Category Archives: writing

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).

6 Comments

Filed under #FineArtFriday, writing

Tagged as , , ,

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).

16 Comments

Filed under writing

July 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

Scene Framing and Composition #writing

Things went a little sideways here at Casa del Jasperson over the weekend, so today we are revisiting a post from January of 2022. When we’re in the first draft stage, determining a chapter’s length and just what should be included to keep the length reasonable is not our primary goal.

However, when we get into the revisions stage, we go deeper and look at each scene and transition. We fine-tune how each scene comes together to make a chapter that is a story within the larger story. This is where composition and scene framing come into play.

I hope you enjoy revisiting this post.

Composition is defined as the way the elements inside a frame are exhibited to the viewer – the layout of a picture. In the second draft of a novel or story, you must consider what to show and how to arrange the visuals to achieve the best effect. The environment (world) against which the events and actions are shown is the frame that enhances the scene.

scene framingEach chapter is comprised of one or more scenes. These scenes have an arc to them: action and reaction. These arcs of action and reaction begin at point A and end at point B. Each launching point will land on a slightly higher point of the story arc.

Each scene occurs within the framework of the environment, which must be shaped to emphasize the emotion of the narrative. This is called scene framing.

Our written narrative is the camera through which the scene is viewed.

We want the characters’ interactions to convey the most emotional impact. Also, we want to keep the wordiness to a minimum. We supplement our descriptions by using the environment to highlight the characters’ moods and darken or lighten the atmosphere.

When you target the focus of the scenery to frame the action, you draw attention to the subtext you want to convey, beneath and around the ruminations and conversations.

Today’s example is taken from Anne McCaffrey’s 1988 novel, Dragonsdawn. The Dragonriders of Pern series is recognized as science fiction because of the protagonists are aware of the nature of the star Rukbat and its planetary system. They know they are the descendants of colonists, but life is a struggle and that history is no longer important. Many elements in the earlier books are primarily fantasy in origin as they deal with dragons and telepathy.

However, the early novels also detail the gradual rediscovery of lost technology, the revelation of their forgotten history. Dragonsdawn reinforces the science fiction nature of the series by explaining the science behind McCaffrey’s dragons and why they were genetically engineered to be what they are.

The story follows several POV characters, giving us a comprehensive view of the colony’s successes and failures. For the first ten years, the planet Pern seems a paradise to its new colonists, who are seeking to return to a less technologically centered, agrarian-based way of life. They believe Pern is the place where they can leave their recent wars and troubles behind.

A decade after arriving on the planet, however, a new threat appears. It is a deadly, unstoppable spore that periodically rains from the skies in the form of a silvery Thread that mindlessly devours every carbon-based thing it touches.

The scenes we are looking at today form one chapter and have two distinct environments to frame them: first the planet and then the abandoned colony ship, Yokohama. These scenes are filled with emotion, high stakes, and rising dread for the sure and inevitable tragedy that we hope will be averted. Not all the drama is in Sallah Telgar’s direct interaction with Avril Bitra. The environment heightens the drama, the sense of impending doom.

Before the advent of Thread, Avril disappeared, gathering resources and intending to leave the planet with as much treasure as she can carry. She has been pretty much forgotten by the others but has an agenda and refuses to be thwarted.

In the first scene of this chapter, we see Sallah on her way to work, leaving her children at the daycare. We zoom out and see Kenjo, the pilot, putting the last of the precious fuel into the only working shuttle, the Mariposa. This shuttle has been refitted for one last science expedition: to discover the source of the Deadly threads that rain down upon the planet periodically and to retrieve a sample. If this mission fails, there will be no other.

The camera moves out, and we see Sallah as she observes a woman she recognizes as Avril Bitra slipping through the abandoned shuttles on the landing grid. The view widens again as we see Avril following the pilot, Kenjo, who vanishes. We then see her entering the Mariposa alone.

Sallah makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to follow her, to see what Avril is up to.

