Tag Archives: Writing

Story ~ Organic symbolism & the language of flowers and trees

08 Sunday Apr 2018

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Symbolism deepens the emotional core of a story, enhancing the three-dimensionality of characters and their relationships. It’s pure magic when done well, but it’ll ooze like a didactic plague if not.

Spring flowers, bouquet

An elegant way to weave symbolism organically throughout a story is through the use of flowers, plants, and trees.

Say it with flowers

It may surprise you that flowers have secret meanings. From Victorian times, and earlier in the Middle East, flowers were used to convey messages due to social mores that dictated suppressed feelings. Society’s stringent rules created a secret language of courtship, love, and friendship through the use of flowers.

For example, daffodils represent new beginnings, lily of the valley imply a return of happiness, bluebells stand for constancy and everlasting love, and tulips (especially red tulips) symbolize perfect love.

Evermore, coverThrough the secret language of flowers, you can layer added depth to a character’s feelings and intentions. But be aware that the colors of certain flowers carry their own significance.

Take tulips, for example, red tulips are associated with true love, while purple symbolize royalty, and white tulips are used to claim worthiness or to send a message of forgiveness.

Alyson Noel used red tulips to portray the quality of the love between the characters in Evermore: The Immortals series.

There are numerous resources for the hidden meaning of flowers. I’ve offered links to a couple of botanical codices below, and there are any number of web sites dedicated to the language of flowers.

Tell it with trees and plants

Tree and plant symbolism was woven through Egyptian and Celtic cultures, and is still influences us Wishtree, covertoday. If flower symbolism doesn’t work for the characters and theme of your story, trees and plants may be an option.

The maple tree is a symbol of strength and endurance. While the willow tree represents mystical powers and a spiritual alignment with the moon, because it thrives near water.

Katherine Applegate used a red oak as the main character in her middle grade novel, Wishtree. An appropriate choice, since the oak is a symbol of wisdom. To the ancient Celts, the oak also represented durability, purity, and constancy.

Stacey Lee weaves an expertly rich tapestry of botanical symbolism throughout her evocative coming-of-age novel, The Secret of a Heart Note. Mimosa is one of the two remaining aroma-experts (aromateurs), and she uses her mystical sense of smell to help others fall in love—while protecting her own heart at all costs.

At once, hopeful, funny, and romantic, Lee’s lyrical language brings the characters and plants to life. You might even catch a hint of the poetically rich aromas as they find their way off the pages and into your heart.

Botanical codices

red tulips

Santa writes back! ~ Get a letter from the North Pole

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in Holiday, Writing

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Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus!

The United States Postal Service can help you prove it too. Santa can reply to your child’s letter from his workshop, complete with a North Pole postmark.

North Pole Postmark

How to get a North Pole postmark

You can make Santa and his workshop real for your child with a personal reply to their letter that includes a North Pole postmark. Here’s how.

  1. Write a letter to your child and sign it From Santa.
  2. Put the letter in an envelope and address it to your child.
  3. Add the return address SANTA, NORTH POLE.
  4. Affix a First Class stamp to the envelope.
  5. Place the complete envelope in a larger envelope with the appropriate postage (to cover the extra weight), and address to:
    North Pole Postmark
    Postmaster
    4141 Postmark Dr.
    Anchorage, AK 99530-9998

If you want to know how writing letters to Santa became a thing, you can read Alex Palmer’s A Brief History of Sending a Letter to Santa in Smithsonian Magazine.

Miracle on 34th Street

Humor ~ the secret ingredient that keeps kids reading

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by in Humor, Writing

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Kids laughing and readingIf something is fun, we want to repeat the experience as much as possible. Reading is no different. It’s no surprise that for young readers, the key to keeping them reading is humor.

Marvin Terban, master of children’s wordplay and author of over 35 humorous books for young readers, explained the science of reading fun to a packed house at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Summer Conference in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Terban was a school teacher for decades, learning first-hand how to capture children’s interest 3 Latino children readingand keep them engaged. He was adamant:

“It’s no laughing matter if there’s no laughing matter.”

