” live in an abstraction/intangible.

• “I doubt there was logic, other than that shaped to the predestined act.”

• “who had no flair for attracting favours.”

• “ in the interest of coherence, an infinity of impressions have been sacrificed and, along with them, some experienced truth.” An ever present struggle in life. When constructing a narrative or communicating anything at all, we must squash some of the nuances and complexities, so we can never see a full, round version of truth, only a compressed, spark notes version.

• “his first engagement with lion grief and its transformations.”

• “After childhood, we become prepared for coldness. It’s generosity that disarms us.”

• “tinkering with the parental role, taking it up sporadically like a neglected hobby and allowing it to lapse.”

• “When we’re indecisive, yes, the wishes of others gain.” The powerful influence of other people’s desires and our own uncertainties in the course of our lives.

• “There is a kind of well-meaning that is doomed. It was this that Rita had a sense for, an aversion to.” The idea that someone an sense, that we implicitly know, when the best intentions are pernicious or doomed to failure. A sense of foreboding.

• “trying out manliness.”

• “They were deluded by the craving for action… In their thoughts, most men are conquerors.” (240)

• “Having had one go at setting the world right, I decline a second opportunity.”

New Words and Words To Use

augury

sundered

unguent

diffidence

affiance (betroth)

inanition (exhaustion)

avuncular

plait (braid or pleat)

plinth

slattern

crone

cadge

piquant

doyen

Ideas for my story

• Use Hazzard’s dialogue interior thought technique when David is describing Max to Custis, leaves out the things that bother him about Max, or things about Max that he know Custis will disapprove of (political views and perspective on humanity)

• Custis is involved in a project translating poetry by young Latin American revolutionary poet, look to Hazzard’s subtle treatment of age discrepancies before they are romantically involved, just the consciousness of having an attraction to a younger woman.

Dialogue language and techniques

• “ ‘I’m just giving facts,’ mistrustful of anything that might be called a story.” Go deeper into the rationale of a statement outside of the quotation marks, but inside the same sentence. Use sparingly to avoid too much explanation, but works beautifully here, when it is so concise, speaking to a core value of the character.

• “ ‘But then—he isn’t lucky.’ Unsuitability of saying this to that unlucky boy.” Sentence fragment after the quotation marks, expressing regret at having said something after it has already been said. Don’t need to say, “He regretted having said that.” Jump to the why.

• “ Rysom said, ‘The bugger takes opium.’” p. 68 Snippet of dialogue stands alone in it’s own paragraph as a small detail that helps paint the scene. Rysom is not in the scene, it is just something he has said previously about the man that adds to the description of his shop.

• “ ‘It was quite affecting.’ Revelations that need not be shared.” Very vague, almost meaningless dialogue, that shows the speaker is keeping something to himself.

• “I see you’ve recovered from that bad business.” Characters using euphemisms like “bad business’ to talk about things they don’t want to speak directly to.

• “ ‘Good of you to come’ —not meaning it, not meaning anything.” commentary on the words said, commentary on the tone/attitude of the speaker, in so few words, with beautiful repetition.