Here is where the sparse visual mentions of the environment become crucial as they emphasize the stark reality of Sallah’s situation. Sallah enters the shuttle just as the airlock door closes, catching and crushing her heel. She manages to pull it out so that she isn’t trapped, but she is severely injured. Later, the dark, abandoned interior of the Yokohama reinforces Sallah’s gut-wrenching realization that her five children will grow up without a mother.

Subtext should be almost subliminal, the hidden story, the secret reasoning that gradually emerges as one reads each page. It forms images we see of the environment and how it affects the atmosphere. Subtext is the content that supports the dialogue and gives purpose to the personal events.

Scene framing is the way we stage the people and visual objects. What furnishings, sounds, and odors are the visual necessities for that scene?

Whatever you mention of the environment focuses the reader’s attention when the characters enter the frame and affects the reader’s interpretation of a scene. In this chapter of Dragonsdawn, we see the junk and scrap on the grid and the decaying shuttles. Two shuttles have been dismantled and parted out and used to keep the few cargo sleds they have converted to Thread-fighting gunships in working order. One shuttle remains in usable condition.

Sensory details are important, showing how the environment affects or is affected by the characters. Conversely, not mentioning the scenery during a conversation brings the camera in for a closeup, focusing solely on the speaker or thinker.

A balance must be struck in how your characters are framed in each scene. We flow from wide-angle, seeing Salla floating in freefall, blood pooling in her boot. The camera moves in closer, showing Avril’s rage at the fact that she can’t control the course of the Mariposa, which is programmed to dock at the Yokohama.

Plot-exists-to-reveal-characterWe see Avril taunting Sallah for her matronly body and move out again to see Avril tying a cord to Sallah’s crushed foot and forcing her to make the navigational calculations for Avril’s escape. We move close up and hear the interaction, Sallah pretending to do as Avril asks but really setting her enemy’s doom in action. The camera moves to the wide view again, and we hear the interaction with her frantic husband on the ground. We are caught up in her determination to seize this only chance, using her dying breaths to get the information about the thread spores to the scientists on the ground.

Atmospheric Mood: Ask yourself why you have placed those things in that scene. Why are they important, and what are you conveying to the reader with that visual composition? What subliminal elements does the environment contain that clue the reader into the deeper emotions in that scene? What subtext will carry over from this scene to the next?

Scene framing is the way you compose the scene and transitions. How you use the setting to place your characters supports and reinforces the subtext of the conversations and events and is what makes a scene feel powerful.

Comments Off on Scene Framing and Composition #writing

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 29, 2026 · 6:00 am

The Great Artists are Brilliant Storytellers #writing

If you are a follower of this blog, you know that Fridays are “Fine Art Friday” here. I love the art of the past, as well as many modern pieces. I also love examining photographic art.

Paintings and photographs offer us a glimpse of a moment in time that may have occurred centuries ago or may not have occurred at all. It is the story of a moment frozen in time and preserved forever for us. Forever, that is, for as long as the painting or photograph exists.

I would love to have created beautiful visual art. I’ve shot some decent photographs, but I’m a writer. Perusing the vaults at Wikimedia Commons allows me to view images with possibilities. Each is a visual representation with a past and a possible future.

We see the whole story.

I’m not educated as an art historian and would never claim to be one. I’m just an old lady who loves the paintings of great artists. I doubt I will ever visit the great museums of Europe, as that would be an expensive endeavor, but I can view their collections in detail.

Anyone with internet access can see great art and photography from the past and present.

Every week, I scour Wikimedia Commons, looking for images that intrigue me. My goal is to give others like me access to see the art that humanity is capable of, the good and perhaps the not-so-good.

Art can be beautiful or savage, depending on the story the artist is trying to present. I love beautiful scenes, and sometimes, especially in winter, I crave the view of a warm summer’s day.

However, more than anything, I like images that tell a story. I am compelled to zoom in and look deeper whenever I view a painting. I research a museum’s website to discover the symbolism the artist snuck into the scene. I want to inform my perception of the story the artist has painted.

Whether I want if to or not, my writer’s brain will influence my interpretation. And the art of the past influences the art of today.

One of the most stunning works of modern art is Guernica, a 1937 painting by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973). This painting is considered to be one of the most powerful anti-war statements of all time. This single painting, done in shades of black and white, tells the story of the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy destroyed at the request of the Spanish Nationalists.

