Short Story Writing |
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Common terms and phrases
action Algernon Blackwood Aminadab Amontillado Andreson angle artistic asked atmosphere Aylmer beauty beginning birthmark boots bright boy Cask of Amontillado character cheek comes conflict Conrad Daniel Steele doll's house Donna door dramatic Edith Wharton Elsie emotional effect experience eyes face father feel fiction Fortunato genius George Georgiana Gessler girl give hair hand happened hero human husband idea interest James Stephens Joseph Conrad Katherine Mansfield Kelveys Kezia kitchen knew lamp lives looked lover Marignan Maupassant mind Moonlight mother mysterious narration nature never Nick nigger night personality plot reader Ruth Suckow scene seemed setting Sherwood Anderson short story situation Six Dollars smile Snow sort Stone Fold stood Story Writing struggle talk Tansy tell theme thing Thord thought tion told traits voice walked wife window woman words young
Popular passages
Page 12 - During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
Page 12 - If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design.
Page 12 - DURING THE WHOLE of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
Page 35 - And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.
Page 260 - As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me " "Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." "And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own.
Page 140 - I saw brown, bronze, yellow faces, the black eyes, the glitter, the colour of an Eastern crowd. And all these beings stared without a murmur, without a sigh, without a movement. They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men who at night had come to them from the sea. Nothing moved. The fronds of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like...
Page 257 - The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark — that sole token of human imperfection — faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into thfe atmosphere, and her soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
Page 76 - The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace— all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least.
Page 266 - He! he! he! — he! he! he! — yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone.
Page 12 - I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.