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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Speaking The Unspoken: Reconsidering The Craft Of Subtext In Fiction Through Nafissa Thompson-Spires’S Use Of Palimptext In “Heads Of The Colored People”, Karen Lee Boren
Speaking The Unspoken: Reconsidering The Craft Of Subtext In Fiction Through Nafissa Thompson-Spires’S Use Of Palimptext In “Heads Of The Colored People”, Karen Lee Boren
Journal of Creative Writing Studies
This essay suggests new craft techniques in fiction are emerging, which act as a palimptext, a writing, erasure, and overwriting of subtext, establishing new relationships between writer and reader. Traditional uses of subtext rely on an unspoken relationship between writers and readers wherein writers “hide” thematic meaning in subtextual layers of fiction and readers “dig” for these deeper meanings. However, this essay shows reading practices have changed from deep reading to skimming and information-seeking practices. Further, subtext’s need to give the unseen and unspoken a limited and veiled presence in a text has shifted. Current unspoken assumptions about the …
Bi Design: Strategies For Fiction, Audrey T. Heffers
Bi Design: Strategies For Fiction, Audrey T. Heffers
Journal of Creative Writing Studies
How can bisexuality be represented in fiction in a way that is realistic and nuanced? This article presents five strategies of representing bisexuality in fiction, listed here as Implying, Demonstrating, Describing, Using Explicit Labels, and Having Conversations. These practical approaches highlight craft techniques that writers can implement in their own work. By articulating some of the ways in which bisexuality is already written in fiction, these strategies provide tools for writers to write bisexuality in ways that work against common stereotypes. These strategies are presented through an interdisciplinary lens, primarily relying upon Creative Writing Studies, …