Wednesday 8 July 2015

A Great Yarn
              



In this week’s Write Essential episode of Reel Time, the crash test dummies spin a great yarn.  Here's another one:
The Significance of the Apple
Jasmine eats a lot of apples.  They have significance.
The apple is a purpose-filled literary device.  It imparts information about Jasmine’s physical dimension.  The first time she eats an apple, it’s in the pocket of her school uniform.  The second time, it is not mentioned how she happens to have it in her hand, but she and Cassie are sitting outside the local shops across from their school.  It can be inferred that she has bought it at the shop, choosing it over the other kind of ‘food choices’ that her friend, Cassie, makes.
This in itself provides social / emotional dimension to the character, Jasmine.  Her choice is clear and simple.  An apple – an afternoon practise, maybe? Every afternoon she seems to be eating one.
The apple therefore, has metaphorical meaning.  Why an apple?  Why doesn’t she pull a banana from her pocket?  Why isn’t she peeling an orange as she sits and talks to Cassie, sucking up and splashing its juices around?
The apples establish relationships.  The contrast between the two friends can’t get sharper then the crunch of an apple verse an avalanche of ‘anything-chocolate’.  The relationship between Jasmine and her mum is established over an apple. The humorous tone of the tale begins with an apple.  A bulge, left forgotten, quietly and unnoticed, is much like Jasmine’s spirem dimension.  The way she eats her apples, spitting out its seeds, throwing its core into the river with a few choice words or chewing it over as she attempts to describe what being a spirem is like, are all descriptive metaphors that give her character substance.
Meet any significant apples lately?
A stone from the hand of a friend is an apple (Moroccan proverb)
There's small choice in rotten apples (Shakespeare)
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why (Baruch)
Jasmine Neutron Star is the first book of the Star Ways Chronicles.  It is a novel most suitable for young adult and teenager readers of speculative, fantasy / science fiction, urban fantasy.  It is a humorous account of Jasmine’s first adventure into the world of light – Quanta.  She is a spirem – a new kind of superhero – and perfect for the sphere of Terra.
Acknowledgment:


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