The Write Focus

3:21 / Research / Mixed Miscellany A

MixMisc A / Research / 3:21 / E110

Research: a Ho-Hum topic? Not quite.

Research is necessary in all realms of writing.

Whether discovering the details that given veritas to our fiction, the details that we shouldn’t get wrong in commemorative poems, or just adding specific and elaborating details to our nonfiction, HUMDRUM RESEARCH is totally necessary.

The challenge comes in determining how many research details to use.

• 1:11 Check-In
• 2:50 Opening
• 3:27 Challenges
• 3:49 Fiction and Research
• 4:31 Light Hand
• 5:17 Active Use of Research
• 5:52 Amount of Research to use
• 7:26 Poetry and Research
• 9:11 3 Chief Elements when presenting Occasional Poems
• 9:16 4 Requirements of Song
• 10:06 Public Ceremonies
• 10:35 Writing for Independence Day
• 12:50 Checklist for any poem / 10 To-Do’s
• 13:46 Walt Whitman
• 17:45 R. Waldo Emerson
• 20:40 Nonfiction and Research
• 21:40 Next Week
• 21:54 Inspiration / Ezra Pound

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is A Mixed Miscellany: Fiction / Poetry / Nonfiction / Interviews with Writers.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:20 /Sequences / Enhancement series

We're going from A to Z this week, as we discuss Sequences, the last of the Enhancement series.

Climbing higher and higher = foothills, ridges, mountains.

Getting worse and worse = aged, ancient, decrepit.

Listen up to discover ways to sequence, progress / regress, ascend / descend, and create clever jumps in meaning.

• 1:10 opening
• 2:45 deliberate ordering: ranking, progressions, expansions 
• 8:08 anticlimax
• 9:25 auxesis
• 12:14 zeugma
• 15:06 parallelism 
• 17:26 isocolon
• 18:50 elliptical constructions
• 22:06 closing / next week
• 22:25 inspiration / Annie Dillard

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:19 / Opposites part 2 / Enhancements series

“I always lie.” There’s a conundrum for you. If we tell people that we’re lying—are we lying or telling the truth? Yes? No? Difficult to tell, isn’t it?

The opposites in this week’s episode offers 3 types that can quickly entangle us. If you’ve ever been mixed up about paradox, irony, or satire, this episode can help.

LINK to "Counting Stars" OneRepublic - Counting Stars Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

• 1:08 opening
• 2:09 Paradox with explanation and examples
• 5:31 paradox that fills “Counting Stars”
• 10:13 Irony with explanation and examples
• 12:13 Frost and Dickens
• 14:19 3 Forms of Irony
• 16:05 Cosmic Irony
• 17:13 Satire with explanation and examples (including lampoon and farce)
• 19:17 Geoffrey Chaucer and Jane Austen
• 21:52 the American master Mark Twain with modern examples
• 25:03 Next Week
• 25:18 Inspiration / Roy Blount Jr.

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:18 / Opposites part 1 / Enhancement series

Opposites / Dichotomies are the foundation for all ideas. The positive / negative synergy develops concepts for finance and commerce, business and manufacturing, science and tech, fiction and nonfiction, art static and art dramatic.

The world also has its triads and quarternaries ~ past / present / future and earth / air / water / fire.

We have many more dichotomies than triads and quarternaries and even symbiotic dualities (yin / yang). When the opposition is presented “for effect”, then we have an Enhancement.

• 1:00 Opening = opposites / dichotomies / juxtaposition
• 2:12 Antithesis = explanation and examples
• 4:46 Robert Southey’s “Winter”
• 6:10 Oxymoron = explanation and examples
• 6:42 In Romeo and Juliet
• 8:13 in Hamlet
• 9:06 “Lesson of the Moth” by Don Marquis
• 13:57 Starting in Mid-May
• 14:12 Next Week
• 14:40 Inspiration / Somerset Maugham

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

 

3:17 / Repetition pt. 2 / Enhancements series

Repetition. We focused on simple repetition in the previous episode, from the riding, riding, riding of “The Highwayman” up to the old inn door to the clever use of incremental repetition, with “I’ve looked at cloud … and love … and life” in Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, and to alliteration of “streaming rain, blinding sleet, stoned by hail, freezes the frost and fall the snow” from an Old English poem.

This time we look at the intricate types of repetition, to and fro, fast and slow, front and back, complicated but powerful. It’s Repetition, part 2.

• 0:58 Opening
• 1:07 Antistrophe
• 3:18 Epanalepsis
• 4:30 Amplification
• 5:23 Anadisplosis
• 6:46 Polysyndeton
• 7:53 Asyndeton
• 9:51 Anaphora
• 13:35 Epistrophe
• 17:20 Nest Week
• 17:30 Inspiration / John Hersey

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:16 / Repetition pt. 1 / Enhancements series

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”

Why are we quoting the famous Macbeth speech by Shakespeare? It has two separate types of repetition. The 1^st type is simple repetition with two instances. The 2^nd type is a repetition of opening sounds.

In this episode we’re also going to talk about a third clever type of repetition.

Three types of repetition. Did you know repeating words is a proliferate writing technique? Like Guppies, words clone each other. Join our presentation of three simple ways to capture reader interest and curiosity.

