Strategies/Techniques
• we saw that all his clothes were in ruin, that the knot on
his scarf was tight and grimy; that he was a tramp. Already told us that he was a tramp in the last paragraph, but the
repetition of the word and the realization is effective here after the listing
of the attributes of a tramp.
• They looked a good deal less unhappy with the ship than
they said they were. Good way to explain
putting on airs. Can be used to describe anyone who is feigning something. He
looked less/more _______ than he said they was.
• Many people, both here and in India, will feel that I have
done well. But. Sentence fragment at the
end of the paragraph helps to heighten the uncertainty we feel as readers and
create more possibility in our imaginations.
• I saw myself having to return to my village in the hills,
to my wife and children there, not just for a holiday but for good. One of the only mentions of wife and
children, and there is no shame or guilt associated with leaving them behind.
Saying serious things in passing, as if they were nothing, creates a sinister,
uneasy, morally intriguing atmosphere.
• With Priya the world was servile. With Custis, the world was… The world was less _____ when Custis
accompanied me.
• This is how I think of him in Montreal, furthering his
studies, and happy among the maple leaves. General/abstract
action paired with a specific sensory detail or element of landscape.
Juxtaposition of general/specific and coincidence of personal/geographic make
for a full, beautiful sentence.
• I feel that if I stay in that room I would hit him. And
yet I went to his room with love and shame. Confound the character’s expectations of themselves. Circumstances of
life are constantly making us change our minds, suddenly and in ways we cannot
forsee.
• As though he was at once punishing and forgiving all who
misunderstood him. Paradox opens up the
sentence in a charming, ambiguous way. Use opposite actions together.
• In another country this would not have been noticeable;
here it was unusual. Good way to build a
sense of place. Make an action stand out there, that would not stand out
somewhere else. What seems strange only in this landscape?
• Bobby asked, in the brisk, friendly, simple voice he used
with country Africans. Says a lot about
a character to give him a special voice that he only uses with someone, or with
a particular group of people. Can reveal prejudices, proclivities,
insecurities, ulterior motives
• It is a smell of rotting vegetation and Africans. One is
very much like the other. What two
things that are very different does a character think are similar. Interesting
way to develop character, what strange associations does she make?
• Somehow in the desert he had learned boredom. In (place) he learned (a feeling, not
usually thought of as learned). The (place) taught him (feeling we don’t think
of as needing to be taught). Match verbs with unexpected objects.
Loved Phrases and Ideas
• he had developed this way of swiftly explaining himself to
himself… He hadn’t wanted company; he wanted only the camouflage and protection
of company. This is how so many people
think and speak.
• The American schoolchildren lay in their own promiscuous
seasick heap. This reminds me of
advertisements for 90s sitcoms. All the “Friends” lounging on top of one
another.
• each had taken the measure of the other. And they were
both tired.
• the sort of distaste we feel when we are faced with
something that should be kin but turns out not to be, turns out to be degraded,
like a deformed man, or like a leper, who from a distance looks whole. People/beings that look completely unlike
us are less unsettling than people/beings who look very similar to us but still
somehow, not right. It just takes the smallest details to create the creepiest
sensations. Think Baudelaire’s essay on dolls.
• sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but
the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over. Cetain characters/people will have different default emotions that seem
to last, and everything other emotion is just a brief episode for them. People
obsessed with achieving happiness can never be happy, because it only exists in
moments and cannot be achieved.
• How can a man like yourself have enemies? There would be
not profit in it. I have enemies. It is part of your happiness and part of the
equity of the world that you cannot have enemies.
• All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I
have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body
for a certain number of years. Then it will be over. The agony that comes with freedom. Freedom is a set of
responsibilities/chores that we must fulfill in order to survive. Is there such
a thing as true freedom? Not in the idealized sense. We have to sell our labor,
or labor for ourselves, in order to survive.
• the love and the danger I carry all my life burst.
• It would be much more bearable if they was ugly. But they
are not ugly, and I feel that their scorn is right. The power exerted by beauty. The ease with which we discount the
opinions/judgment of ugly people. And it works vice versa too. The people whose
judgments we discount and do not respect become uglier to us, and the people we
trust become more beautiful.
• He is like a man who break his back in truth. Beautiful!
• If a man could do that, if a man could just leave a life
that spoil… How quich a big thing like that settle, how quick a man spoil his
life.
• Africa here was décor.
• “That’s been said before.” I love that as a retort to shut someone down. It is so cold and blasé.
Fits a pretentious character, or someone who is shaming a pretentious
character.
New Words and Words To Use
• lassitude
• enmity
• intrigue (as a verb) the president intrigued with the
representatives of white governments
Ideas for my story
• I felt I had caught the person in an interval between his
television duties. I used to think of
myself as being on TV all the time when I was a child (Truman Show style, but
before the movie came out!) Probably a common phenomenon for children who grow
up surrounded by TV. Heightened by reality TV and enacted in when we curate our
virtual presences through social media.
• I can’t start again. I can’t go back to the cigarette
factory and those insulting illiterate girls and that long ride in the cold
morning to the factory. All of these
characters move into a new world/class/social group/mental state that prevents
them from resuming their old lives. This feeling is essential for making any
narrative resonate, the feeling that some type of line has been crossed and
there’s no going back. Doesn’t have to be written this explicitly, but the
sentiment has to pervade the consciousness of the protagonist and/or the
reader.
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