I think one of the oddities of Twitter Style is that it blurs the lines between "inner thoughts" and "outward speech". Namely, both involve impulsively producing half-formed thoughts that are not necessarily directed at anyone or anything in particular. If you tweet a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if you start naturally molding your thoughts to look a bit more like tweets, so as to improve the efficiency of the thinking-to-tweeting pipeline.
All that is to say, if you have an author who is Funny on Twitter writing a character who is terminally online, it may be impossible to say where the Free Indirect Style begins or ends.
Yes I read and enjoyed that piece! I have to say though I'm enjoy reading books 100+ years old, because it is much easier to read them without worrying about What It Means for Society Today, which seems like the most stressful and least fun part of being "literary".
I've been reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell and wondering about the 19th-century-ish writing device of some omniscient narrator interjecting with asides and or even moving the story one... Now I know it's called Free Indirect Style. Thank you.
As you listed all those authors who have written adultery novels I was kind of surprised. I have read MANY of them but I don’t really consider myself an adultery connoisseur. (At least two of them are in my top 10 or so favorite books, even!) I have never committed adultery and am very disapproving of it but I do wonder what it is about adultery that makes for such good storytelling, and thoughtful.
Thanks to my MA dissertation I have an accidental minor specialism in adultery fiction. I think it’s got a sweet spot of conventional life and emotional drama. It’s a credible means of writing about huge moral and psychological problems in perfectly dull lives. It gives writers many opportunities to work with narrative and plot as timelines and deceit are so important. And it results in shocking behaviour.
I just finished this book last night and liked it very much. I liked the style you pointed out, of reading Cora's free indirect first and then reading immediately after the narrator's commentary on those thoughts, almost like "fan fiction."
I think one of the oddities of Twitter Style is that it blurs the lines between "inner thoughts" and "outward speech". Namely, both involve impulsively producing half-formed thoughts that are not necessarily directed at anyone or anything in particular. If you tweet a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if you start naturally molding your thoughts to look a bit more like tweets, so as to improve the efficiency of the thinking-to-tweeting pipeline.
All that is to say, if you have an author who is Funny on Twitter writing a character who is terminally online, it may be impossible to say where the Free Indirect Style begins or ends.
Yes this is exactly what I think, although in this case the character is *not* very online, which is part of what makes it interesting. You may find this interesting https://www.commonreader.co.uk/p/the-modern-discourse-novel?utm_source=publication-search
Yes I read and enjoyed that piece! I have to say though I'm enjoy reading books 100+ years old, because it is much easier to read them without worrying about What It Means for Society Today, which seems like the most stressful and least fun part of being "literary".
Depends what you read but yes that sort of anxiety is part of what makes literary culture so off putting t many people
I've been reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell and wondering about the 19th-century-ish writing device of some omniscient narrator interjecting with asides and or even moving the story one... Now I know it's called Free Indirect Style. Thank you.
Her first book Stay Up With Hugo Best was also breezy and funny.
For me, over time, funny has become table stakes for fiction. Any style (dry, mordant, silly) is fine as long as I laugh.
As you listed all those authors who have written adultery novels I was kind of surprised. I have read MANY of them but I don’t really consider myself an adultery connoisseur. (At least two of them are in my top 10 or so favorite books, even!) I have never committed adultery and am very disapproving of it but I do wonder what it is about adultery that makes for such good storytelling, and thoughtful.
Thanks to my MA dissertation I have an accidental minor specialism in adultery fiction. I think it’s got a sweet spot of conventional life and emotional drama. It’s a credible means of writing about huge moral and psychological problems in perfectly dull lives. It gives writers many opportunities to work with narrative and plot as timelines and deceit are so important. And it results in shocking behaviour.
Yes, ok! This is exactly what I was wondering about but couldn’t articulate in my current brain fog state. Haha
It is also a good means of writing about consciousness but with characters
I just finished this book last night and liked it very much. I liked the style you pointed out, of reading Cora's free indirect first and then reading immediately after the narrator's commentary on those thoughts, almost like "fan fiction."
I thought it was very well done.
I wondered whether the Hemingway stuff was a veiled commentary on the last Rooney novel
I did not read the last Rooney. Was there a character with a Jake Barnes disability? I took it as a dig at Eliot’s sexual performance issues.
It's funny that in a world that seems to revolt at humour, we as writers have to hide behind humour to make our point 'lol'