(Yes, a faction in Spain bombed the citizens of their own country.)

Pablo Picasso was influenced by the great art of the past and based the layout of Guernica on the layout of a history painting, The Consequences of War by Peter Paul Rubens.

Looking at art can lead the viewer to new ways of looking at the world.

Some artists offer us fantasy, and others show us the truth about historical events. Both are necessary. Art can be pretty and comforting, and art can teach us a moral lesson.

Art can be brutally truthful.

One of my favorite artists is Pieter Brueghel the Elder. His paintings always tell us a story. He embeds a moral in every aspect of his work. For example, let’s look at The Hunters in the Snow, probably his most famous painting. On first glance, we see a comforting winter scene, a bucolic view of hunters returning and people frolicking on the ice. But when we look deeper, we see the true story.

Brueghel used symbolism to convey an entire story by employing paradox and gallows humor in every painting. Here, he shows us that winter was harsh, and for the average person, survival required a lot of work, sometimes for nothing.

  • He shows us the hunters returning with empty game bags, the lone corpse of a skinny fox, and little else.
  • One dog looks at us with starving eyes, as if hoping for scraps.
  • The tavern’s sign is about to fall down, a large hint that all is not well. That symbolic broken sign tells us the owners are bankrupt.
  • The owners are cooking outside, directly in front of the door, evicted from their home and business. A woman brings a bundle of straw out of the inn to use as fuel, while in the distance an ox-drawn wagon is heavily laden with firewood. Where is it going? Not to their inn, that is for sure.
  • A man is carrying a table away. He glances over his shoulder at the meager soup they are cooking, as if they had somehow gotten it away before he could take that too. Is he the new owner, having acquired it for pennies from the city by paying the taxes at a forced bankruptcy sale? Or is he a hired thug employed by the new owner?
  • A rabbit has crossed the hunters’ path and evaded their snares.
  • Ravens, which in Medieval times were considered birds of ill omen, roost in the trees above the inn and the hunters and fly above the revelers. They are a warning of worse days to come.

But in this story, Brueghel’s characters have hope and faith that things will improve. In the distance (the future), people are playing winter games. The future is indistinct and far away, shown in a fantastic, mountainous landscape rather than the flat terrain of the Netherlands. It is almost as if they are visions of what winter could be if only the harvest had been good, rather than the truth of the dead fox, hounds with empty bellies, a bankrupt tavern, and the rabbit that got away.

If you get a chance, visit www.wikimediacommons.org and see what the picture of the day inspires in you. Will you come away with an idea for a story?

Perhaps so. But take the time to write those thoughts down. Your notes could become a storyboard, which could become a novel.

A photograph or painting might inspire you, but the way you put those ideas into action will be uniquely yours. That story will be an expression of your voice and your art.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “Guernica (Picasso),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guernica_(Picasso)&oldid=1361273241 (accessed June 28, 2026).

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “Consequences of War,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Consequences_of_War&oldid=1361248306 (accessed June 28, 2026).

IMAGE: Wikipedia contributors, “The Hunters in the Snow,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Hunters_in_the_Snow&oldid=1361428760 (accessed June 28, 2026).

 

 

3 Comments

Filed under #FineArtFriday, writing

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 22, 2026 · 8:54 am

7 Rules of Construction #writing

My native language is English (although I am fluent in gibberish). But since I wanted to be taken seriously as an author, my job is to understand how grammar works and use it to my advantage.

The great authors bend the rules to energize their prose, but they know the rules they are ignoring and are consistent with how they bend them. They are deliberate.

Now, I do understand reality. If you are in the process of burning up the keyboard, tapping out a quick novel meant only to pay the bills, you won’t be thinking about getting fancy.

However, when it comes to word choices, some things are universal.

And so, here are seven rules that professional writing programs teach about sentence and paragraph construction.

One: Verbs. It is important to choose words that sound powerful when read aloud, as they convey the most meaning and reduce the tendency toward using too many “ly” words. In English, words that begin with hard consonants sound tougher and carry more power.

