Writing Fiction

   I've recently learned that writing fiction isn't as simple as it may seem. While writing fiction, you have to have a lot of things in mind. You have to consider imagery, details, and you have to try to evoke certain feelings and emotions from your readers. When you write fiction, you want your audience to feel what you are trying to get them to feel. When people are reading and they aren't interested, they often don't feel emotion. A good piece of fiction makes you feel emotion.
   While discussing the "Writing Fiction" packet in class, my group and I came to the conclusion that a good fiction writer must truly evoke and make you feel several different types of emotions all in one story. We also discovered that fiction writers need to use active voice and they must show significant details.
   While reading the story "Polaroids", we discovered that writing some fiction is is watching a Polaroid develop. It just says how you can ficus your attention on a certain outcome but it doesn't mean that that goal is going to be attainable. This packet helped me see writing fiction in a different light and it makes me realize that it isn't as simple as it seems.

Fiction Packet

    The story that touched me most in the packet was the one on the first page titled "Survivors". To me, it was the easiest to relate to and understand. The story was about two homo-sexuals lovers who both were dying of HIV/AIDS. I came to such a conclusion because they talked about T Cells and that's mostly related to the disease. The lover was talking about how he didn't want to die first because he didn't want to have to take care his lovers bird and hear from his lovers family. He just felt that it would be way simpler if he died first. This story was very sad, I feel like it played at our emotions.
    This story also talked about how the lovers family would blame him for the death of his lover and how they would disgrace his home. Towards the end of the story, the narrator talks about freeing the bird, I think that he feels as if it would help him get rid of the the pain quicker, just in case he doesn't die first. I feel as if the author of this story has had experience with this situation, or has seen it happen in some type of way or another.
    When they mentioned the Parrot in this story, that alone provoked a lot of emotions. The first thing I thought was "Why is this bird so important?". Then I thought about the fact that parrots are colorful and one of the symbols for gay pride is the colors of the rainbow. This may or may not have had anything to do with it but it's  just something that I thought of. The parrot was a small symbol in this story that carried a lot more weight than it may appear.

This week we talked a lot about poems in the book "City Eclogue". One poem that stood out to me was the poem on page 113 titled The"State as Body" Aspect of Eunuch Rule. The first thing that I noticed about this poem was that it talked about death very openly. A lot of the words used like kill,bodily, scalped, and sex provoke some very vivid imagery. It makes me think of a very turbulent crime scene. All in all, I was impressed by the intensity of this poem.