August 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

Revisiting the Layers of the Scene: conversation #writing

This last week has been hectic. I have managed to make headway on one of my novellas despite the distractions. I was planning to write a post on the layers of a scene but realized I had written this one only two years ago, and nothing has changed.

I hope you don’t mind revisiting it. If you’ve already read it, thank you for stopping by and feel free to move on!

Most of my novels and short stories begin life as exchanges of dialogue between two characters. Their conversations shed light on what each character’s role in the story might be.

We all know that dialogue must do at least one (if not all) of these four things:

  1. It must share information the characters are only now learning.
  2. It should show the characters’ mood and state of mind.
  3. It must shed light on the relationship of the characters to each other.
  4. We include props that show the world and the characters’ places in their society.

So, once I have an idea for a story, I think about the characters and ask what they need to know, either about their quest or themselves. It’s a two-stage process—the scenery and background get filled in after the dialogue has been written.

I picture the scene. Then, I write just the dialogue for several back-and-forth exchanges, getting the basic words down.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

Once I know what they are talking about and have the rudimentary dialogue straight, I add basic scenery and speech tags. The dialogue grows with each layer because the scene becomes sharper in my mind.

The next morning, when his stepmother came down for coffee, John was once again working on something in his notebook.

“What are you doing?” Ann’s clipped tones cut the silence.

“Oh, just drawing.” He stood, gathering his pens. The peace he’d sought had gone earlier than he hoped.

“Drawing what?”

John’s normally open features were closed, inscrutable. “You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.” Closing his sketchbook, he attempted to leave but stopped when she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Show me. Now.” When Ann repeated her demand, he reluctantly opened the book. Page after page was covered in stylized dragons, leafy vines, and runes. “Why do you waste your time with this crap? You could be brilliant, but no! People want real art, not this drivel.”

“This is how I earn my living.”

Ann poured herself a cup of coffee, pausing only to sneer. “You don’t have a pot to—”

“It pays my mortgage. What more do you want?” John reclaimed the sketchbook. “Coming back here was a mistake. I did it because David asked me to, because Dad is ill, and because it’s Christmas.”

“Don’t talk to me about David. You encouraged my son to abandon a brilliant career in the law firm that has been in the family for four generations.”

“Stop. I encouraged my stepbrother to have faith in himself. Yes, I urged him to try out for the position of symphony concertmaster, and he got the job. He’s incredibly talented and loves what he does.” John crossed toward the dining room, aware that arguing with her would change nothing. “Enjoy your breakfast.” The kitchen door closed behind him, cutting off his stepmother’s rant.

The layers that form this scene are:

  1. good_conversations_LIRFmemeAction: She comes down for coffee. He holds a notebook, gathers pens, and stands.
  2. Dialogue: shows long-simmering resentment between the two players and gives us a time reference—it’s Christmas.
  3. Environment: a kitchen, closed off from the rest of the house.
  4. The story: Ann is under severe stress in her work and at home. In this story, her closed-off kitchen is symbolic of her closed-off personality. The place that is the heart of a home is walled away. She doesn’t want to examine why she is enraged by David and John’s freedom to make their own choices.

We work with layers to create each scene. With these layers, we show the reader everything they need to know about that moment in time.

Over the course of a narrative, conversations will take place in different settings. Readers will gradually see the world through the characters’ eyes. They will visualize the world without our having to dump a floor plan or itinerary on the reader. Remember our basic conversation?

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.”

Let’s keep the names and put that dialogue and the notebook into a fantasy setting. We’ll change how the characters are related to each other and see what comes up:

Logically, Ann knew John wasn’t responsible for David’s death. Two years on, and it still colored her life. But he’d come back alive when her brother hadn’t, and a secret part of her blamed him for that. Still, her curiosity grew stronger every time she saw him with his pencils beside the campfire, drawing something in his notebook.

Ann knelt and turned the flatbread so it would cook evenly. She couldn’t ask him about the stupid notebook. Why had she volunteered to cook? It was bad enough that she was traveling alone with him. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was open to resuming their old accord.

But curiosity, her greatest curse, got the better of her. To her horror, she heard herself ask, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

“You’ll laugh or find a reason to mock me for it.” Closing his sketchbook, John attempted to rise but stopped when she put her hand on his shoulder.

“I promise I won’t. Please? I’m just curious.”

John’s guarded expression said he doubted her. Of course, he did. She’d been cold to him since David was killed. But he opened his notebook.

Page after page was covered with portraits of all the members of their clan, including her. Each looked as full of life as if they could step off the page. Tears sprang to her eyes on seeing the many portraits of her brother, handsome and laughing. “All these drawings of David … it’s the way I want to remember him.” She met his gaze. “Thank you.”