Verbs are power words. Fluff words and obscure words used too freely are kryptonite, sapping the strength from our prose.

Two: Placement of verbs in the sentence. Sentence construction can strengthen or weaken our work.

  • Nouns followed by verbs make active prose:
  • Moving the verbs to the beginning of the sentence makes it stronger.

From the building, Shari ran.

versus

Shari ran from the building.

It might fall out of our heads in the first draft, but we wouldn’t leave it. That kind of writing isn’t technically bad, but it’s awkward and not changing it in revisions is a newbie mistake. It’s the kind of writing that happens when we are just trying to spew the words as fast as we can.

Awkward phrasing is a subconscious code showing us what we need to revise.

Three: Parallel construction smooths awkward phrasing. This is the act of combining two or more clauses of equal importance into one sentence. To make them parallel, each clause should use the same grammatical structure. They are parallel, and the reader absorbs what is said naturally.

What parallelism means can be shown by a quote attributed to Julius Caesar, who used the phrase “I came; I saw; I conquered” in a letter to the Roman Senate after he had achieved a quick victory in the Battle of Zela. Caesar uses the same number of words in each clause. This choice gives equal importance to the different ideas of arriving, seeing, and conquering.

Four: Contrast: In literature, we use contrast to describe the difference(s) between two or more things in one sentence. The sun burned like fire, but the ever-present wind chilled me.

Five: Similes show the resemblances between two concepts, using words such as “like” and “as.” The sun burned like fire.

Similes are different from metaphors, which suggest something “is” something else.

The pale moon shone, a guiding lamp in the sky that comforted me. In this sentence, the moon becomes a lamp to guide the narrator. “Lamp” is the metaphor.

Six: Repetition. If we occasionally employ deliberate repetition, it can emphasize emotion and atmosphere without increasing wordiness.

  1. Repetition of the last word in a line or clause.

  2. Repetition of words at the start of clauses or verses.

  3. Repetition of words or phrases in the opposite sense.

  4. Repetition of words broken by some other words.

  5. Repetition of the same words at the end and start of a sentence.

  6. Repetition of a phrase or question to stress a point.

  7. Repetition of the same word at the end of each clause.

  8. Repetition of an idea, first in negative terms and then in positive terms.

  9. Repetition of words of the same root with different endings.

  10. Repetition at both the beginning and the end of a sentence, paragraph, or scene.

  11. Repetition is a construction in poetry where the last word of one clause becomes the first word of the next.

courtesy Office360 graphics

There are good repetitions and bad repetitions. Bad repetitions consist of the overuse of crutch words, such as grin, shrug, and wryly, along with many other easy words that come quickly to mind and litter the narrative during the first-draft rush.

Crutch words are easy because they say what you mean with little effort. They will become lazy writing if not found and trimmed back to a reasonable level during the revision process.

Seven: Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter (or sound) at the beginning of successive words. Alliteration can lend a poetic feeling to a passage and help create the atmosphere of a given scene without adding wordiness.

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do.  (Birches, by Robert Frost, 1916) [2]

I love the way Robert Frost uses alliteration to set the scene and create the atmosphere in those opening lines.

Poetry makes good use of good repetition and alliteration. Consider this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Every book is a quotation, and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”  

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prose and Poetry. [1]

I know I say this all the time, but the way we habitually construct our prose is our voice. Our voice determines the impact of our work.

We all know different readers have widely different tastes. But everyone knows what they consider good writing, and they don’t recommend what they see as bad writing. If the work is well written, the author’s voice will determine whether a reader enjoys it.

And this brings me to that old bugaboo, GENRE.

We must know who our readers are, what they want, and construct our work to fit that market. All readers want to find what they perceive as good writing.

Active phrasing generates emotion.

Sometimes, using similes, repetition, and alliteration in subtle applications enhances the worldbuilding without beating your reader over the head.

We all know worldbuilding must be organic and natural, but there are times when we struggle to achieve it. Subtle application of these seven rules will empower your worldbuilding. The casual reader will be immersed but unaware of the mechanics. They won’t realize why the work is powerful.

