Category: an activity
Planning a Story
ONE WAY TO PLAN YOUR STORY There are lots of ways to plan a story but this one is an easy way to step into your ideas. Hope it works for you as well as it works for me.
A Writing Obstacle Course: Race to the End
Writing a story is a lot like running an obstacle course. It can’t be a straight line. To hold the attention and interest of readers it needs obstacles and problems to be dealt with along the way. Those problems need to build, creating an escalating reasons for a reader to finish the story/book. Recently I spoke with a person who read my novel,Tasman-An Innocent Convict’s Struggle for Freedom, in one sitting. She said she got so engaged that she couldn’t stop until she discovered Ean’s fate. Her comments had me floating for days. It verified that I’d created an obstacle...
Book Lists and Reviews, Oh My!!
By now you’ve probably spotted the plethora of 2018 published book lists: NYTimes, Great American Read and from the major book sellers. It’s an invigorating time for authors who place their books out with the millions of books printed each year in the US, when they receive support from readers in the form of reviews and/or forwarding of titles to friends and followers in social media. Writing a book is an act of devotion to characters and subjects dear to an author’s heart. It’s months and maybe years of time spent with ideas, critiques, rewrites, and marketing with the goal...
Wintry Reading
As cuddle and cocoa and lap blanket time arrives, take a trip to the picture book section in your public library to read a few wise-beyond-their-age- group books. We often get so deeply into adult fare that we don’t look back to appreciate the children’s books that line those lower shelves, probably near a fish tank and tiny bean bag chairs; maybe beside a puppet stage or a small, low table circled by tiny chairs. Wander the shelves and pick random books, ask the librarian for suggestions, or look up the ALA (American Library Association) http://www/ala/alsc/awards-grants-nota/ncb for a list of...
Halloween Word Search
I love words games. How many listed words can you find hidden on this word search? Each one comes from using some of the letters in Happy Halloween. So far, I’ve found over 90 words using just those letters. Halloween Word Search F V Y R D H V K N R G U P Y A F T X K Y L S E R N L W E C I G S U D O I P R D P Z E U C H I P O A U C P W O B X A...