This month’s writing prompt is all about lies! Characters are stretching the truth or avoiding it all together. When, how often, how good they are at it, and what they lie about can tell us about our characters — and our character’s character. Perhaps you even have an unreliable narrator on your hands. Up first: Lying…
Category: Writing Wrongs: Essays on Language
This blog is an opportunity to discuss language – its usage, its limitations, and its beauty—through an array of shorter and longer essays.
Otherworldly Words: Mesmerize
This whole month I’ve taken a look at words named after someone: January mausoleum Fortean Joining the ranks is mesmerize. Like mausoleum, we no longer capitalize mesmerize, despite its being named after the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer. He theorized “animal magnetism,” which he thought was the force that passes between two people or inanimate…
Writing Prompt: Resolve to Volunteer
It’s January, and the character prompts for this month revolve around resolve. All month, I’ve provided prompts that center around the types of resolutions a character might make. This final one is about volunteering. Your character pledges to volunteer more this year. What charity does he or she work for? How does it go? Is…
Otherworldly Words: Fortean
Not everybody gets a word named after him, not to mention an entire society! Charles Fort is just one of those individuals. Fortean, meaning “pertaining to extraordinary and strange phenomenon and happenings” is named after this expert in the paranormal. He research and cataloged phenomenon from UFOs to spontaneous human combustion to poltergeist. His tomes…
Writing Prompt: The Higher Power
It’s January, and the character prompts for this month revolve around resolve. As authors we have many ways to learn about our characters and to tell our readers about our characters. What they pray about and whom they pray for are excellent means! So, in the theme of resolutions this month: When some people vow to improve themselves,…
Writing Prompt: Weight Loss Help
It’s January, and the character prompts for this month revolve around resolve. Ah, resolutions. Your character made a bet to shed a few pounds with a friend, who seems to be winning the friendly wager. How does your character step up the game? What means does he or she take? The hard road of eating right and…
Otherworldly Words: Mausoleum
This month, I’m exploring words named after people. I started with January. Today the mausoleum is thought of as a repository for our lost loved ones and part of what make historic cemeteries beautiful, peaceful places of quietude. Originally, however, the word had a very specific meaning as the tomb of Mausolus, king of Caria, who ruled part of…
Writing Prompt: Resolve
It’s January, and the character prompts for this month revolve around resolve. It’s time for your characters to resolve to improve themselves. What are your characters’ New Year’s Resolutions? Are they self-centered? Do they pledge to do more good? What a character resolves to do can speak volumes! If you enjoyed this post, look…
Otherworldly Words: January
January is a time for new beginnings, and apparently, for looking back. This month, I’m exploring words named for people, or, as in the case of January, named for a God. January is the month dedicated to Janus, the two-faced God of beginnings, transitions, and as such, doorways as well as the rising and setting of the…
Otherworldly Words: Mordant
Mordant derives from the Latin mordere meaning “to bite.” I have, on occasion, been accused of being mordant. I call it, “all in good fun.” I have even caused friends to storm off. Limits, man. It’s all about limits when you have a caustic wit. If you enjoyed this post, look around, or sign up…
ADRIANLILLY.COM 