• 1:32 Opening
• 2:56 Repetition has impact
• 3:12 repetition examples
• 4:03 George Gordon, Lord Byron: “We’ll Go no more A-Roving”
• 5:18 Incremental Repetition
• 5:32 Examples, including the “Lord Randall” ballad and William Stafford’s “Fifteen”
• 9:05 Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”
• 14:01 polysyndeton and anaphora
• 15:23 Alliteration
• 16:38 French Rhyme vs. English Rhyme
• 17:28 Old English poems
• 18:40 alliteration examples
• 20:45 Wilfred Owens’ “From my Diary, July 1914”
• 22:00 Next Week
• 22:10 Inspiration / R. Waldo Emerson

Special Links

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Judy Collins sings BSN with Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops as accompaniment

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:15 / Inversions / Enhancements J

“Always in motion is the future.”

Do you recognize that quotation? You may be able to because the words are out of natural order.

It’s Yoda!

No, we’re not going to talk about Yoda and the Star Wars franchise or laser swords.

Our focus for this episode is Words Out of Natural Order. That happens more often than we writers realize.

Inversion, switching up the natural order of words, is more than Yoda and a Zen-like character device that became a gimmick.

It’s recognizable, though, isn’t it?

How can we use Inversion to create our own writing—without becoming a gimmick? This episode of The Write Focus can help.

• 1:18 Inversion: Simple Device or Gimmick?
• 1:53 William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”
• 3:32 Subject Out of Position / 4 Subject Inversions
• 9:22 Yoda Charm / Subtle Inversion (a/k/a Anastrophe)
• 10:28 Emily Dickinson / Henley, again
• 16:08 Closing / Next Week
• 16:16 Inspiration / C. Day Lewis

For CHIASTIC STRUCTURE, which is too involved to hear (You have to SEE it), visit this link and look for the Chiastic Structure of the Iliad books.

• Homer and the heroic tradition. (1958 edition) | Open Library

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:14 / Allegory part 2 / Enhancements I

Mystical wanderer. Dark desert highway. A ragged prince who turns into a toad. The beast of fame that cannot be killed.

Recognize these images? Yep, it’s Carole King’s “Tapestry”, a riddling allegory that questions more than it answers, and “Hotel California” by the Eagers, another allegory of Fame and the goddess Fortuna.

“Hotel California” has a classical music connection to Carl Orff’s “O, Fortuna.” Now that’s a surprise.

These chart-topping songs are the focus for Allegories, part 2. Come along as we explore the songs and their allegories and discover how to craft an allegory in our own writing.

• Carole King’s “Tapestry”
• Carl Orff’s “O, Fortuna”
• The Eagles’ “Hotel California”
• Next Week
• Inspiration / James Baldwin

Special Links

Carole King performing "Tapestry" with images Carole King ~ Tapestry - Bing video

Carole King - Tapestry Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Eagles - Hotel California Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Eagles live performance of "Hotel California" The Eagles - Hotel California Live 1976.. - Bing video

Lyrics to O Fortuna | Latin and English (had2know.org)

Andre Rieu conducting a performance of "O Fortuna" André Rieu - O Fortuna (Carmina Burana - Carl Orff) - Bing video

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:14 / Allegory part 2 / Enhancements I

Mystical wanderer. Dark desert highway. A ragged prince who turns into a toad. The beast of fame that cannot be killed.

Recognize these images? Yep, it’s Carole King’s “Tapestry”, a riddling allegory that questions more than it answers, and “Hotel California” by the Eagers, another allegory of Fame and the goddess Fortuna.

“Hotel California” has a classical music connection to Carl Orff’s “O, Fortuna.” Now that’s a surprise.

These chart-topping songs are the focus for Allegories, part 2. Come along as we explore the songs and their allegories and discover how to craft an allegory in our own writing.

• 1:23 Check-In
• 2:10 Carole King’s “Tapestry”
• 10:04 Carl Orff’s “O, Fortuna”
• 11:00 The Eagles’ “Hotel California”
• 18:23 Next Week
• 18:52 Inspiration / James Baldwin

Special Links

Carole King performing "Tapestry" with images Carole King ~ Tapestry - Bing video

Carole King - Tapestry Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Eagles - Hotel California Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

Eagles live performance of "Hotel California" The Eagles - Hotel California Live 1976.. - Bing video

Lyrics to O Fortuna | Latin and English (had2know.org)

Andre Rieu conducting a performance of "O Fortuna" André Rieu - O Fortuna (Carmina Burana - Carl Orff) - Bing video

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

3:13 / Allegory part 1 / Enhancements H

Ever heard a story, and just know, know that something extra is also part of the story? Not hidden bits and pieces but a whole narrative?

A top story is running along, but another story runs underneath the surface, occasionally poking up the periscope for a look around before re-submerging so it can run silent, run deep? (Yep, that’s an allusion to the famous submarine movie.)

That submerged story, it’s an allegory, and the allegory occurs more often than we would imagine.

How do we craft our allegories? This episode can help.

• 1:18 Allegory
• 3:01 Parables as Allegories
• 6:23 George Orwell’s Animal Farm
• 7:21 Jack London’s Call of the Wild
• 10:04 Next Week
• 10:31 Inspiration / Francois Mauriac

For the five steps, please visit my YouTube channel. The five steps will be in this episode, about 3 minutes in.

YouTube direct link to the Enhancements playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7Iyaw3xDbgPAQrc1p8CG_Z7

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Enhancements.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com  .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)