Prose work- techniques, types and 7 Tools required for a prosaic work

Prose work- techniques, types and 7 Tools required for a prosaic work

When you hear the word Prose work, what comes to your mind? what do you understand by the term “prose work”? Is it the mere sculpting of words till a sentence is formed and then embedding such sentence in a book? Well, that’s just typically defining an essay. That will mean stereotypically identifying writing.

Be it letter writing or otherwise, before understanding the concept of a prose work you would have to begin breaking down the compound moniker to individual terms defining it separately, and then unionizing it once more and by the order of its collective form you should be able to identify it’s meaning, the technique required in analyzing a prose work, tools needed to build one and most especially the determinates for a specific kind.

Now let’s begin with simple definitions, what is prose?

Prose is a written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure. It is already basic what the definition of “work” is, but in a more literal sense, we can conclude that work is a pivotal mechanism that births the completion of any proposition, undertaking, project, concept, and effort.

A “prose work” comes at the moment the author embeds the final full stop and desists from penning further the particles in his imagination that is to say a short story like the Dead by James Joyce can be justified as prose, a flash fiction like “Taylor Swift” by Hugh Behm-Steinberg can be categorized as prose.

Likewise, certain poems like the Proud king written by William Morris can be classified as prose.  Why do all the above-mentioned and many more left unmentioned tell a story, they follow the natural flow of speech only divided by sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, and best of all, they are complete.

With that the entire genre has been divided into categories, mainly, only 4 types of Prose are recognized, understanding this and their difference is the determinant of the kind of prose your work would be identified as. Now a couple of major factors that seem to initiate a non-identical essence shared among the four basic types of prose are style and purpose.

The types of prose are

• Nonfiction
• Fiction
• Heroic
•    Prose poetry
• Nonfiction

Non-fictive prose is a vignette composed of factual happenings, and events, surrounded by relatable circumstances, what we understand as non-fictive prose are sometimes the columns we digest from a newspaper, articles we read every day from magazines and blog posts, historic events curated into fine prints and shielded with covers of different calibre like “Nostradamus; the man who saw tomorrow”, or Anna Franks compilations in

Diary of a young girl; a book infringed by excerpts recounting the actual life of Anna Frank who spent her days hiding with her family in the Nazi Infested Netherlands.

Not much is required in fixing together an anthology of this format, but one central requirement is that it must be factual. But if there is a case that demands you curate a creative non-fictive vignette, here are some techniques that people swear by

• Bait your audience

Have you seen the movie The Conjuring? There is no disputing that it was captivating, many wouldn’t have believed it was factual, because the eerie occurrences bested the human concept of reality and how paranormal events patterns it if they weren’t told.

But it did happen, in the early 1900s, same with Annabel the haunted doll that growls at passers-by all these were true stories, have you ever paused to think how come these movies have a lot of fans? I mean they are other movies the likes of a skeleton key, insidious, and Ouija but none are talked about as much as that. Why?

The readers were baited, the movie although non-fictional poised at the beginning a trigger that appealed to viewers, and from there on we all watched multitudes struggle to view the next instalment and the one after that. That, in a similar manner, can be your non-fictive work, you can mount at a gap and sight a number of individuals race down the content of your work with attention fixed on every line.

Put to cognizance that readers have a thousand and one options owning to how many writers our society has produced, you’re constantly in a heated completion with 700,000 others however your work can be that pin in the haystack that everyone is looking for all you just have to do is come up with bait.

Not a clickbait, but rather something pungent that would make readers want to go through your work, see the nun for example at the start of the movie just before the beginning of the initial storyline, we saw a few reverend sisters mounted before a door, on it was the inscription “God ends here”. Those 3 words were enough to grab the attention of those suffering from ADHD.

• Curate a memorable event in a powerful manner

All themes well expressed are sourced from memorable experiences, the writer will, to his full capacity and knowledge, serve justice to a piece if he is well abreast with the whole idea of it, relatively a reader will experience this work of the writer as if 3D printed.

But before that is achieved everything boils down to words, yes we get it, you were born what is so remarkable about that? What’s so alluring and enticing about your birthday? It is memorable but not everyone wants to read it chiefly because it’s plain but now imagine writing an intro in this manner;

Hi, I am detective inspector me. Unusual name, I know.  My family were incredibly narcissistic. I’m lucky to have escaped with any degree of humility at all, to be honest, but then I have managed to exceed expectations. (Pleasant)

The use of strong and accurately positioned words can transform a casual and rather sleep-inducing non-fictive prose into a must-read.

• Employ emotion blackmail

What pronounces your non-fiction as boring and bad is if the factuality is entirely obvious. Some time ago I came across a very powerful writer who I was privileged to learn from. From the shadows, of course, his work did not need a watermark, trademark or even a signature. His works were unique to him, typically because he could make a news report appear more descriptive and fictive than it initially appeared.

