Eunhae Han > Recent Status Updates

Imagine a character listing:

everyone they've slept with
everything their mother left them
every place they've lived
every reason they hate someone
everything they need to accomplish before dying

Instead, fiction has a moral dimension because it asks:

How should people treat one another?
What do our choices cost?
What responsibilities do we have?
How do people deceive themselves?
What happens when desire conflicts with responsibility?
What does a person owe to a community?

The story doesn't necessarily answer these questions.

It stages the

good detail reveals something:
setting character mood history social class relationship conflict symbolism

desire → conflict → choice → consequence

The writer shouldn't merely ask:
What happens next?

The writer should ask:
What would this person actually do?
And then:
Why?

ways to play around your lived experience to turn it into fiction
- combining several people into one character
- changing chronology
- inventing events
- altering settings
- changing points of view
- exaggerating certain characteristics
- eliminating irrelevant details

make a decisions about: selection structure sequence perspective characterization language pacing mission emphasis

areas of growth: unnecessary exposition weak characterization artificial dialogue structural problems clichés sentimentality confusing point of view ineffective endings overwritten prose

Imagination Poetry allows us to envision futures beyond the present.
Tenderness Poetry helps preserve emotional openness in difficult circumstances.
Resistance Poetry can keep us from becoming numb, isolated, or dehumanized.

Nature Poetry reconnects humans with the living world.
Community Poems transform individual experiences into shared ones.
Public art Poetry belongs in parks, libraries, streets, schools, and etc
Accessibility You don't need specialized literary knowledge to enter poetry.

Attention Poetry teaches us to actually notice the world.
Loneliness Reading connects us with other minds across time.
Grief Poetry gives shape and language to suffering.
Language Poetry can resist language that has become distorted or manipulative.

But the poet can:

pay attention
remember
witness
imagine
connect
mourn
celebrate
speak
listen
preserve stories
challenge silence

poetic consciousness.

The poet pays attention to:

language
memory
metaphor
history
ordinary objects
human relationships
political events
cultural contradictions

what language belongs to you
what traditions you inherit
how family shapes your imagination
how race and ethnicity affect your literary identity
what poetry can do politically
how private experience becomes public art
how a poet participates in community
how history enters the imagination

A character's inability to act can reveal:

political conditions
social restrictions
trauma
power structures
cultural expectations

Therefore, don't automatically "fix" an inactive protagonist.

A protagonist can be interesting even when they aren't constantly making things happen.

Some characters:

observe
endure
resist internally
respond to circumstances
refuse action
survive
remain trapped
change their understanding rather than their circumstances

when writing about violence

whose suffering is being depicted
who is watching
what the reader is expected to feel
whether violence advances the story
whether victims retain humanity
whether historical violence is being simplified

Don't assume that greater graphic detail automatically creates greater emotional power.

Language contains:

cultural history
rhythm
worldview
humor
social relationships
cultural assumptions

not everything needs to be translated, leave them uncomfortable

You can allow:

untranslated words
unusual syntax
culturally specific references
linguistic ambiguity
multilingual rhythms

characters as existing within families, communities, histories, cultures, and relationship

What does the character want?
What is stopping them?
How do they change?
Who is this person connected to?
What relationships define them?
What obligations do they carry?
What community do they belong to?
What histories live inside them?

Don't allow the presumed expectations surrounding your biography to dictate your fiction.

You can write:

outside your culture
against stereotypes
about ordinary life
about absurdity
about fantasy
about people unlike yourself
about subjects that have nothing to do with your ethnicity

Your identity is part of your imaginative resources, not a prison.

BIPOC authors in a white denominate space to expand craft. often given feedback like

lacking conflict
being too culturally specific
not explaining unfamiliar customs
having too many characters
using a narrative structure unfamiliar to Western readers
being insufficiently dramatic
being "confusing"

Poetry has very little space - CONCISE IT!

poets often want words that perform multiple functions.

imperfect rhyme works cause perfect rhyme can feel too final.

Off rhyme leaves some tension unresolved, the slight mismatch can make the reader more aware of the sounds.

Rhyme creates relationships
Two words become associated because of sound even if they are completely unrelated, it is a fun way to build relationships between words

The stanza can therefore create:

pauses
divisions
transitions
contrasts
repetitions
changes in tone
changes in argument

can be like a temporary space or architectural rooms.

A poem can create:

suspense by delaying information,
emphasis by repetition,
surprise through disruption,
memory through recurrence,
closure through pattern completion.

after you establish the pattern

The poet can then:
fulfill the expectation,
delay it,
disrupt it,
accelerate it,
reverse it,
or suddenly abandon it.

That tension, importanta

poetry is designed for human perception. Its patterns work partly because our brains recognize repetition and anticipate what comes next. A rhyme can surprise us because we don't yet know what word will arrive.

expectation → anticipation → surprise → recognition

ways to end a chapter

suspense
a question
a revelation
an emotional shift
a decision
a new problem

But escalation shouldn't simply mean:

bigger explosion → bigger explosion → biggest explosion

The stakes can escalate emotionally, morally, psychologically, or relationally.

Escalation means increasing difficulty or consequence—not merely increasing spectacle.

Others should slow down for:

emotion
reflection
characterization
important information
Main idea:

Good pacing is controlled variation.