About Lit Bits
A “Lit Bit” is a writing tip or mini craft lesson (250-500 words) you share with our newsletter and blog readers to help promote your class by showcasing you. Lit Bits are optional, but help a lot in getting registrations for your class.
Lit Bits are often craft tips drawn from your upcoming class, but can take other forms, such as a craft essay you’ve already written, say, or an excerpt from your own writing with a link to the full piece.
Think soft sell rather than direct pitch. It’s best not to mention the class at all; we’ll provide class info and a registration link below your piece.
If you choose to write one, thanks! We have two samples below.
Listening to the Line
by Julie Funderburk
The line is clearly a chief feature of poetry, visually distinguishing it from prose. Folks who don’t read a lot of poetry are sometimes put off by the line, especially the free verse line, because they don’t understand why lines end where they do. They want a rationale, to know what each one means.
Handled well, free verse is just like formal verse: the music is in the lines, in the interplay between line and sentence. Free verse writers might not have rules and patterns to show where the lines must end, but that does not make the lines arbitrary. Anyway, adherence to pattern alone doesn’t make for a successful line.
Everybody zeroes in on line breaks, how lines end and begin, through enjambment and end-stopped lines and the other ways we have of describing that great collision between white space and syntax. What makes it both exciting and challenging is that there are no standard descriptions for the effect created by a certain type of line. Short lines don’t always sound the same way. Neither do long ones. This is because the lines don’t function in isolation from the other elements of the poem (voice, tone, syntax, sound repetitions and other sonic qualities).
Looking at models to see how the lines work in the context of the whole poem, and to study this in poem after poem, gives insight into the possibilities. We can describe with confidence how the lines work in a particular poem and why. And with the experience of close reading behind us, we can experiment when drafting, trying out difference effects until what’s on the page sounds like what’s in our heads, looking for clarity, energy, and the right pacing. When we study models, that’s where the thinking comes in. We must think about the line. Then, when drafting, the goal is to listen. This may be why some people chalk it up to instinct, but we have to think our way through as readers before we can hear our way as poets.
Interiority
by Dustin M. Hoffman
Occasionally, I get jealous of other artistic mediums. All we have to tell our stories are these words on the page, these black ink on a white page. This can seem like a disadvantage when looking at the explosive, varied forms of expression the other mediums wield. Sadly, we just won’t be able to pull off some content as well as other mediums. Paintings will always be more vivid and colorful than our best descriptions. Songs will always be more musical than our most lyrical lines. Movies, with their special effects and booming soundtracks, will create more intense fight scenes and car crashes and romantic stares with movie screens picturing eyeballs as big as boulders. So, then, what do we do best?
I’ll always argue that interiority is our advantage over all other mediums. No other art can tunnel inside the mind as naturally as written story. No other medium can unwrap psychological complexity as fully. Where voiceover is corny in a movie, it’s organic and powerful in literature.
The short story especially guides effective interiority writing with its emphasis on compression. We don’t have space to waste when conciseness is key. But even if we’re aiming to imply a large portion of the psychological complexity through a minimalist Hemingway style, there’s still plenty of room and need to explore the mind. We certainly don’t want to rely solely on shorthand emotional abstractions: “she was depressed/elated/angered/etc.” And we don’t want to use interiority to redundantly explain what a vivid character action effectively shows.
Instead, we should lean into using interiority to enhance crucial narrative elements like tension. Character motivation grants stakes to story, for example, and is most richly explored in the mind. Motivation is emphasized by the level of desire, another internalized quality. Tension is further emphasized by a character’s anxiety—how much they worry about and over what they most want. Of course, this is just the thrilling start to all interiority can offer us on the page. Interiority is one of our most potent tools, and through its effective use, we can pull off a story those other mediums can only envy.