How did he do so? he subtracted that essential sleeper that has a toll over every non-fictive reader and utilized the likes of imagery, personality, and more emotional appeal, he did more—enough of it to expel clichés, he expunged that rather boring downslide and made a twirl that fluctuated whenever readers conceived expectations towards a particular ending he made it seem like a movie only for readers to wake up and discover it actually happened.

Now remember while writing, try to lessen the use of abstract nouns, the more things presently comprehendible the more effectively the attention of your reader is drawn. Furthermore, you can easily achieve emotional blackmail by employing the use of power words, try confession, try to imagine, etc. for you to connect more with your inner mind try Dickens 4 horsemen, it’d definitely hamper your spiritual connection with God, but hey! Which great thing doesn’t require a sacrifice?

• Make it simple

You are not writing a dictionary, besides you would still want your reader to understand your work as non-fictive inclined, so do away with frustrating terms. Your article, manual, would be dumped and sidelined if it is difficult to read.

All components of your article or story should be clear and understood. Virginia Woolf wasn’t recognized as the best essayist because she grafted her works thoroughly with complex grammar. Every reader has his/her mind fixed on the story unfolding not big words, so make it simple and easy to understand

Fiction Prose

This has been the most patronized fraction of the entire genre. It is common in novels, novelettes, novellas, short stories, and gothic stories, and in general has a diverse characterization, plot, settings, and dialogue, for this a skeletal frame or outline is needed.

A work of fiction is a simple make-believe story, it is purely invented not by history or phenomenal occurrence but rather by the human mind

Let’s begin unraveling the elements with;

Description: while writing a fictive work, give rise to imagery and influence the reader’s mind with sensory details, trace out all lines and identify carbons, and detail out elements and entities till their distinctive qualities can be identified from a mile away, to achieve this, your work must be riddled with metaphors and imagery, always give a vivid description this is a dominate feature as well as a puissant technique renowned authors apply.

Narration: this should be done sequentially with reference to time as pertaining to before and after. All occurrences must be confined in a setting, an environment defined by boundaries, spoken language if possible a given law, and inhabited by still-live entities.

There won’t be a need to drive further this is typically telling you to speak on what happened but this time with the use of accurate tenses, scenarios, point of view (first person, second person, third or omniscient point of view), for the purpose of giving this a smooth flow and dispensing clarity till it suffices there would be a need to employ the use of flashbacks and foreshadowing

Characterization: what makes a fictive work vividly obvious and more distinct than a fictive one is the presence of characters. There is an entire course on characterization and how to make them look less fictive and more non-fictive.

You see one yet to be told the secret of fictive and non-fictive writing especially when it comes to narrating an incident is that the fictive should look nonfictive while the non-fictive should somewhat appear as non-fictive. This aspect plays an essential role and is judged based on

How they are presented

• motivation: what inspires their greatest and most noticeable attribute and course of action
• description
• Purpose

Plot: this should consist of the opening scene, the follow-up scene, the unpredictable twist, and the rise and fall this very is the foundation, the blueprint of your write-up, this was what Marcus Zusak used in writing his book thief.

A plot is the central arrangement of all significant happenings programmed to take the course in a story, play, novel, etc. for a successful story, especially one to be written by a beginner it is essential to compose your story with this type of plotting technique

• Opening situation/conflict
• Obstacles and technical hitches
• Suspense
• Climax
• Resolution
• Final philosophy and possibly a sentence for cliffhanger (that is if you are writing a sequel).

Heroic prose

Well as the name implies, it’s always something about a legend, see Lugh, an Irish champion who slays the one-eyed demon king Balor, see Beowulf the Norwegian walking ballistic warrior who trampled the man-eating monster Grendel, and Hercules champion of Olympus who pulled 12 inhuman labour and went on to complete a 13th.

All these and likewise many others, like Moremi the courageous queen are heroically prosaic and passed down either orally or written. This type of prose surrounds a usually techular character doing heroic deeds as seen depicted in Howard Pyle’s Adventures of Robin Hood. Whether orally or written the stories are meant to be recited, and they employ many of the formulaic expressions of oral tradition.

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is most commonly seen as one that adapts the metric structure of prose instead of the initial structure of poetry. This literary Crossbreed may sometimes possess rhythmic patterns and rhyme schemes. Take the proud king by William Morris for example, although published as a poem the literary work is embedded with a prosaic structure that details a story of a  king, a metaphoric representation of king Nebuchadnezzar from the Hebrew denomination, who perceived himself as high and mighty only to be debased to an infinitesimal status of anonymity.

Tools required for a prosaic work

Are you looking to tighten your prose work? Have you ever considered what essential element is added to a prose work that makes it standard out, well here is a glimpse of it

• Figure of speech
• Diction—an extended knowledge of dictionary terms, collective word expression, and description
• Clarity
• Accuracy
• Strong words—ditch the modifiers, let the verbs speak
• Excerpts
•   Reading—understand the works of other writers and how well they prospered, take notes and embolden yourself with what they know.