Credits and Attributions

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works. Published in 1904. Vol. VIII. Letters and Social Aims, VI. Quotation and Originality, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8 (Letters and Social Aims) | Online Library of Liberty, Public Domain (accessed June 19, 2026).

[3] Wikipedia contributors, “Birches (poem),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birches_(poem)&oldid=1351913530 (accessed June 19, 2026).

 

Comments Off on 7 Rules of Construction #writing

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

June 15, 2026 · 6:00 am

The infinity arc, or double-circular story arc #writing

We as writers must resonate with the stories we tell. They have to mean something to us or they won’t mean anything to a reader.

Lately, life has been a little hectic, and I’ve been unable to focus on my longer work. But I have been able to write and complete short stories in a variety of genres and lengths.

While my longer work is “resting” and going nowhere, there is an upside to this: I’ve had a chance to experiment with writing and delve more deeply into how my favorite authors construct their work.

I am a wordy writer. To counteract that problem, I set myself a wordcount goal and do my best to stay within it.

In microfiction, the author must build a world in fewer than 100 words, show mood and atmosphere, and give the reader a story with a complete arc.

This sharpens my skills in writing longer pieces because I must convey as much information as possible in as few words as I can. No matter the story’s length, my chosen words must be powerful and visual, showing the setting, combined with a strong theme, and conveying the intended atmosphere and mood.

My ideas usually fall out of my head in an outline form. This skeleton becomes the first draft. Other times, I write the story as it unfolds in my mind. Then, I make an outline and rewrite it so that it makes sense.

I’ve written several stories lately that have a “circular arc.” This kind of story takes us through an experience and returns us to where we began. For better or worse, we are changed by the events we have undergone.

Most of these pieces are essays on my real-life experiences and may someday end up in a published collection, but may just be put into a book for my grandchildren. They began as handwritten entries in my notebook. I put them into a Word Document and saved them in a file labeled Essays 2026.

My personal essays usually have a circular narrative arc and rarely run more than 500 words. The story begins at point A, takes the reader through an occurrence, and brings them back to where it started.

In this type of story, the characters return to where they began but are fundamentally changed by the story’s events.

The infinity arc is similar to the circular arc but presents one story from two different viewpoints: a double-circular arc.

The story begins with Character One, takes them through an occurrence, and brings them back. At that point, the story shifts to Character Two and retells the events from their perspective, returning them to where they began. (Two circular story arcs joined by one event.) If we graphed it out, it would look something like an infinity sign, a figure-eight lying on its side: ∞

The story I’m using for today’s example is one I wrote about ten years ago. It features two protagonists, and I had intended to tell both stories in only 1,000 words. I was not entirely successful, but managed to keep it down to 1,025 words.

As I mentioned above, in the infinity or double-circular arc, two stories begin at the same place: the center of the infinity symbol. They experience the event simultaneously. Both characters are tested and changed by what they have lived through.

The characters in this story do not meet. In many stories with this kind of story arc, the two characters do meet and interact. Relationships across time are a popular romance trope.

But they don’t have to, and I think that makes a more interesting story.

In this tale, my characters briefly occupy the same patch of ground during a glitch in time. It ends where it began, but with two sets of characters having seemingly experienced two different events. Their perception of the meeting is colored by the knowledge and superstitions of their respective eras.

How is the story constructed?

  • It opens in the center of the infinity sign. In this tale, the antagonist is the catalyst, the place and moment where two realities meet.
  • The opening sentences establish the world, set the scene, and introduce the first protagonist.
  • The following three paragraphs show the situation and establish the mood. They also introduce the antagonist.
  • At this point, our first protagonist knows he must resolve the problem and protect his people, and he does so.

But the infinity arc presents us with a story from two viewpoints.

  • Again, I had to set the scene and establish the mood and characters. Here, we meet the second protagonist. He has the same needs as our first and must also resolve the problem.

Neither character would have understood the strange physics of what they experienced had Brian Cox been around to explain it.

  • The final paragraphs of the first half contribute to the overall atmosphere and setting of the story’s second part.
  • Each character’s understanding of what they saw and experienced is firmly grounded in the beliefs and lore of their era, and both do what they must to protect their people.