John looked away. “I dream all night long of that day and all the things I could have done to change what happened. And then I have to draw. I don’t know why.”

Ann’s eyes burned again. She owed him an apology. But how? “Maybe you draw portraits to keep the people you love alive.” She sighed, saying what she knew was the truth. “It was an avalanche. You couldn’t have changed anything.”

We used the same words as in the previous scene for the core of the conversation and included a sketchbook. We used the same names. John is still an artist, and Ann is still under stress, in this case, grief. However, with different relationships, we have different histories. We end up with different character arcs and a different outcome.

The layers that form this scene are:

Family Camping Clipart

Action: Ann is cooking—the campfire is her kitchen. John opens a notebook.

Dialogue: shows a wary interaction between two people who know each other well but are estranged and who may be entering a different stage in their relationship.

Environment: a campsite, an open fire. It is set in the wide outdoors, yet in the darkness, it is intimate.

The core of the dialogue is the same, but the direction the conversation takes is changed because the story and the characters are different.

By beginning with the conversation and envisioning it as if it were a scene in a movie, I can flesh it out and show everything the reader needs to know. Readers are smart and don’t want to be told what to think. Their minds will supply the details of a kitchen or a campsite, depending on the props I include when I add the set dressing.

The layers of action, dialogue, and environment form the framework that supports the story. Where will the layers you add to your conversations take your stories? The possibilities are endless.

This post first appeared here on Life in the Realm of Fantasy in August of 2024. Thank you for revisiting it with me!

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August 7, 2026 · 10:10 am

#FineArtFriday: A second look at “Newhaven Harbour on the Firth of Forth” by Samuel Bough

Samuel_Bough_-_Newhaven_harbour_on_the_Firth_of_ForthArtist: Samuel Bough  (1822–1878)

Title: Newhaven Harbour on the Firth of Forth

Date: Unknown date

Medium: pencil and watercolor, heightened with white

Dimensions: height: 25.4 cm (10 in); width: 35.6 cm (14 in)

Inscriptions: Signature bottom left: Sam Bough

What I love about this painting:

This is a faithful record of a sunny summer day at a busy harbor on Scotland’s Firth of Forth, painted before the port of Newhaven was industrialized. When this painting is viewed from a distance, there is a crispness to the scene, to the women and men purchasing fresh-caught fish, conveyed by the choice of colors, the use of pencils with the watercolors, and the impressionist’s technique.

I like this scene. It’s an active scene, bustling and full of mid-nineteenth-century life.

About the Artist, via Lyon and Turnbull:

Considered to be one of the most influential and prolific Scottish landscape painters of the 19th century, Sam Bough RSA was a self-taught artist who spent much of his career working in Scotland. Born in 1822 in Carlisle, Bough settled in Manchester where he worked as a scene painter in the Theatre Royal.

After moving to Glasgow he continued to paint in the evenings whilst working at the New Princes Theatre, eventually building enough success to move to painting full-time. Bough’s reputation as a topographical and landscape painter grew during the 1850s, and by the time he resettled in Edinburgh he had established himself as a successful landscape artist. Whilst living in the capital he created some of his most important paintings.

Bough was as successful a painter in both oils and watercolours, and was committed to depicting a wide variety of landscape views and effects, urban and rural, bright days and dark storms. However, there are specific locations and landscapes that Bough returns to regularly in his work; the hustle and bustle of harbours and coastal towns, with the distinctive Newhaven harbour a particular favourite, and the hunting forest of Cadzow, near Hamilton. Generally associated with views of Scotland, he did also create a series of Italian views. In general, his spontaneity, loose technique and interest in capturing fleeting atmospheric effects, particularly cloud formations and weather, establishes him as an important predecessor of the Scottish Impressionists, paving the way for the development towards a freer, plein air style. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Bio Quote: Sam Bough | Scottish 1822 – 1878 (lyonandturnbull.com) accessed August 28, 2024.

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August 3, 2026 · 6:00 am

Lack of information drives a plot forward #writing

We have often heard the saying that “knowledge is power.” Great plots are driven by an imbalance of power caused by a lack of knowledge, and that lack creates the tension that keeps the reader engaged.

So, our protagonist lacks knowledge about something. She discovers that someone else knows something. The need for those answers sets our girl on a path, a quest to discover the one who does know.

At first, it seems easy:

  1. Find the knowledge,
  2. Achieve the goal,
  3. Story over in thirty pages.

But we’re writing a novel, so it’s not that easy. The first roadblock is here, also known as the inciting incident. The information gained has done one of several things:

  1. It led us to a dead end.
  2. Or it was incomplete.
  3. Or it was a trap.

My novel could be a romance, mystery, sci-fi adventure, or a fantasy tale. The dark corners of the story must gradually be illuminated by the characters who know stuff.

