Week 9 already (or probably Week 10 by the time I post this). Hooo boy. Good thing I work well to deadlines.
That said, this week I hit the 10.5k minimum required for the subject, and I’ve been working hard on both revising and getting towards the end. Getting a decent wordcount isn’t as much a challenge for me as getting the right words into it though, so this is very much the make-or-break period for me – getting the editing right.
What I’ve been focussing on is layering theme and foreshadowing. For both, I’m a firm believed that subtlety is key. No-one likes a preachy story, and when foreshadowing tells the story for you, it can make the rest a bit redundant. As a side note, I’m talking about the surprising-but-inevitable type of foreshadowing. Having a signpost or promise being less subtle is quite a different thing.
But anyway, onto the journal. Because I have an ending to write, as well as a draft exegesis (which I misread the assessment for, and now have about two and half weeks to get a 3-4k essay done. Draft only at least).
Journal – Week 9
This has been my ogre week – developing layers to flesh out the story and frame it in a way to put forward the message I want it to convey. There is a long, convoluted pitch that goes through some of the more detailed components of the theme, but essentially it comes down to discussing the interplay between how an individual sees themselves, how they way to be seen, and how society sees them. It’s about conflict of identity between society and self. But as a theme, I want it to be subtle enough that readers can make up their own mind between the importance of self-determination versus the needs and expectations a society places on an individual, in this case as a consequence of the change the individual has wrought in society. The back and forth of each impacting the other is really the crux of it, and that is what needs to be layered in for comparison. Using the suggestions by Alderson and Rosenfeld (2016), I’ve tried to make the dialogue a little more sparse and used it, along with combining foreshadowing and narrator voice, to take a three-pronged approach to conveying theme.
I’ve also used and developed poetry as an express method to introduce culture and tone at the start of each chapter, which has given me the structural crutch of chapter numbers – one for each deity (plus maybe a bonus to add to the climax). Poetry has both the benefit of drawing from previous subjects as well as being made more powerful by foreshadowing. To give a powerful, immersive start to each chapter enables maximum worldbuilding that subtly adds to the theme without using too many words.
References:
Alderson, M, & Rosenfeld, J, 2016, ‘Developing theme scene by scene’, Writers Digest , vol 96, no 2, viewed 16 May 2020, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/apps/doc/A439832456/AONE?u=cqu&sid=AONE&xid=36dc2c75. Accessed 17 May 2020.
Bugeja, M, 2000. ‘Foreshadowing empowers poems,’ Writer’s Digest, vol 80, no 12, pp.44–45.
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