As a practice piece, the story had good bones. However, it’s not the right kind of story for submission to a magazine or contest, as it’s not commercially viable. In fact, much of what I write isn’t commercially viable, but I love writing it.

The act of writing something different, a little outside my comfort zone, forces me to be more imaginative in how I tell my stories. We should all have a little fun with writing. Give that double circular arc a shot and see what you come up with.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: The  Hero’s Journey, Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Heroesjourney.svg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Heroesjourney.svg&oldid=1013027507 (accessed June 14, 2026).

 

2 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,

June 12, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: A second look at “Sur la plage, les bains de mer” by François d’Orléans

François_d'Orléans_-_Sur_la_plage,_les_bains_de_merArtist: François d’Orléans, prince de Joinville (1818-1900)

Title: Sur la plage, les bains de mer (English: On the beach sea bathing)

Medium: Watercolor

Date: before 1900

What I love about this painting:

I first featured this painting in July of 2023. The wild sense of humor shown in this portrayal of upper-class Victorian-era people on vacation beside the sea absolutely captivated me. François d’Orléans spills the gossip in this watercolor seascape: they weren’t all as prim and proper as history would like us to believe.

I love the hilarity, the wild abandon they feel at being temporarily freed of “proper” clothing and society’s rules of politeness. When the holiday is over, they’ll have to behave. But for now, the sun is shining, the waters are warm, and the day is just getting started.

The two young men who are clowning around, one leaping over the back of the other make me laugh. They remind me of my husband’s college fraternity days circa 1978. (He did outgrow it, but some of their pranks were hilarious.)

Everyone is having fun on this glorious day beside the sea, except perhaps the woman being drenched by a bucket of water. So much action! It was a party, and François d’Orléans, Prince de Joinville recorded it with his own unique style.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

François d’Orléans, Prince de Joinville (14 August 1818 – 16 June 1900) was the third son of Louis Philippe, King of the French, and his wife Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily. An admiral of the French Navy, François was famous for bringing the remains of Napoleon from Saint Helena to France, as well as being a talented artist, with 35 known watercolours.

He married Princess Francisca of Brazil, daughter of Emperor Pedro I and sister of Emperor Pedro II. The dowry received by François upon the marriage became the Brazilian city of Joinville.

François and Francisca’s grandson Jean went on to become the Orléanist claimant to the extinct French throne, a claim passed on to his son, grandson and now great-grandson Jean, Count of Paris, current Orléanist claimant to the French crown.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Sur la plage, les bains de mer  by François d’Orléans, prince de Joinville. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:François d’Orléans – Sur la plage, les bains de mer.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Fran%C3%A7ois_d%27Orl%C3%A9ans_-_Sur_la_plage,_les_bains_de_mer.jpg&oldid=757902107 (accessed June 11, 2026).

Wikipedia contributors, “François d’Orléans, Prince of Joinville,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fran%C3%A7ois_d%27Orl%C3%A9ans,_Prince_of_Joinville&oldid=1160992832 (accessed June 11, 2026).

Comments Off on #FineArtFriday: A second look at “Sur la plage, les bains de mer” by François d’Orléans

Filed under #FineArtFriday, writing

Tagged as , , ,

June 8, 2026 · 6:05 am

Dialogue tags, verbal tics, and accents #writing

We who write love our characters and want our written dialogue to sound as natural as a conversation with our best friend. We meet on the street, in the bar, or at a coffee shop.

And we talk, talk, talk.

And so do my characters. Sometimes they won’t be quiet, and it drives me nuts.

Other times, my characters behave like a fourteen-year-old forced to go camping with the family. She owns the backseat with the glowering disapproval only a teenager can bring to it, sitting in stony silence and staring at her signal-less phone. Hell will freeze before she interacts with these strangers who claim to be her parents, kidnappers who dragged her out to the wilderness for something called “family time.”

Eww.

But when my characters DO choose to participate in the conversation, how do I make them sound natural? I go back to the works of established writers whose dialogue is crafted so well that I don’t feel like I’m reading it. Instead, I feel like I am living it.