An imbalance of information is called asymmetric information.Finding the knowledge may be fraught with difficulty, but that struggle is the best part. No matter what era, world, or genre a story is set in, an imbalance of knowledge creates an imbalance of power, and the quest to resolve that imbalance IS the story.

This is called asymmetric information, a situation that occurs all the time both in business and politics. Let’s consider that concept.

In real life, asymmetric information creates a situation in which one party in a business transaction has more or superior information compared to another. In business, one individual’s pursuit of pure self-interest can prevent other companies from effectively entering and competing in an industry or market. He/she has the critical knowledge their competitors don’t have, which effectively eliminates the competition. He/she has a monopoly.

A monopoly of information creates a crisis. In real life, the bank could fail, a politician could lose the election, or we could act on assumptions and generally make a fool of ourselves.

A scene that is all action can be confusing if it has no context. If there is no narrator acting as a witness (an omniscient presence, if you will), a properly placed conversation can give the reader the context needed to understand the reason for the action.

A certain amount of context can arrive through an internal monologue, but it must be done in a way that doesn’t leave the reader facing a wall of italics. There are two problems with long mental conversations:

  • Italics are daunting in large chunks.
  • Internal monologues can become a thinly veiled cover for an info dump.

When we are building a plot, our characters must work with a limited understanding of the overall situation. At the outset, they think they know what is going on, and their actions reflect that belief.

Question markThis is good because characters who know everything are boring. Asymmetric information creates a crisis, and that crisis is the real story.

Conversations can work if we keep them on track and don’t wander off the subject. No one wants to read about people nattering on or rehashing old times. Yes, Aunt Jo made terrible spaghetti sauce, but is that really important?

For me as a reader, a story works when the information dribbles down to me piece by piece. That way, our characters must search for the next clue or someone else who knows. That search offers opportunities for mishaps.

Mishaps and dead ends build tension.

HOWEVER … conversations can be a field loaded with landmines. Restrain the urge to dump information. Characters should discuss things that advance the plot in such a way that they:

  1.      Illuminate the speaker’s personality.
  2.     Offer something tantalizing about the quest or perhaps shed a little light on a character that has so far been a mystery.
  3.      Tell us where we should go next.

steampunk hand holding a penI struggle with this, too. Foreshadowing is important and keeps the reader reading, but dispersing small but necessary bits of info at the right moment is tricky. This is because I know it all and must fight the urge to share it too early.

Hopefully, with the aid of my beta readers, all these bumps will have been smoothed out by the end of my second draft.

When we write a story, no matter the length, we hope the narrative will keep our readers interested until the end of the book. We lure readers into the scene and reward them with a tiny dose of new information and then drop them into trouble.

I have no idea whether the novel I’m working on today will be an engaging story for a reader or not.

But I’m enjoying writing it.

And that is what writing should be about: writing the story you want to read. Write it to the best of your ability through as many drafts as it takes and be proud of what you do.

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July 31, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a second look at “Sommarnöje (Summer Fun)” by Anders Zorn 1886

Sommarnöje_(1886),_akvarell_av_Anders_ZornArtist: Anders Zorn  (1860–1920)

Title: (Swedish: Sommarnöje)  (English: Summer Fun)

Genre: marine art

Date: 1886

Medium: watercolor paint on paper

Dimensions: height: 76 cm (29.9 in)

Collection: Private collection

Place of creation: Dalarö, Sweden

Inscriptions: Signature and date bottom left: Zorn -86

What I love about this painting:

I first featured this painting in February of 2024. I really like this image.

The way the lake is shown took me back to my childhood. I grew up in a house that faced directly onto a large lake, with a wide beach for swimming, a wooden dock, and few neighbors. It was a peaceful place in summer, although it could be dreary in winter.

The southern Puget Sound area usually experiences more overcast days in June than most people like. Many days, the waters and the sky look exactly as Anders Zorn has depicted them here.

Zorn’s brushwork is so meticulous, it is nearly photographic. He captures the feeling of the day, of the breeze, slightly sharp but not too cold, and the anticipation of going out on the water.

I like the story Anders Zorn is painting for us. I like that the male subject is maneuvering the small boat closer to the pier so she can jump in.

She is adventurous woman. Her skits are gathered and she’s prepared to make that leap.

