Задание 5 ЕГЭ по английскому языку

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Presenter: Hello everybody and welcome to our weekly programme 'The Writer's Workshop'. Today in our studio we have Stacey Swan, a prize-winning short fiction writer, an editor and an educator. Hello, Stacey.

Stacey: Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me here today.

Presenter: You're currently spending much time editing other writers' work for American Short Fiction. How does it affect your own work?

Stacey: I think my time at American Short Fiction had a huge impact on my learning curve as a writer. I started volunteering as a reader there while I was still in grad school, and for the next seven years or so, I read dozens of submissions a month. For some reason, it is so much easier to see the flaws in our own work after we've seen them in someone else's. My primary agenda, though, was always whether or not I thought the story would be a good fit for the journal, but subconsciously, I was probably filing away plenty of things to steal.

Presenter: As a writer, what do you think about drafting and drafts?

Stacey: I teach a course of creative writing at university, and I always tell my writing students that while they are drafting, they should lock their internal critic in the trunk of their car and just drive. I find revision easier and more enjoyable than drafting, and that's mostly because the internal critic is so bad while I draft. If I don't put him away, he'll drive me away from the computer.

Presenter: You must be doing a lot of editing later, then.

Stacey: Of course. My first drafts are huge messes, and it can take me multiple revisions to even pin down the basic plot arc. I used to think revision was one hundred percent about the critical brain, because that's the only part I use when editing others. I certainly wouldn't want to let my free-writing brain loose on someone else's work, but I'm starting to think there may be room for it when I revise my own.

Presenter: Your recent story, 'The Pull', has enjoyed tremendous success. Why do you think the readers loved it so much?

Stacey: Well, I tend to explain it by the fact that the story traps together two incompatible characters, though I can't say I did it on purpose. When it comes to drafting fiction, I always like to say that my sub-consciousness is way smarter than my conscious brain. I didn't set out to make the central characters incompatible, but I suspect that my sub-consciousness, after so many years of writing, tends to maximise tension when it can. I did intentionally want the relationship to make my characters feel trapped and limited, though.

Presenter: The story has the dogs of the main characters. How did you make the parallel? Highly literary and artificial by nature, seems so natural.

Stacey: I'm glad you found the parallel natural. The naturalness probably stems from the fact that I didn't start out with the dog and people parallel in mind. Indeed, the parallel between the human couple and dog couple — the dogs can't help fighting — is very clear and seems intentional, and yet it's not at all awkward or forced. Perhaps it's just the old saying about dog owners resembling their dogs.

Presenter: How do you manage to give such clear definitions to your characters?

Stacey: The final version of my stories is usually not that different from how they come out on the first draft. It's likely that I'm nailing down my characters for myself as a writer before I let them loose in a scene. I suspect this is because of the short fiction I was reading at the time and the overall atmosphere of my MFA programme, where I got my training as a short story writer.

Presenter: Thank you, Stacey. It has been very interesting talking to you.

Stacey: Thank you.