If you visit many writers’ forums, you’ll find a wide variety of opinions on this subject. I don’t worry about the gurus who want you to know how important they are. Instead, I consider the reader.

How can I write dialogue that is the easiest for the reader to follow?

My favorite authors don’t get too fancy or uber creative. Their written dialogue tags are simple and show the conversation.

I try to stick to said, replied, answered, and asked. Most readers won’t even notice the attributions are there.

This is especially true when writing genre fiction. I stick to simple tags, such as John said.

At times, we may need an attribution like “screamed,” “uttered,” or “retorted.” Most of the time, fancy synonyms for ‘said’ are distracting.

I agree that you can skip using dialog tags altogether for a back-and-forth or two, but never if there are more than two speakers in the scene. I never do that for more than one exchange. Readers want to be able to track who is saying what.

Beats are what screenwriters call the little bits of physical action that are inserted into dialogue:

Junior unbraided his hair and pulled it back into his customary long ponytail. Off came the sarape, which he told Pap smelled musty. “Tell Johnny thanks for the loan of his buckskins,” he said.

Some writers will leave the ending attribution, and some will move it to the front of the dialogue. As an editor, I would suggest removing it entirely, since the words “he told” already appear in that paragraph. But again, the author’s choice is final.

Beats or actions not only punctuate the dialogue, they also give the scene movement. Actions present a strong mental picture, eliminating the need for a description dump.

Character moods can be shown by actions and are often best placed where there is a natural break in the dialogue. This allows the reader to experience the same pause as the characters. Beats are an effective tool and are essential to good dialogue.

But don’t overdo it, or the scene becomes about the action rather than the dialogue, and the impact is diluted or lost entirely. When we add gestures and actions to the conversation, we want the information that is conveyed to be meaningful, and the visual actions to be subliminal.

This is why we don’t make the mistake of eliminating attributions in our entire manuscript. We must insert clues as to who is speaking, or the reader will be confused.

Worse, the action takes over, and the dialogue fades into the background, obscured by the visual noise of foot shuffling and paper rattling.

But what about exclamations and verbal tics?

“Um … ah ….” We frequently speak this way in real life, but I recommend being sparing with them. When a character overuses thinking sounds and exclamations, it is exhausting for the reader.

Another conversation stopper is the “filler sound.” Have you ever met a person who drones on with a long “A-ahhhhhhhhh….” effectively holding conversations hostage with meaningless syllables?

These are ‘thinking syllables.’ This is known as a ‘verbal tic’ or a “filler sound” and is usually such an ingrained habit that the offending party is unaware they are doing it. I warn you, their feelings could be hurt if you try to hurry them along, so I ignore the habit when I come across an acquaintance who suffers from it. They are just gathering their thoughts.

However, if there is a habit you don’t enjoy in conversation and don’t want to read in a novel, don’t write it into your characters’ dialogue.

As a reader, I’ve come to feel your best bet when dealing with verbal tics is to give a brief example of a character’s speech pattern, and, if it is important, occasionally mention how their habits annoy other characters.

What about accents? Please, don’t overdo spelling them out. You have no idea how hard it is for readers to wade through heavy accents.

“My feet hurt, and I’m feeling dead tired. I need to sit and rest a while.” A writer could get away with using knackered and kip to convey the general idea of a regional accent without losing the reader’s interest.

I recommend going light and limiting the use of misspellings, bad grammar, and vulgar accents, especially if you are trying to point out that the character is uneducated or from a rural background.

Fun fact: negative experience is a harsh, but thorough, teacher.

So, nowadays I use only a few well-chosen words to convey the idea of the accent and am consistent in how I do so. I don’t want my dialogue to be incomprehensible. It’s too easy to go over the top with it, and then the character becomes a parody, a cartoon of a person, instead of someone who feels real.

This winds up my rant on annoying habits we don’t want to inject into our dialogue. Accents, dialects, and verbal tics are all things we need to convey, but we must be mindful of our readers’ supply of patience. Show what is necessary and let the reader’s imagination do the rest.