About this painting, via Wikipedia:

Zorn painted Sommarnöje in Dalarö in the early summer of 1886, after the couple had returned from honeymoon but before they settled in Mora. He made a smaller sketch first, which measures 30.2 by 18.8 centimeters (11.9 in × 7.4 in), now held by the Zorn Museum in Mora.

The completed watercolor captures a fleeting moment and shows influence from the works of the French Impressionists that Zorn had seen while in Paris, but with a distinctively austere Scandinavian palette.

The painting depicts the artist’s wife Emma Zorn standing in a white dress and hat, waiting on the edge of a wooden pier beside the water, as their friend Carl Gustav Dahlström approaches in a rowing boat.

The reflective glassy surface of the water is rippling in a breeze, under cloudy grey skies. The figures, pier, boat and sea are finely rendered, almost as if the work was made in oil paint, showing Zorn’s skill as a watercolorist. Less attention is paid to the other side of the lake, sketched roughly in the background. It is signed and dated in the lower left corner, “Zorn 86”.

It was acquired by Edvard Levisson of Gothenburg, and then descended through the Schollin-Borg family. The painting was sold at the Stockholms Auktionsverk in June 2010 for SEK 26 million, setting a record for a Swedish painting.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Zorn was born in Mora, Sweden, between the lakes of Siljan and Orsasjön. He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm from 1875 to 1880, and then spent time travelling in Europe, painting watercolours and society portraits in London, Paris and Madrid.

He returned to Sweden in 1885, and on 16 October, he married Emma Zorn (née Lamm) (1860 – 1942). After spending their honeymoon abroad, in eastern Europe and Turkey, they returned to Sweden in 1886, spending time with Emma’s family at Dalarö, before settling near Mora, where their house, which is now the home of the Zorn Collections, is located.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Sommarnöje (1886), akvarell av Anders Zorn.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sommarn%C3%B6je_(1886),_akvarell_av_Anders_Zorn.jpg&oldid=842907051 (accessed February 29, 2024).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Sommarnöje,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sommarn%C3%B6je&oldid=1149795747 (accessed February 29, 2024).

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July 27, 2026 · 6:00 am

More random thoughts about the process of #writing

I’m not a Romance writer, but I do write about humans and their relationships. The people in my tales sometimes fall in love, and while they don’t always have a happily ever after, most do. An aspect of my writing that would disappoint a dedicated Romance reader is the profound shortage of smut.

I think of sex the way I do violence. Both occur in real life. I’m like every other author in that I want my characters to live. However, while I have been graphic in the past when the story demanded it (Huw the Bard, Julian Lackland, and Billy Ninefingers), their stories follow the events that change and shape them. Some of those events are traumatic, while others are moments of joy. I would likely write some of those scenes differently now, nearly twenty years on.

When I first have a glimmer of an idea about who the characters might be, I make a small outline of what their personality is, noting their likes and dislikes. This always evolves and changes as I lay down the first draft.

When I first know two characters are developing either antipathy or an attraction, I find writing the subtler nuances of those emotions difficult. In real life, we are sometimes repulsed by a person. It seldom happens, but when it does, I feign geniality but offer nothing beyond pleasantries. Nor do I encourage further communications beyond that chance encounter at a party or, as sometimes happens, in a work environment.

Cartoon: I am their creator. Why do they not obey me?When I’m building the first draft of a story, the characters’ emotions seem to come out of nowhere and feel forced. This gets ironed out in subsequent drafts.

For me, the hardest part is writing subtle foreshadowing. I try to show the gradual connection as it grows between two people, but it often takes two or three drafts to get it right.

I have many friends who write Romance. I read their work and enjoy it. I’ve also attended many workshops given by Romance writers and learned a great deal from them.

I love books on the craft of writing. Two books in my writing craft library that have seen heavy use were written by Damon Suede, who writes Romance. He explains how word choices can make or break the narrative.

As a reader, I have found his viewpoint to be accurate. As a writer, I have found putting it into practice takes work.

In his book Verbalize, Damon explains how actions make other events possible. Crucially for me, he reminds us that even gentler, softer emotions must have verbs to set them in motion.

So, emotions are nouns and need strong verbs to push them to action. Matching these nouns with verbs is key to bringing a scene to life.

This is where my writing experience becomes work. I open the Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms and delve into the many words that relate to and describe attraction. Or I can go online: ATTRACTION Synonyms: 33 Synonyms & Antonyms for ATTRACTION | Thesaurus.com

I make a list of the words that I think will fit my characters’ personalities. Then, I have to choose the words that say what I mean and fit them into the narrative. Sometimes, this means I will rewrite a sentence two or three times before it says what I intend and flows naturally.

