Hawthorne Stylistic Imitation

Short Story or Personal Essay

Write a story or personal essay that has grown out of your journal entries during the past few weeks. Experiment with the literary methods which Hawthorne uses in his own short stories: symbol, allegory, and the supernatural. 

To steep yourself in Hawthorne's style, read the following stories:

After reading each story, do a ten minute journal entry in which you experiment with Hawthorne's style: his use of symbol, his allegorical plots, and his invocations of the supernatural. Even experiment with using Hawthorne's vocabulary.

parable, venerable, pathos, emblem, sagacious, prodigy, remonstrance, type, torpor, approbation, periwig, peruke, sepulchral, charnel, potation, taciturn, lineaments, physiognomy, cachinnation, contagion, apprehension, ascetic, assimilate, avail, aver, caprice, delude, effectual, emolument, exhort, feign, imbibe, incredulous, insidious, inscrutable, mien, morbid, penitent, progenitor, purport, remonstrate, repugnance, requite, retribution, revile, sanctify, succor, suffice, superfluous, talisman, tangible, tempestuous, vie, vivify, voluptuous

Remember that good writing appeals to all of the senses, not just sight. Appeal to our senses of hearing, smell, touch and taste. Let people talk in your story. Capture the way people really speak. Be specific about time of day and year. Name names. Be open to the novel associations and descriptions that your mind devises. Open your mind to everything going on around you in your actual physical space. 

Short Story:

Your story will be evaluated according to the quality of your writing as well as the following criteria:

- verisimilitude: a realistic evocation of character in a realistic dramatic situation
- a believable setting, a sense of time and place, use of dialogue and interaction of characters; how is this a day unlike any other day?
- dynamic dramatic action: a clear objective for your central character and clear obstacles to that objective
- use of Hawthorn-esque literary devices