How The Road hooks readers: Rooting for the underdog (video essay)
How author Cormac McCarthy creates vulnerable characters that engage our emotions in his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road. Also, how the literary theories of Greek philosopher Aristotle still apply today, and what the modern anti-hero gets right and wrong.
TRANSCRIPT on Medium: http://bit.ly/TheRoadEssay
UPDATES on Twitter: / hownovelstarts
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ADDITIONAL READING & VIEWING
The Road novel synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road
Cormac McCarthy biography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_...
The Road film http://bit.ly/2Frd25W
Cormac McCarthy speak to Oprah about The Road • Cormac McCarthy Interview on the Oprah Win...
Aristotle's treatise on dramatic storytelling http://bit.ly/2Fn8oqE
The overused trope of "fridging" to motivate characters to violent action https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
A comparison of the morality in Greek tragedy with the Christian morality in Hamlet https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy...
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ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
What’s the best way to start a story? What makes readers, agents, and publishers take a chance on our book? What holds their attention? There’s plenty of advice out there on how to write a first chapter, but so much of it is generic. So I went looking for concrete examples in great books. On HOW THE NOVEL STARTS, I explore the opening chapters of popular novels, and figure out what writers can learn from them for their own work.
SUPPORT THE CHANNEL on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/howthenovelstarts
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IMAGE ATTRIBUTIONS
“The School of Athens” by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
“The Blind Oedipus Commending His Children to the Gods” by Bénigne Gagneraux
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
“King Lear Act I Scene I” by Edwin Austin Abbey
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
Subscribe button - AlfredoCreates
https://www.alfredocreates.com/youtub...
Blueprint background - Ian Barnard
http://www.ianbarnard.co.uk/free-blue...
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MUSIC ATTRIBUTIONS
“Virtutes Instrumenti” by Kevin MacLeod
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kev...
“Global Warming” by Kai Engel
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai...
“Acoustic Meditation” by Jason Shaw
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jas...
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#writing
#novel
#underdog
#NaNoWriMo