When children were asked what books they liked to read, this is what they said:

  • My favorite books are the ones I pick myself.
  • I like books make me laugh.

Recipes for laughter

“That’s great,” you say, “but what’s the secret to making children laugh?” You’re in luck! Terban shared a few of the ingredients from his recipe for humor:

  1. Use funny names, like Ralph Puken or Bob Booggensnot.
  2. Use funny words. Apparently the funniest words for young readers are: fart, poop, and underpants. In that order.
  3. Kids (and adults) laugh the hardest at the unexpected.
  4. The funniest scenes contain an element of sorrow.

Lin Oliver and Henry Winkler are also masters of writing comedy for young readers. Kids of all ages love their Hank Zipzer: World’s Greatest Underachiever series and Ghost Buddy series. At a past SCBWI conference, this awesome writing team shared a few of their secrets for writing comedy:

  1. Write what makes you laugh. If you think something is funny, someone else will think so too. Young readers know when humor is not authentic.
  2. Write from your own “most embarrassing” moments.
  3. You have to love the character you’re putting in comedic jeopardy, or else it comes off as being mean. You want your audience to laugh with the character, not at him.
  4. Specific details are almost always funnier than generalizations. For example: Principal Zumba has a mole. Or… Principal Zumba has a mole shaped like the statue of liberty that looks like it’s doing the hula whenever he talks.

Hank Zipzer and Ghost Buddy covers

Mark Twain and the Kitten that Played Pool

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Animals, Cats, Writing

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Twain’s softer side

Mark TwainThe name Mark Twain is synonymous with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn—rough and tumble boys full of adventure, daring pranksters who were afraid of nothing.

In many ways, the characters an author creates are their reflection. But like Hemingway, Mark Twain had a softer side he hid from the world.

Like so many creative people, Mark Twain was sensitive and more than a little reclusive. People who knew him said he was most comfortable around animals, with a particular love of cats. According the Mark Twain’s daughter, Suzy…

The difference between papa and mama is that mama loves morals and papa loves cats.

Twain loved cats so much he had up to 19 living in his house at one time, according to one source. And that was just at his Connecticut home.

Mark Twain biographer, Albert Biglow Paine, revealed that Mark Twain even traveled with cats. Once on his travels, he missed his cats so much he rented a few local kittens for the summer. “He didn’t wish to own them, for then he would have to leave them behind uncared for,” Paine explained, “so he preferred to rent them and pay sufficiently to ensure their subsequent care.”

The kitten that played pool

It’s odd to think that an author as accomplished as Mark Twain suffered from nervousness about his writing. But he did. His cats helped calm him, as did playing billiards. Amazingly enough, there was one special kitten who did double duty by playing pool with Twain. For real. I am not making this up.

Kitten on pool table

When Twain took a break from his writing to blow off nervous energy, he’d pick up the kitten and tuck him into one of the pockets of the billiard table and the game began. The kitten swiped at the balls as they darted by, amusing Twain to no end. Rejuvenated by the kitten’s antics, Twain could then return to his writing.

Twain’s love of animals lives on

Generations of cats have called Nook Farm home—the famous author’s house in Hartford, Connecticut. Dozens of cats still live on the grounds of The Mark Twain House & Museum today, much as they did during the famous author’s lifetime.

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction. ~ Mark Twain

Many of the staff members at The Mark Twain House are proud owners of Nook Farm cats, continuing Twain’s legacy.

Mark Twain’s love of cats lives on in his writing, as well. Cats stalk, slink, pad, and play their way through many of his best-known books, including The Innocents Aboard, Roughing It, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Puddn’head Wilson. If that’s not reason enough to read Twain, I don’t know what is. But I’m a hopeless animal lover too. What can i say?

Get that Half-Baked Story Out of the Oven!

