When I first started writing, it was just for me. I met a friend on Monday nights twice a month. We used a book of writing prompts to tap into our creativity. We had no idea what we were doing. We just wrote. Some of what I did with my writing in those early days […]
Funny story. I didn’t learn what an appositive was until I had to teach it, year after year, to classrooms full of 7th and 8th graders. I just used an appositive in the above sentence. Can you spot it? The answer: year after year (set off by commas) I like grammar, so I thought I’d […]
I was an English major in college, and I taught English/Language Arts for a lot of years. One thing I realized early on is that, although I had to take a linguistics class, I have absolutely no need to understand how to diagram a sentence. Likewise, I have no need to understand interrogative adjectives, or […]
Types of Fictional Characters Teaching middle and high school language arts taught me a lot about the types of characters in fiction. I learned as much teaching as I did when I was in high school myself–and as an English major in college. Understanding the different types of characters and the roles they play in […]
Characters are at the Heart of the Story Characters are at the heart of every story. Without a strong hero, a book is often forgettable. This is why series are so popular. People come back not for whatever mystery or crime Stephanie Plum will be tackling, but because they love Stephanie herself. And Lula. And […]
We’re wrapping up our Writing Prompt series on SETTING by looking at the connection between character and setting. Setting gives the reader a world to visualize. It’s grounding. It creates mood and tone. In Gone With the Wind, for example, Atlanta is almost a character. So it Tara. These locations provide much more than just […]
Writer’s block is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot in the writing world. At writing conferences; at workshops; at organization meetings. I’ve been asked time and time again, “Do you get writer’s block?” or “What do you do when writer’s block happens?” I used to say something to the effect of, “Oh, I […]
Using Dialogue to Convey Setting Setting in a story can be given through description (see Writing Promp #3). Last time we talked about creating setting through description. Today, we’re still looking at setting as a way to convey a story’s time and place, but this time, we’re using dialogue. Why? Because setting doesn’t have to […]
Why do we enjoy reading mysteries so much? It’s an interesting question to consider and that’s just what I did recently. I gave it a lot of thought and this is what I came up with. I think one reason people love reading mysteries is because they are a safe thrill, kind of like roller […]
Setting is a story’s time and place. You cannot have a story without setting. Setting grounds the entire narrative. In books, setting can be very overtly or explicit given to the reader, or it can be alluded to through descriptions of clothing, architecture, weather, topography, and other environmental elements. When we think of TIME, a […]