My Billy’s Revenge series (Huw the Bard, Billy Ninefingers, and Julian Lackland) began from one accidental novel. That novel was spewed onto the page, and the relationships developed without preplanning. Thanks to my inexperience and a predatory publisher, that book had a rough life, but fortunately I had retained the rights to my book. It was unpublished, dismembered, and over the next ten years, the three character threads were separated into their own novels instead of jammed into one.

For me as a person and as a reader, true Romance has an air of mystery, of something undiscovered. It has to be a little bit magical, or I can’t suspend my disbelief.

Writing adventures for my people is easy. When two characters are gravitating toward one another, injecting the feeling of magic into that attraction is the tricky part.

When a beta reader tells me the relationship seems forced, I go back to the basics and make an outline of how that relationship should progress from page one through each chapter. I make a detailed note of what their status should be at the end. This gives me jumping-off points so that I don’t suffer from brain freeze when trying to show the scenes.

As I am rewriting the scenes involving a developing relationship, I want to avoid weak phrasing. I look at the placement of verbs in my sentences. When a scene feels weak, it is usually my phrasing that is off. As I revise each scene, I try to ensure that the reader will experience events as the characters do.

Harold felt attracted to Gertie. This is a scene that indicates attraction, but it is narrated. That makes it weak, telling. What did Harold’s experience of attraction feel like? Maybe a small wish to know her better? Pounding pulse?

Bystanders narrate their view of events, but characters experience the events. Reading their thoughts and emotions as they do is far more compelling than hearing a bystander talk about it.

It’s true that some stories need an all-seeing narrator. Even if a tale is told in the third-person omniscient voice, readers want to live the events with the characters.

I think this is why many authors gravitate to a first-person point of view. I confess I do enjoy stories with unreliable narrators. They offer their opinions and shade the truth, and sometimes outright lie to us. They’re more interesting because of that.

I think our characters have to be a little clueless about romance, even if they are older. They need to doubt, need to worry. They need to fear they don’t have a chance, either to complete their quest or to find love.

Romance writers have it right: overcoming the roadblocks to happiness makes for great love stories. This is why I read in every genre. I try to learn what I can from the masters, seeing how they use their words to write their scenes and construct their stories.

Romance is drama, but it isn’t the entire story.

Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame said something about drama and creativity on a recent podcast. He was talking about Stanley Kubrick’s creative process. His opinion was that Kubrick is best at recognizing the moments where a story could create drama.

Attraction and antipathy are two sides of one of those points. That place is a point where the smallest emotions can grow and create friction until they catch fire. And recognizing those places with strong emotional potential is crucial to creating a great novel or short story.

Yes, my first drafts are pretty uneven and flat, but I hope my beta readers can spot those missed moments. That way, I can illuminate them when the manuscript is in revisions rather than making my poor editor suffer.

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July 24, 2026 · 9:14 am

#FineArtFriday: A second look at “California Spring” by Albert Bierstadt 1875

Albert_Bierstadt_California_SpringArtist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: California Spring

Genre: landscape art

Date: 1875

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 187.3 cm (73.7 in); width: 264.2 cm (104 in)

Current location: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

I very nearly forgot to post an art piece today, which is why it’s late. Albert Bierstadt is one of my favorite 19th century artists. He was known for presenting nature in an epic, majestic manner. This painting demonstrates his skill at depicting the grandeur and power of storms and the wildness of the lands of the American West. In many of his other works, he also showed the native people as they were, depicting them as having dignity and purpose in their lives.

What I love about this painting:

I love this composition, the way everything is deliberately placed. Cattle graze on a hilltop beneath a grove of trees, uncaring of the rainstorm sweeping across the valley below, far off in the distance. The immensity of the sky is the focus of this scene, with the sun emerging from the clouds, a brief promise of warmer days. Spring has arrived on this hilltop.

Albert Bierstadt paints us an idyllic scene of seasonal weather and the harmony of nature. The grass is green, the cattle are happy, and while rain may come, summer is around the corner.

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.

Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

Image: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Albert Bierstadt California Spring.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Albert_Bierstadt_California_Spring.jpg&oldid=701053175 (accessed February 9, 2023).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1137881139 (accessed February 9, 2023).

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July 20, 2026 · 6:00 am

Random thoughts on why some novels stink #writing

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t review books I don’t like. So let’s talk about why some books are not on my review list: first-draft issues that occasionally find their way into published works. For me as an author, the easiest part of writing is inadvertently slipping a clumsy bit of phrasing into my narrative, having an action scene go hilariously (and impossibly) wrong.

I don’t usually notice the awkwardness until my editor points it out.

One: passive phrasing. I’ve said this before, but in real life, people don’t “begin” to pick up that hammer. They don’t “start” to walk away.