17 Monday Apr 2017

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Writing Recipe for Success

Toddler chefIt happens to every writer. At least once. We start a project, excited and inspired by the sparkly new idea. We run with it, fleshing out characters, working magic with dialog, setting, and plot. Then something happens. Our inspiration dissipates, like air from a hot air balloon. We’re slugging forward through molasses, when once we soared.

It’s easy to get discouraged, or possibly even give up on that great idea at this point. I’m here to tell you…

DO NOT GIVE UP!

Writing a novel is a lot like baking a cake. You carefully organize and mix the ingredients, select and prepare the pan, then put it in the oven to bake at the right temperature for the perfect amount of time. Unlike the cake, a creative oven requires our input for the heat, and the time it takes to fully bake is not always in our favor. Deadliness be damned. Unfortunately, half-baked is only half there.

The good news is that you got the story into the oven. Here’s a few strategies on how you can get it out…fully baked.

Turning Up the Heat

We get stuck in our writing for lots of reasons. The best way to get unstuck is to shake things up, take a new approach, do something totally different. The unexpected has a way of jump starting creativity. Here’s few suggestions:

  • Go someplace you’ve always wanted to, but haven’t. A change of scenery, especially a place that elicits intrigue, works wonders.
  • Watch A LOT of movies and TV shows. Joss Whedon would watch four or five movies in a row (in one day) to study story. You never know what will provide the boost you need for your story.
  • Read A LOT of different things, both magazines and books. Read outside your comfort zone. Change is good. Embrace it.
  • Talk to people who have cool jobs, or who’ve had very different life experiences than your own. This is one of the things Amie Kauffman, co-author of Illuminae and Gemina, does to get new ideas.
  • Go to a public place and people watch. Imagine where they’re going and what they’ll do when they get there. Have fun creating stories without the pressure of an outcome.
  • Start a totally different project in a completely different genre, just for you. Published authors confess to doing this when they’ve been paralyzed under a deadline. TheFemail chef illustration story they started “for themselves” got them excited about writing again and they made their deadline. Those stories later became wildly popular books too. A win-win.
  • Brainstorm with other writers. Especially if you’re under deadline. Screenwriters work this way a lot.
  • Write stuff. Then write more stuff.
  • Fire your internal editor and keep going until you reach The End.

You’re doing great!

 

“THE PLAYBOOK” of Positivity

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Author, Inspiration, Writing

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52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in this Game Called Life

Playbook coverYou gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar. What can we imagine for our lives? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own basketball rules to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives? 

The Playbook by Kwame Alexander was inspired by his Newberry Medal-winning and New York Times best-selling novel The Crossover. The Playbook is filled with uplifting stories … from favorite sports figures … and 52 rules to follow both on and off the court. Kwame Alexander shares his own … stories of overcoming obstacles and winning games. All illustrated with stunning photographs by Thai Neave.

Say Yes! to life

I heard Kwame talk at Kepler’s Books, and can say straight up that The Playbook is a direct reflection Kwame. He’s a fountain of positivity. And it’s contagious. Kwame Alexander walks the talk. Throughout the evening, he shared lessons from his life on being open to possibility.

The most important rule I’ve learned is that when you are presented with an opportunity that may seem different or challenging or unknown, sometimes you’ve got to summon the courage to trust yourself and SAY YES!

That’s exactly what Kwame did when he was asked to teach students how to professionally publish a (print) book of their poetry … in one day!

Kwame Alexander reading from The CrossoverHe initially designed a two-week workshop. During that time the kids would learn how to design, edit, and layout a book. Then, negotiate with printers, define a marketing plan, and arrange for distribution. As life would have it, the school’s schedule shrunk to a one day window. One day! A seemingly impossible task, especially considering the ages of the children he’d be working with.

Yet, Kwame said Yes!

The workshop started at 7:30 in the morning, and by 4:30 that afternoon the kids had their book of poetry on the way to the printer. Kwame’s wife suggested that he take the program to other schools, and he did. He traveled around the country teaching children how to professionally publish a book of their poetry.

