Thrice Told Tales
Three Mice Full of Writing Advice
-
- £1.99
-
- £1.99
Publisher Description
Three Blind Mice. Three Blind Mice. See how they run? No. See how they can make all sorts of useful literary elements colorful and easy to understand!
Can one nursery rhyme explain the secrets of the universe? Well, not exactly—but it can help you understand the difference between bildungsroman, epigram, and epistolary.
From the absurd to the wish-I’d-thought-of-that clever, writing professor Catherine Lewis blends Mother Goose with Edward Gorey and Queneau, and the result is learning a whole lot more about three not so helpless mice, and how to fine tune your own writing, bildungsroman and all.
If your writing is your air, this is your laughing gas.*
*That’s a metaphor, friends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lewis makes wonderfully clever use of the "Three Blind Mice" nursery rhyme to illustrate nearly 100 elements of writing and literature plot, dialogue, flashbacks, coincidence, and more. The concept of sentimentality is framed as a publisher's rejection letter, picking apart a mouse's mawkish manuscript; "Wow, that's sharp!" remarks another mouse, gingerly touching a kitchen knife on a page about foreshadowing. Lewis expands on each term in brief "Snip of the Tale" summaries and an extensive appendix. "It's not just the idea, but the author's way of putting it," she writes of style, following samples from the likes of Dickens Mouse and Hemingway Mouse ("Three mice. Woman with knife. No tails"). Swarte's clean-line b&w cartoons ramp up the energy and comedy. For writers of any age, it's a very funny and useful resource. Ages 12 up.