  • They reach for the hammer or take it from the toolbox.
  • They walk

We’re thinking and writing the story as it falls from our heads. Because we get into storytelling mode, the dog begins to bark, and the neighbors start to complain. In real life, the dog barks, and the neighbors complain.

Two: not showing a character’s emotions. When laying down the first draft, it’s easy to “tell” the story instead of showing it: “Hugo was mad.” That is concise, but it tells us nothing about Hugo.

Then there is the opposite extreme, showing far too much. I once read a 250-word description of a purple velvet suit of dubious origin. I had trouble not going to sleep. I could see what the author was trying to say, but the host’s suit was the least of the travesties in that train wreck of a novel.

They could have written the entire 250-word encounter this way: Vincent wore a suit of purple velvet, threadbare, and looking as if it came from his grandfather’s closet. A good investment for the author would have been to hire a professional editor.

I don’t care for minute details describing facial expressions: “Marge’s eyebrows drew together, her lips turned down, and her cheeks popped a dimple. Hate glared from her eyes.”

Not a good visualization.

Three: wimpy word choices. Some authors swamp us with an avalanche of prettily written descriptors: “-ly” words. In the 18th and 19th centuries, “ly” words in literature were often rife, a natural and expected component of narrative flow.

But times have changed. A few adverbs and adjectives ending in “ly” are unavoidable, but as authors grow in the craft of writing for modern readers, they begin to find alternate words that sound more forceful: power words.

Power words can be found beginning with every letter of the alphabet and usually don’t end in “ly.” In English, words that begin with consonants convey strength. What are some “B” words that convey a hint of danger, but aren’t “telling” words?

  • Backlash
  • Blinded
  • Blood
  • Blunder

When you incorporate any of the above “B” words into your prose, you post a road sign for the reader, a notice that “ahead lies danger.” Mingle them with other power words, and you have an air of danger.

New writers sometimes want to show their characters as human. They have them natter on about nothing: “Remember when….” If the memory doesn’t pertain to the story or explain something about a character that has been a mystery, it doesn’t advance the plot. Rather than showing them as human, it pads the word count, stalls the momentum, and the reader stops reading.

Four: use of clichés. Speaking as a reader, no matter how perfect it is, please don’t use the word alabaster to describe a white woman’s skin. Don’t describe a black woman’s skin as chocolate. Make an effort to find a different way to describe her appearance. It’s an easy word that says smooth and pale, or smooth and dark.

Overused words and phrases become clichés.

Most readers will tell you that it’s not usually necessary to describe a character’s skin other than with broad generalizations. This is because you want the reader to imagine them for themselves, and we all have different ideas of beauty.

Clichés and catchphrases will appear in the first drafts of our work, but they are signposts for the second draft. They tell us to spend some time finding a creative way to show a person or an event.

Five: events that occur for no reason and take the story nowhere. One of my favorite sci-fi series is “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series of books written by the late Douglas Adams. The storylines across all the books have a random feel, but they are anything but random.

The books detail the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman traveling the galaxy in his pajamas. He and his friend are transported off the earth just in time to miss the destruction of the planet by the Vogons, a race of unpleasant and bureaucratic aliens, to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

Douglas Adams understood that there must be a reason for the protagonist to leave his home wearing his pajamas and a robe. He used that opportunity to show the cozy, comfortable environment Arthur was about to be thrust out of.

Adams understood how to write a compelling story. First, he showed us Arthur in his happy home, and then his protagonist had to be quickly yanked out there and placed on that Vogon Constructor Ship. Every event in Arthur’s story exists for a reason.

Six: Inadequate research presented as fact. Don’t say you’re writing real science if you are skimping on research. Yes, true research is time-consuming. Writing true history, writing medical dramas, and using police and military procedures involves effort. You must glean research from more sources than Wikipedia and old CSI episodes.

If you are writing historical fiction, you must know the true history of your subject. Make notes as you read each, noting the book title, the author, and the page number where you found the info, as you may need to know those things later. You can write fiction around it, but major historical events have well-known timelines. It’s work to learn the facts, but this is a job where you can’t skimp.

A research side note: Storyboards are your friend.

If you are writing speculative fiction, fantasy, or even a contemporary novel set in your town, you will accumulate background information in your world-building process. You will want to keep it organized, and this is where the style sheet or storyboard comes in handy.

What the style sheet/storyboard should cover:

  • All names, created or not: Aeos, Aeolyn, Beryl, Carl, Edwin, etc.
  • Real and created animal names: alligator, stinkbear, thunder-cow, waterdemon
  • Created words that are hyphenated: fire-mage, thunder-cow
  • All place names, real or created: Seattle, Chicago, Ragat, Wister, Sevya, Arlen, Neveyah
  • Any maps, calendars, and research notes you have accumulated.

