When students are having trouble with the beginning of a piece, they’re sometimes advised to think about what their character is feeling. Often, this means emotions. But the actual sense of touch can be effective too. This series of posts—Finding Your Beginning—offers tips for students on how to jump-start a scene through the senses. By… Read more »
Story Bite
Story Bite 23: Finding Your Beginning Through Smell
Students often struggle with the beginning of a piece of writing. (So do many published authors as well.) This is the second series of posts—Finding Your Beginning—that offers tips for students on how to jump-start a scene through the senses. Using sensory elements can put the reader—and the writer—directly into a piece of writing. For… Read more »
Story Bite 22: Finding Your Beginning Through Sound
One of the most common questions I’ve heard from students about writing is how to find ideas to start a piece. They’re often told to start with action in the middle of a scene. But sometimes they can’t think of an action or a scene, and the ideas just won’t come. A scene is a… Read more »
Story Bite 21: Writing Symbols
Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a great year of writing ahead. Late in December, I had a lovely chat with a young reader and writer about a story she was working on. She’d come up with a great scenario and there were many places her story could go. Ever since, I’ve been thinking… Read more »
Story Bite 20 (Special): How to Write an Action Scene!
This is a little bit different from my other Story Bite posts. I wanted to try this format and see if young writers would this kind better (maybe I’ll just mix it up in the future). In this post, I’m sharing a video for a series created and hosted by Debbie Ridpath Ohi called Ask Me… Read more »
Story Bite 19: Building Character Through Sensory Details
Sensory details—of smell, taste, sight, and sound—make a scene come alive and can also make a character feel real. Thinking about sensory details and how someone reacts to them tells you a lot about that person. So even though this may feel like a post on descriptive writing, it’s really about digging deep into who… Read more »
Story Bite 18: Creating Myths
As I’ve been sheltering in place to help keep my community safe, I’ve been thinking about what stories do for us during challenging times. They can help us look with new perspectives at what surrounds us, sometimes understanding it better or more deeply. They can also help us escape into worlds far from ours. Many… Read more »
Story Bite 17: World Building and History (Today)
For this Story Bite in a time of global social isolation, I’m going to delve into one of my favorite parts of writing: research that helps a writer to understand a world. This post will also connect to the incredible historical situation we all find ourselves in today…but more on that in a bit. (By… Read more »
Story Bite 16: It’s All About Perspective
Perspective—the voice that tells a story—can entirely change a story’s meaning, purpose, and feel. Here’s an example: When I was four years old, I was invited to the birthday party of my older brother’s best friend, Aaron. There was a chocolate cake in the kitchen while activities went on outside. I grew bored with the… Read more »
Story Bite 15: Writing Action (Part 2)
In our last Story Bite, we wrote an action scene. We focused exclusively on the path and the obstacles facing our character, but mostly the journey itself. Those scenes are fun to write. For many authors, they just flow onto the page: We’re narrating what’s going on and that’s often not too hard to write… Read more »
These lilacs have the most glorious scent, but are pretty modest in their way. The former colleague I lost over the weekend to cancer would have liked them for both those reasons.
#flowers #grief #lilacs
It’s been a tough week. A moment with a few flowers can make a difference.
#flowers #azalea #springflowers