A meteor streaks across the sky and then brightens the horizon behind a stand of trees. What does your character find when s/he investigates? If you enjoyed this post, look around, or sign up below ↓ to receive future posts via email.
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.
The power of representation
Whether I have one reader or 100,000 readers, I take the power of representation seriously. As authors, we have the opportunity to create characters, who in the best of circumstances can introduce readers to someone unlike a person they’ve ever met in real life, and in the worst case scenario, we create characters who reveal…
Writing Prompt: The Last Minute Cancel
Your character wants to cancel on an obligation. Maybe it’s work or helping someone move or helping sneak kittens safely out of enemy territory. Whatever the obligation—what lie does he or she make up to get out of it? If you enjoyed this post, look around, or sign up below ↓ to receive future posts via…
Writing Prompt: XYZ…the wardrobe malfunction
During an important meeting or presentation (or a date), your character realizes s/he is having a …wardrobe malfunction. What happened and how does s/he handle it? If you enjoyed this post, look around, or sign up below ↓ to receive future posts via email.
Otherworldly Words: Will-o’-the-wisp
Perfect for Halloween Night, will-o’-the-wisp is the ghostly light in the woods that is always just in front of you. So much of nature has inspired our tales of horror as we grapple with understanding the difference between the natural world and the preternatural. I’ve long thought the much maligned full moon lit the way…
Otherworldly Words: Vex
The word vex comes from a word that means to shake or jolt. When someone truly vexes us, it does sometimes feel as we have been physically shaken due to the emotional or mental stress caused by his or her actions. I think that’a great way to think of vex: someone has troubled you to…
Writing Prompt: The Paintings
Patrons in a museum are suddenly cast into the paintings. Where do they go? What happens? If you enjoyed this post, look around, or sign up below ↓ to receive future posts via email.
Otherworldly Words: Vanquish
Vanquish is one of those words that many people find interchangeable with words like decimate or annihilate. These words are a really good example of how visiting the thesaurus and hitting replace doesn’t quite do the job sometimes. As I stated in my post “The thesaurus is out to get us,” the nuances of words…
Otherworldly Words: Umbrage
To take umbrage is to feel shadowed. Think of the words umbra and penumbra—all from the Latin root for shade or shadow. It’s not uncommon to say that we feel “overshadowed” by someone. Umbra is the fancy-schmacy way of saying it. 🙂 What is brilliant (pardon the pun) about this word is that it also refers…
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