See my post, Designing the Story,” for more on how to make a storyboard or style sheet.

Keep your notes/stylesheet in a clearly labeled file, and back them up on a thumb drive or file them in the cloud via Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Docs. I use and work out of a file-saving service, so my files won’t be lost no matter what happens to my computer.

Turning those notes into your story is an integral part of the writing process.

Seven: plagiarism. This is most important: never copy lines from another person’s work and pass them off as your own. That is plagiarism, and you never want to be accused of that. If you must quote someone verbatim in your book and the work is not in the public domain, contact their publisher and get their legal permission to do so, and credit them by using proper footnotes. If you do not receive written consent, do not use their work.

Keep this written permission on file with any other legal papers that pertain to that book. An excellent article on this can be found here: Cite Unseen: 3 Bits for a Better Bibliography.

So, there they are, a few random thoughts on the reason some published novels don’t resonate with me, no matter how affordably they are priced.

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July 17, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Resting in Maremma by Giovanni Fattori ca. 1875

Artist: Giovanni Fattori (1825–1908)

Title: Resting in Maremma (Italian: Riposo in Maremma)

Description: Resting in Maremma (c.1875), by Giovanni Fattori

Date: circa 1875

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimension: height: 35 cm (13.7 in); width: 72.5 cm (28.5 in)

Collection: Private collection

Inscriptions: Signature bottom right: Gio. Fattori

What I like about this painting:

This is the first work I’ve seen by Giovanni Fattori. I really like the way it shows the laborers resting after loading the hay wagon. This is an excellent historical depiction of an ox-drawn hay wagon. One can see how the oxen are hitched, and the shape of the wagon.

I especially like the flat, dry land and the view of the sea beyond.

About this painting, via Wikipedia:

Following the death of his wife in March 1867, he spent the summer of 1867 in Castiglioncello with the critic Diego Martelli, the theoretician of the Macchiaioli. Working together with the painter Giuseppe Abbati on the same themes, he painted a number of landscapes en plein air and studies of rustic life and peasants working in market gardens. In these paintings, he put particular emphasis on a bold design within geometrical simplicity, and on an intense luminosity. One of his paintings from this period is Pause in the Maremma with Farmers and Ox-cart (1873–75).

About the Artist: via Wikipedia:

Giovanni Fattori (6 September 1825 – 30 August 1908) was an Italian artist, one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was initially a painter of historical themes and military subjects. In his middle years, inspired by the Barbizon school, he became one of the leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life. After 1884, he devoted much energy to etching. [1]

For more about this artist, go to Giovanni Fattori – Wikipedia

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Giovanni Fattori,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Giovanni_Fattori&oldid=1347862097 (accessed July 17, 2026).

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July 13, 2026 · 6:00 am

#writing about grief

Last week I recycled two posts. This was because my husband had passed away, and I was unable to think of what to write about. So today, I want to talk about memories and deep personal emotions and how they color our view of the world.

Greg had been suffering from Parkinson’s and for the last year, he’d been in an adult family home. He had been steadily declining and had three hospitalizations over the last six months. After the last bout of pneumonia, he was on hospice, and so I shouldn’t have been surprised by his death.

But I was.

Grief is a complex emotion to write about because people experience it in so many different ways. I now realize I have been grieving since the day he was no longer in my full-time care. Even though I went every day to visit him, there was a hole in our home where he had been.

His “ejector” chair sits in the corner by his side table, just as it did when he was still able to live at home. At times, seeing it made me feel angry, and I didn’t know why. But even though he would never come home, it was still his chair, empty of the man who had been my rock, my anchor. I sat in it, hoping to fill the silence, but it didn’t help.

My journey with grief began two and a half years ago on the day I realized he required more care than I could safely give him. I had hired caregivers to help mornings, and some evenings, but at night he suffered from hallucinations and exceedingly disturbed sleep.

He called for me at least once an hour all night long and I could get no rest. He had become unable to walk or help transfer himself to his wheelchair. Worse, he had lost the ability to smile.

He fell several times and had to be hospitalized. Still, I tried to care for him but it was becoming unworkable.

I began mourning the day I realized I had to cancel our reservation for our annual summer trip, that even an ADA room would not be enough, that he required 24-hour care by professionals. We would never again make the pilgrimage to our soul-home together. We would never again walk on the sand with his sister and her family, and never investigate the tidal pools at Haystack Rock together. We would never again rent our favorite condo, the one with the perfect view of Terrible Tilly, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.

