{"id":3728,"date":"2014-10-27T07:25:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T11:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3728"},"modified":"2015-01-03T07:27:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T12:27:29","slug":"writing-tips-from-the-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3728","title":{"rendered":"Writing Tips from The Count"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dracula's<\/a>

Castle where Vlad the Impaler (“Count Dracula”) was imprisoned (photo: the author)<\/p><\/div>\n

Inspired by Halloween\u2019s rapid approach, the editors at Writers Digest<\/em> have used the opening of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> as a way to demonstrate 10 key writing techniques<\/a>, as revealed in the book\u2019s annotated version<\/a>, with annotations by American horror author Mort Castle.<\/p>\n

Among Castle\u2019s observations are how tiny clues provide insight into the character of the book\u2019s narrator, Jonathan Harker, including his domesticated notes to himself about getting recipes for his fiancee back in Victorian England. He praises how masterfully Stoker moves Harker through time and space to get the story moving, rather than lingering on blow-by-blow details of his journey to Hungary and on to Transylvania: \u201cThe impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.\u201d Leaving the familiar, in other words, and crossing into the realms of the barely known.<\/p>\n

A little further on, Stoker describes the people of the Transylvania region, \u201cI read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool.\u201d Again, as Castle notes, he is setting the reader up for happenings that are beyond everyday knowledge. This must have been quite thrilling for people living in 1897 London.<\/p>\n

There was a real Dracula, of course, a 15th c. leader of Wallachia, south of Transylvania. Here\u2019s a well-regarded history<\/a> of his cruel and violent rule\u2014fighting those Turks, as well as his rivals\u2014written by two Boston College history professors. Don\u2019t read it unless you have a strong stomach. I couldn\u2019t finish it. If Londoners nearly 120 years ago knew even dimly of this real prince, their bones were shivering from the start of Stoker\u2019s tale!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspired by Halloween\u2019s rapid approach, the editors at Writers Digest have used the opening of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula as a way to demonstrate 10 key writing techniques, as revealed in the book\u2019s annotated version, with annotations by American horror author … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Writing Tips from The Count","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,104,29],"tags":[273,271,414],"class_list":["post-3728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-the-morgue","category-writing","tag-bram-stoker","tag-openings","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Y8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3729,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3728\/revisions\/3729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}