Don’t let other people’s NOs define you

Just as important as saying YES to possibility is not listening to other people’s NOs!. Again, Kwame is proof of the wisdom behind these words. The Crossover is a shining example.

The Crossover is the story about 12 year-old twins who are Kwane Alexander reading from The Playbookawesome on the basketball court, and how they come to realize that breaking the rules comes with serious stakes. Kwame’s game is poetry, and The Crossover is entirely in verse.

Poetry…for middle grade readers, targeted for boys no less.

The Crossover was rejected by the first publisher Kwame submitted it to. So he went back and revised the manuscript, only to get rejections from subsequent submissions to other publishers. He kept at it, revising and submitting. After five years, he’d accumulated 20 rejections.

Most people would’ve given up after the first two or three rejections. Not Kwame, because he knew the power poetry had in changing lives. In the poems he wrote to his mother and daughter, and the “alternative school” students in which poetry inspired a lifetime love of reading. Kwame believed in his work. He didn’t listen to other people’s NOs. Thank goodness.

One publisher finally said YES! The rest is history for the Newberry Award winning, New York Times best-selling novel, The Crossover.

Be Your Own Muse

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

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The Myth of the Muse

Muse ~ a person, or personified force, who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

A muse

For centuries, there have been accounts of writers and artists who looked to muses to spark imagination and fuel creativity. I hate to throw shade on anyone’s creative process, but creativity and imagination are not something you can get from something or someone else. The truth is…

There’s No Magic Feather … or Genie

That’s the bad news. Nothing, and no one, can magically imbue you with creativity. Grow up. It’s just not going to happen.

Creative mindIn Stephen King‘s book, On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft, he says just that: “There’s no magic feather” that will make you a good writer (or artist). It takes a certain amount of innate talent combined with a serious amount of hard work.

The good news is, you don’t need anything outside of yourself to be amazingly creative. You have a vast storehouse of creativity inside you. You just have to know how to access the limitless supply of ideas and raw imagination.

It’s like having your very own Idea Store…inside your head. You just might have temporarily misplaced the key that unlocks the door. Studies of consciousness and the science of creativity (yes, it’s a thing) show there is a Fort-Knox treasure of creativity inside us…just waiting to be tapped.

Activating Your Inner Muse

It’s great knowing you have a wealth of creativity at your beck and call, but you have to know the number. Here’s a few ways to find yours.

I’ve used the following methods, and (from my personal experience) they activate my inner muse. These approaches to unleashing creativity are also listed in the Forbes magazine article Science Continues to Show Us How to Be More Creative.

  • Performing routine tasks, such as housework or walking, allow the mind to wander so creative ideas flow in.
  • Being painfully bored also opens the floodgates of creative thinking. For example, having to wait for long stretches of time, like long airplane flights without a book to read or waiting in line at the DMV.
  • Having a regular meditation practice has shown to improve creativity. Meditation helps slow down the mind, which in turn opens the creative centers of the brain.

At a recent YA (young adult) novel conference, a young writer asked the panel of published authors how they get their creative ideas. Here’s how a few of the authors responded:

Inspiration is Contagious

Why is inspired creativity important for writers? Because a writer’s emotions are woven throughout the tapestry of their stories. As Robert Frost said so succinctly:

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

When a story is infused with imagination, the reader is swept up in the fictional world and carried away. I think we’ve all had that magnificent feeling when reading a good book, becoming the characters and our real world drops away. That quality of writing can create a lifetime love of reading. And to me, that is an author’s true measure of success.

Boy's imagination while reading

The Music of Words

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Music, Writing

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shutterstock_379805902_flipThere is music in words. Listen to a conversation in a language you don’t understand and focus on the lyrical quality. When you aren’t distracted by what is being said, you hear the rhythm of the words and the melody in the tones.

