Category: details in writing
Summer time, winter time, all year ’round. It’s always a great to write down your impressions as you experience them. It’s almost too simple, so give it a try! 1. Keep a small Impressions Notebook in your pocket and jot down what you see and feel at various moments in your day and across the year. 2. Record the weather: sky conditions and colors,the temp, the way you feel looking around you or what you feel when you step out into the weather. 3. Outside, touch objects to record their impressive temperature. A chair in the sun feels different from...
Characters are the focus of most novels. Here are two examples from well known authors that demonstrate important pats-on-the-back to characters that engage readers. (1) Show what’s “on the line” in the character’s lives including risks, obstacles and needs for change. In Distant Shore, Kristin Hannah wrote: In those days he’d promised her the moon and the stars, vowed to love her forever. He’d meant it too. Believed in it. They hadn’t done anything wrong, either of them. They simply hadn’t understood how long forever was. (p.118) (2) Show growth across the story for secondary characters and their subplots In...
When you talk face-to-face with others or provide your feedback, use the 3 C’s to improve your communication skills. Use: Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking Collaboration: work with the goal of listening to others (voices or written words)before you speak. Creativity: share your original ideas when the other person desires your input. Critical Thinking: use considerate, careful judgment in your suggestions. Be careful not to trample on other’s ideas in your excitement to share your thoughts.
My trilogy is ending as 2016 begins. It’s a bit nostalgic to think I’ll soon be stepping away from Marta, Lynne, and their friends and families. I say that hoping that their stories will continue on in reader’s minds when they think of real dancers, teens, growing up, making life-changing and life-shaping decisions. Since I’ve lived with the characters for so long they are as real to me as you, my readers. I’ve hoped to share their dreams as well as their day-to-day reality, their ability to wiggle out of tense situations and their joy of dancing and life. As...
Resolution: a resolve, a declaration, a decision to make a change. Authors make resolutions every day as they develop and write their character’s lives. True, they are not usually to lose weight or read a certain number of books; they revolve around day-to-day decisions with the intent of moving their stories forward. Will Marta recover from her injury? Will Steve get a job? Will Lynne keep her position with the Intermountain Ballet Company? Will Madame ever explain to Marta or Lynne why she was hard on them? Those are the fun elements in stories that need to be shared before...
Where do you go to get inspired? the beach, a park, a movie? Or, are you the type that of person to find your inspiration in talking with people, joining a club or maybe the solitude of a day alone with a good book. Does sampling a variety of wines or berries or vegetables inspires you? How about the touch of a luscious fabric? Regardless of where you find inspiration, a writer often uses what they see, smell, hear, taste and touch to make a story sparkle. They take the inspiration IN, mush it around a bit and voila! It...
Writers never stop looking for ways to improve their writing. One such way is conferences. Our local conference, Write on the Sound, is a perfect place to gain ideas and techniques while meeting with fellow writers. And, as good fortune would have it, we had a perfect weekend of weather, classes, and vistas from the Plaza Room at Edmond’s Francis Anderson Center (formerly the place where I began my teaching career half a century ago). Ouch. that sounds ancient; maybe it is! The conference strictly showcases writers as presenters with no agents or publishers making presentations. Listening to fellow writers...
Color: the presence of life as seen through different lenses. Each day we select the way we’ll see our world. The following quotes provide different views/moods/images within a story. The brilliant sun had disappeared, its last flickering rays painting the rim of the sky with liquid crimson, bleeding into saffron and amethyst and the palest lilac before dropping down behind the dim horizon. The Women in His Life by B.T. Bradford p.167 The mist enclosed them, making straight-ahead visibility almost non-existent. Up above was another story; the fog was pinned to the rivers and lagoons, barely higher than...
I have several favorite contemporary authors I enjoy when I read to escape for awhile. Recently I read a book by a well-known NYTimes author and almost choked on one of her glitchy sentences. See what you think. (The following is one sentence with the character names changed to protect that author from embarrassment as she writes another 2-3 books before the end of the year.) She walked out to get the phone, and heard, as she assured Hannah the baby was fine, was sleeping like an angel, had been no trouble at all, the front door close behind him....
What makes a good character? Here’s a starting list. Please send me your ideas so I can grow the list and re-share it with you. * flawed with strengths and weaknesses, scars and oddities in their lives * well-developed personality * distinctive ‘voice’ (you often know which character is speaking without the ‘said’ tag) * approachable yet filled with secrets * has a story worth our time learning about as we read * share both their inner and outer conflicts * grow and change over the course of the story
