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The importance of agony in storytelling

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 23 Sep 2013, 14:56

Fig. 1. Betthany Hughes - The ideas that make us. BBC Radio 4.

The volume of 'educational' content I gather from BBC Radio 4 is remarkable - there is so much of it. Much of it recalled here over the last three years.

Here is a 15 minutes piece that might make you the fiction writer you have always wanted to be.

She derives the word from ancient Greek and its use in Himer's Illiad then interviews an eloquent Aussie Cricket commentator during the Ashes and the author Kate Mosse at her publisher's. 

Agony helps us to empathise with another's struggle.

'Struggle, in the form of philosophy of ideas, is at the heart of a good novel', says Kate Mosse, 'otherwise there is no story to tell'. 

Jeopardy and contest is central to what makes us human. 

And when it comes to the effort of writing:

'Try again, fail again, never mind, fail better', said Sam Beckett.

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Design Museum

Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Sep 2011, 09:45
How passed thinking informs the present when it comes to learning.

"It's a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger that memory becomes." Nabakov.

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover for ourselves than by those given to us by others'. Lec

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. Lec

'The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently'. Nietzsche

'Analogy is the only language understood by the subconscious mind'. Jung

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." Jung

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. " Jung

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