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Tag: writing
White-washing the world: trying to handle race in your fiction (if you’re white)
Pick up a book. Almost any book. If it’s a white character, does the author ever say “white”—or is it just assumed? One difficulty (for me) when writing a character of a race (other than white) is that you have to be so blatant about it—because white is assumed. Racial identity is much more than…
Character motivation: a brief thought
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. —Kurt Vonnegut Knowing your character’s motivation, while seeming simple, isn’t always easy. First, different scenes will have different motivation. For example, in a murder mystery, the main motivation of the protagonist will be to solve the mystery. In another scene, the…
The dreams of characters — a brief thought
When writing characters, do we ever stop to consider the characters’ dreams? The things, places, and people that our characters dream about—including daydream—tell the reader so much about the true motivation and desires of our characters. How characters interact with their fantasies tell us much about the character: do they indulge their fantasies, do they…
sunday
the thorns of a new week crown through the pink clouds in sulfur-yellow shards of sun. each passing day, week, I fight to make this stumbling more than the sorrow of missing you, less than the joy of counting the days until we are reunited. Time is a two-faced lover: easing and stealing. Yet I…
The Runes (a sneak peek at my next novel)
Prologue It was like a bur—the kind you get stuck to your clothing crossing a late summer field or side-of-the-road ditch—only, it was stuck to her insides. She could feel it there, burrowing in, deeper each moment, contaminating her blood, feeding on her. Ilene pressed her hands to her stomach until her exposed flesh turned…
Dialogue — a brief thought
“Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.” Alfred Hitchcock This is excellent advice for a visual medium, like film. In writing, how do we accomplish the same affect? Communication is 90% non-verbal. When speaking, what…
revelation
And you said, You and I as a couple are as ironic as Mother Teresa with a photon gun. I said, “Oh, I know. You are so handsome, so witty and you really have your shit together.” I guess it wasn’t funny. A two year old letter read and reread countless times lies on the…
The semicolon: half-right is all wrong
Something about the semicolon seems to trip people up. Maybe it’s the shape: the little round head and tail like a snake. I’m not sure. At any rate, here are a few basic examples of when to use the semicolon. Use a semicolon to join two independent clauses not joined with a conjunction, such as:…
summer’s slow retreat
I that final summer we spent our nights on the pier, the moonlight bathing the water with its cool hands. night sounds, frogs humming and burping, crickets, and water slapping rocks serenading us. long hours lost in eternal embrace, caresses without end, daylight hours, too, passed in hide-and-seek cornfields. ski trips and trains marked our…
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