Translating life into fiction can be a way to externalize our inner apocalypse... photo: Jon Sullivan ...and reading our fiction can lead us to an understanding of what we have locked away. Write about a Thanksgiving that became a turning point in your life, locate it in an exaggerated world of your creation, and animate it with people who enact … Continue reading truth to fiction
making a scene
before selfies
Before there were selfies, photographers revealed themselves with subtle clues that perhaps even they were unaware of. Examine this photograph, and from the details - tangible and intangible - evoke the photographer. Who is this person on the other side of the lens? What is their relationship with the people in the photograph? How did they come to be the … Continue reading before selfies
choreographing the Aleutian cackling goose
Exposition is risky - and necessary. At it's best exposition provides critical back story, or foreshadowing, it can enhance character development and help to convey place, time, and atmospheric subtleties that are not appropriate for dialogue. Used with patience, pacing and economy, exposition feels 'invisible' to the reader, it enhances story without intruding. A good way … Continue reading choreographing the Aleutian cackling goose
it’s me
Begin here: photo: Orion Nebula Space Galaxy Write a scene involving two people in orbit, each believing they have been sent away together for entirely different reasons. Begin with "I'm the one they've been waiting for..." Incorporate at least three of the five senses.
jumpstart love
Writing a compelling, visceral love scene can be the most daunting of challenges - how many times have you tried, without success, to evoke the eroticism, tension, suspense and thrill of first contact? The temptation is to make it too obvious, too easy. Or to fall into the trap of 'happily ever after'. We might … Continue reading jumpstart love
start up
Everything before has led up to this moment. What has happened to bring us here, where will it lead? Writing Prompt: Open a story with a sentence that evokes the past and foreshadows the future. Incorporate the following: photo:Bill Jacobus
choreographing a troupe
Making a scene requires artful choreography – animating your characters interactions so vividly and seamlessly that your reader forgets they are reading. This often means tracking a troupe of characters as they make their disparate and interconnecting way from the beginning to the end of the scene. To do this, you must know each character … Continue reading choreographing a troupe
getting your backstory straight
Backstory is history that helps your reader to better understand the motivations and inner lives of your characters, it can help them to care about and identify with your characters. Unlike a history lesson, backstory should be brief, giving enough information to enlighten, without disrupting the forward motion of the story. When deciding where to … Continue reading getting your backstory straight
making a scene
How to make a scene. Every story (and all its components) assumes a basic contract between the writer and the reader – readers want a world they can believe in, characters that matter, and stories that invite and compel them to care. It is up to the writer to provide all that and more. At … Continue reading making a scene
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