Holmesglen TAFE: Industry Overview
Writing for Specific Fiction Markets - Week Nine Journal
Speaker: Arnold Zable
Arnold Zable has written Short Stories, Children’s Books, Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing. Arnold Zable’s ancestors were Polish Asylum seekers – Arnold gives them a voice eg. Aboriginals or current seekers of refuge in Australia.
Definition of Autopsy à Auto means self.
True Meaning à Autopsy à seeing with your own eyes.
Imagination à image and action.
Forced autonomies, seeing something to write a story – have to be able to see something to write a story.
Writing a Novel à describing a situation, event in time, or a period in someone’s life. What you draw upon, you imagine it or see it.
Novelist – must research
Point One (i) research – Definition means look again. Go back to suburb in Melbourne where you grew up and look at old buildings and trees and neighbourhoods and houses and shops.
Point Two (ii) Newspapers – look at old newspapers eg. Melbourne Cup à see fashion of people’s clothes. There is an art in reading newspapers and to recreate the scene of a previous Melbourne Cup from years ago.
Point Three (iii) Fiction vs. Non-Fiction – Must be able to bring the story to life. Try to see a recreation – say a current building which looks like an old building to recreate reality.
Point Four (iv) Listen to people and you will see why they are unique. Listen to how many times they have a certain rhythm in their speech. These things bring a person to life and in fact this is a signature refrain ie, the rhythm in their speech.
A story teller is a unique individual. Look at Evan’s family history and see how many times history has repeated itself.
U.S.A.à individual wealth – Capitalists – Common Wealth – wealth of all Americans share.
Look at floods and hurricane in New Orleans – look at destruction of Constantinople and Ancient Rome.
Look at Paris, France and French Revolution, or Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia with the Tsars – led to Bolshevik Revolution and an end to the Romanov Dynasty. Consider Class Society in History.
Political Power – doing an autopsy – seeing a story with Evan’s own eyes.
President G. W. Bush avoided the draft in Vietnam War when he was young. At present George W. Bush forced Americans to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is all individual wealth in conflict with Common wealth.
Vietnam War 1960s. ½ a million American soldiers and ten thousand Australian Soldiers fought.
God bless this, God bless that – God bless America.
“What does all this mean?
American soldiers took drugs and went to brothels during Vietnam War.
Mirror à you stay true to your story. But another story comes up which is exactly the same – Your story will be the same as another situation.
“Great Paradox here”
Be true to the story
Art of story telling is that you give a listing of events.
- What can we do?
- He was a fine young gentleman.
- Where can we take this?
- Where will this death of good people end?
NB: Present and Past Greeks say this!
This goes back to Ancient Greek Plays – Look at Chorus in Ancient Greek plays as it was the conscience of the characters.
Second type of storyteller is Evan’s great grandmother who died in 1970 age ninety-six. She knew gossip, fought over land, never left the village, was isolated up in the mountains and was therefore a resident tiller of the soil.
In Australia – Aborigines – Temporal story tellers – bring back the old law of the land.
Difference between Fiction and Non-Fiction. What does Fiction actually mean?
Definition of Fiction – Fiction means to shape or make a story.
Conventions and obligations of a writer.
Conducting an autopsy – look at detention centres in Australia – people committing suicide – Most people in Australia do not see this but some seven year olds in Australia’s detention centres witness suicide by adult detainees.
New Orleans – at present it is all surreal – seeing dead people floating on the water. Seeing people screaming and crying on television.
People’s lives completely destroyed in what was once one of the greatest cities in the world ie, New Orleans.
Economic Migrants = Modern Day Refugees.
Participant Member – when Evan goes in person to a party and has some drinks and meets the people in person and hears the situation first hand without a tape recorder. This is Evan’s (the storyteller’s) Curse!!!
Evan hears the stories from the old folk and what he hears and experiences can be written as both a Fiction and Non-Fiction Book in his own words. It can be a Mirror image as true facts or fantasy either way. Fiction can stop Evan from getting sued and through this Evan can help his readers go through a bigger journey with him. When Evan writes a Non-Fiction book he has a contract between himself and the reader as all the facts must be true.