Written words are musical as well. A story, in essence, is a symphony of syllables. Writers weave words into melodies, sentences that flow into passages, then swell into movements.

Writers hear the words as they are put onto the page, as if they being spoken. Their structural tempo evokes mood and conveys emotion. A character’s purpose and journey is intertwined with the melody. The author’s voice is the harmonic fabric that blends intertwining melodies into a vibrant whole.

Many writers find inspiration, and connect with the inner muse, through music. The proof is in the playlists they post on social media, different music for each story.

Find Your Writing Rythm

A writer’s rhythm is their voice. I already have a blog post on The Illusive “Voice” ~ What Editors Want and Writers Seek, so I won’t go into that again. Instead I’ll cut to the chase, to the three simple steps anyone can use to find their unique voice:

  1. Read. Read. Read.
  2. Write. Write. Write.
  3. Repeat.

Read everything in your genre, then read widely in other genres. When you find an author whose style resonates with you, read everything they’ve written. Then read those books again. In the sheer act of reading and rereading their words, you absorb the rhythm of the prose, which miraculously transforms into your own unique voice.

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or tools to write. ~Stephen King

A writer’s voice isn’t a static. The quality of voice evolves as a writer hones and polishes their craft. It takes both reading and writing to discover your writing rhythm, your voice.

Making Music with Words

A story is a symphony of syllables, with possibilities as rich and varied as the imagination. The following excerpts are from books by remarkable authors, each with a unique voice.

Shiver
by Maggie Stiefvater: As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air. That was what I loved, when I was human.

The Game of Love and Death
by Martha Brockenbrough: “If life didn’t end,” he [Love] said, “there would be no need for me. To choose love indreamstime_xs_182186 the face of death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you [Death] are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more than it otherwise might have been.”

The Beauty of Darkness
by Mary E. Pearson: The world flickered, pulling us into protective darkness, and I was in his arms again, our palms damp, searching, no lies, no kingdoms, nothing between us but our skin, his voice warm, fluid, like a golden sun, unfolding every tight thing within me, I will love you forever, no matter what happens.

Crenshaw
by Katherine Applegate: I noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat. Thing number one: He as a surfboarding cat. Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said CATS RULE, DOGS DROOL. Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of not the point of surfing.

Truman Capote understood the music of words. For him, it was the joy of writing.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.~Truman Capote

What story do you need to write, what symphony do you have to play?
Music of words

Fictional Time Management & Other Relative Topics

06 Sunday Nov 2016

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Einstein Nailed It

When I was in grade school, my parents went away for an hour and it felt like an entire day. Seriously. Later that same year when we went to Disneyland for the first time, one day felt like a minute.

Not unlike when we set our clocks forward an hour in the spring for Daylight Savings Time, and it feels like we lose four hours of sleep instead of just one. Yet when we set our clocks back an hour in the fall, the same hour feels like it’s cut in half. What’s up with that?

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in four words: Time is funny stuff.

Clock faces

The Perception of Time is Relative

We often perceive time as expanding or contracting based on our emotions, and our perception creates our reality. Authors have used this to their advantage for quite some time. Telling a story in real-time slows the pace down to focus on a character or story element, or maybe to build suspense. Writers have their ways of accelerating the pace to adjust perception and influence emotion too. Further proof that the pen, and the keyboard, are mightier than the sword. And quantum physics…apparently.

Manipulating fictional time, at its best, keeps readers turning the pages. I wrote a post on Time as a Story Element that discusses these techniques in greater detail, if you’re interested.

Lost Time: Timekeeper

What if time didn’t just expand and contract, but could actually be lost? As in disappear. Vanish. Just freaking gone.

TimekeeperAn intriguing predicament that I hadn’t considered, until I picked up Timekeeper by Tara Sim. The first lines of this alternate Victorian era London run by clock towers cut to the chase:

Two o’clock was missing. Danny wanted it to be a joke. Hours didn’t just disappear.