At the time, the subconscious awareness of what we would never again do together darkened my view of things, although I never focused on the growing sense of loss. I had a schedule to keep to, daily visits to the adult family home to make no matter what. I had to schedule his doctor appointments and special transportation to arrange and pay for. I had to pay the bills and argue with the insurance companies.

I had all these things to keep me from contemplating why I felt so distracted and depressed.

Fortunately, I have a supportive family and a strong circle of friends who lift me up when I need a laugh. I have a career as a writer, and while my husband is no longer physically here to give me that smile and encourage me, I have a wealth of memories to cherish.

Now, instead of the frail shell of a man made immobile by the disease, I am able to see him the way he was before Parkinson’s stole his smile. Now I only see the kind and happy man who never failed to lighten the room. The man whose dedication to his family was boundless.

We were together for twenty-three years. I’m a pretty good cook, but occasionally, things don’t turn out the way I think they will. Greg ate anything I served and complimented it, no matter how awful I thought it was.

Those years have been the best because I had a life partner who was creative and generous, a man who cared about people he’d never met and who supported many charities. He loved traveling the Washington and Oregon coast and finding new places to visit.

He looked forward to our annual Valentines Day “Wine and Cheese” parties with our friends and happily spent time shopping and selecting good vintages and fancy cheeses.

I miss him and always will, but now I can see him the way he truly was, not as the man whose final days were so difficult to watch. Life is sometimes hard and often sad, but it is still good.

I carry him in my heart, so he will always be with me.

Credits and Attributions:

Haystack Rock, by Tiger635 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Terrible Tilly, Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, © 2019 by Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved (author’s own work).

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July 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a close look at “Worn Out” by H. A. Brendekilde 1889

Artist: H. A. Brendekilde (1857–1942)

Title: (English: Worn out) (Danish: Udslidt)

Date: 1889

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 207 cm (81.4 in); width: 270 cm (106.2 in)

Inscriptions: Signature and date bottom right: H.A. Brendekilde 89

Collection: Funen’s Art Museum

About this painting:

Hans Andersen Brendekilde (7 April 1857 – 30 March 1942) was a Danish painter.

H.A. Brendekilde was a forerunner of the social realist style, embraced by Diego Rivera.

This is one of my favorite paintings because the artist shows us the story of a poor farmer or farm laborer.

Brejdekilde’s early work often depicted the daily lives of the rural working class. Later, he painted portraits on commission and also painted children and countryside landscapes. He is also famous for his garden which contained more than 3000 species of flowers.

Via Wikipedia:  “His painting of flowers and animals are mentioned among the best pictures illustrating the material and spiritual correlation between vegetation, animals and the Danes.” 

“Worn Out” (1889) is one of his most famous paintings. It shows an elderly man lying fallen on his back in a vast, barren field. This is a strong social statement, showing that the lowest working class had no option to retire with even a tiny pension. Laborers worked until the day they died.

Brendekilde’s genius shows in the way he depicts the central subject. The rocky field nearly blends with the sky. Dirt and rocks dominate this painting. Dirt on their clothes, small rocks embedded in the soil, larger rocks gathered into piles to be carted from the field … this man’s life was the soil, hard and rocky though it was. Yet he clung to it, working to clear the rocks until he could go no further.

I love the detail in this painting, the way he shows the broad flat lands of Denmark. It’s easy to see how their day began: the man and woman spent the morning picking rocks from a field and making small piles of them, preparatory to plowing the field.

Then, something happened. Was it a heart attack? A stroke? One of the man’s clogs has fallen off his foot, lost when he stumbled and fell. The stones he was picking up and carrying in his apron have tumbled to the ground beside him.

Farming is working in the dirt, and that is made clear in this painting. If you have ever planted a garden in an area where a glacier once stood, you know that new rocks tend to work themselves to the surface every year.

The woman wears a dress that has been patched many times. The loose, dry soil on her garments show she too has been picking rocks all morning.

Is the woman his daughter? Or perhaps his wife? Even if only a friend, she is terribly concerned for him.

They are nearing the end of their winter stores, and the first new vegetables have yet to be planted. Has he worked himself to death? Will he recover?

As most artists do, H. A. Brendekilde tells us a story in this stark painting. He leaves us the option to imagine what happens next.

Credits and Attributions:

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Worn Out by H. A. Brendekilde File:H. A. Brendekilde – Udslidt (1889).jpg – Wikipedia accessed July 7, 2026.

Information sourced from: Wikipedia contributors, “H. A. Brendekilde,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=H._A._Brendekilde&oldid=1343079043 (accessed July 8, 2026).

 

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