But they can, and did, in a world where clock towers literally control time. When a clock tower breaks, so does time. And when a clock tower is destroyed, time stops completely. This clockpunk fantasy is infused with magic, woven through with myth, and spiced with mayhem. Danny, our hero, is a clock Mechanic charged with ensuring that time flows according to the natural order. The Mechanics inherit the job, because they can actually feel the strands of time and the weave of its fabric. The existential truths layered throughout the story provide satisfying believability and depth.

Time was everywhere and nowhere at once, making the moment last an eternity.

Stuck in Time: Groundhog Day

There is broken time, and then there is being stuck in time on infinite repeat. A post on fictional time and relativity just isn’t complete without a mention of one of my favorite movies: Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day movie

Phil (Bill Murray), an egotistical curmudgeon of a weatherman, gets stuck living Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania over, and over, and over…until he finally gets it right. Which for him, takes some doing. I could go on and on and on about this movie, but you’ll enjoy watching the following trailer much more. May time forever flow in your favor.

Word Wizardry ~ The Power of Punchy Dialog

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Fiction, Television, Writing

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Dialog molds characters into three-dimensions. What characters say, as well as what they don’t, reveals who they are. Dialog has the power to make a story and its characters memorable, whether in books, theater, film, or television. I shamelessly study any medium that’s raised the dialog bar. My current obsession interest is The West Wing.

The West Wing cast

The Magic of the Cutting Quip

I’m a little (?) late to the game on The West Wing (1999-2006). However, it is still in high westwing_joshsam1pngdemand on Netflix, which is a testament to its raise-the-bar quality.

The snappy dialog, and the aplomb with which it is delivered, hooked me in the first episode. Centered around the day-to-day happenings surrounding the President of the United States and his staff, The West Wing tackles serious topics without sinking into the morose. The sheer genius of the dialog and its delivery balanced intense drama with just-right humor, while revealing nuanced layers character traits.

Such as when Sam Seaborn, Deputy White House Communications Director in the administration of President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, deflects an attack of an irate woman for his stance on school funding:

Woman: Don’t play dumb with me.
Sam: I am dumb. Most of the time I’m playing smart.

Then there were the typos in the State of the Union Address. Sam Seaborn, headshotAs a writer, I may find typos funnier than most. But still. It’s The White House. Monumental decisions that affect millions of people go down there every day. So misspelled words in the State of the Union Address? Kind of (?) funny, if not a little embarrassing.

The following exchange happened during a read-through of the President’s State of the Union speech:

President: I’m proud to report our country’s stranger than it was a year ago?
Sam: Stronger. That’s a typo.
President: It could go either way.

Then later in the same episode:

First Lady: Why is hall#wed spelled with a pound sign in the middle of it?
President: I stopped asking those questions.

Dialog “Do’s” from The West Wing

  • Reveal personality quirks.
    Josh Lyman, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Donna Moss, his assistant, were arguing about her not checking his lunch order to make sure his hamburger was burned-to-a-crisp. Josh elaborates, “I like my hamburger so hard that if you drop it on the floor it breaks.”
  • Show character strengths.
    Josh threatens to fire Donna when she pushes back on a request that’s obviously not important. To which she replies, “You’ve already fired me three times. I’m impervious.” Then she walks away, declaring “Impervious.”
  • Expose character dynamics.
    C.J. Cregg, White House Press Secretary, intentionally annoys Josh in a press briefing by saying, “…the theoretical psychics at Cal Tech Nuclear Lab… You know what? I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be physicists.”
  • Engender empathy in a character.
    An international incident is in play, the President suffered a medical emergency, the State of the Union Address is that evening, and everyone keeps asking him if he’s taking his medication. To ease his staff’s worry, President Bartlet responds with humor, “Is it possible I’m taking something called euthanasia?” Sam replies, “Echinacea.” The President smiles, “That sounds more like it.”
  • Lighten an intense scene.
    Every episode of The West Wing uses witty banter to lighten intense scenes. Joss Whedon—creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—said it best: “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”