5 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , , ,

June 1, 2026 · 6:00 am

#Writing Interior Dialogues

I write in several genres, and I read nearly any book I come across. It’s a habit from the years of working two jobs. It was a time when I could only fit one book purchase a month into my meager budget, but I read the books in my favorite genres faster than the library could stock them. My small bit of excess cash was reserved for a $5.99 fantasy paperback and a $2.00 grocery bag of second-hand books with the covers torn off.

I was always a sucker for great cover art. Nevertheless, a bag full of coverless books was like a treasure hunt. Chain Bookstores used to rip the covers off books that didn’t sell, and they often ended up in second-hand bookstores.

The bag could contain a wide range of novels that had been sitting on shelves for too long. There might be five Harlequin Romances a Jack Kerouac novel, two by Nora Lofts,  three Regency bodice-rippers by Georgette Heyer, a Jaqueline Suzanne novel, an Ian Flemming’s James Bond novel, an ancient copy of Gone With the Wind, several Isaac Asimov novels, an Anne McCaffrey Brain and Brawn novel, and if I was really fortunate, a classic fantasy, such as a Gormenghast novel or a Jack Vance novel.

Oddly, I never found a Tolkien novel in one of those bags.

The books I loved the most were those that let us into the characters’ heads. I still gravitate toward character-driven books. I’m interested in what they think is going on and how they lie to themselves. I love an unreliable narrator and am hooked when the truth is dangled just out of reach.

I love characters who go through the events, with arcs that grow or decline as the facts are revealed. We have so many clues, and yet we don’t know what is really going on until the final pages, when the characters themselves discover or reveal the truth.

One modern writer who is a master at this is Canadian novelist Shari Lapena. I have read every book she has written since I first came across 2016’s The Couple Next Door. Lapena takes us through the crime, the victim, and the people surrounding them. She raises the blinds on what polite society allows the world to see, opening a window on what lies beneath the image of propriety and perfection.

Many people won’t like her style or the way she spends most of her time inside her characters’ heads.  I like the way Lapena uses interior monologues to shed light on hidden sins and motives that drive an outwardly respectable person to commit murder.

Each character’s surface thoughts are open to us, yet not so open that we can guess the truth. As the book progresses, what is hidden is gradually revealed, illuminating less-than-flattering aspects of all the people involved and muddying the waters.

What I have learned by dissecting her work is that internal dialogue must never be an opportunity for an info dump. This is crucial for writers of mysteries. Yes, a character’s thoughts must show us their mental state in real time, but they will lie to themselves as often as they do to us. The thoughts and conversations of those surrounding them must offer some foreshadowing, small hints that all may not be as it appears. In a Lapena murder mystery, these hints gradually become unpleasant truths.

Opinions abound in online writers’ forums regarding interior monologues. It’s true that beginning authors can rely too heavily on them as an easy way to dump information into a narrative, rather than deploying it. A few people are blunt and loud about their dislike of them, and while I disagree, I do see their point.

In Sci-fi, Fantasy, and YA novels, it is an accepted practice to italicize a protagonist’s thoughts, and readers expect them to be presented that way. However, we need to be aware of how daunting it is for a reader to face a wall of italics.

A rather vocal contingent at any gathering of authors will say that thoughts should not be italicized, as it creates greater narrative distance, setting readers outside the character and the events of the scene.

As an avid reader, I disagree with that statement when applied broadly and will argue the point, though more than a sentence or two of italics does exactly that. This is a personal style choice you, as an author, must make, based on the genre you are writing in and the preferences of your intended audience.

So, what, in my opinion, is the best way to indicate that a sentence or two of interior monologue in the middle of a scene is the viewpoint character’s thoughts and not the narrator speaking?

We can write the thought in first person, present tense, which is the way we actually think them. This is how Shari Lapena writes them. OR we can write it in third person, past tense if that is the mode you are using for the rest of the text.

We can use italics or normal text, or a “she thought” tag. Or we can choose not to.  I do not recommend using quotation marks to set interior monologues off, as that can confuse some readers and make them think it is spoken dialogue.

Interior monologues are crucial to the flow of novels in which the author wants the reader planted firmly in the protagonist’s mind. This is where skill, intention, and the ability to craft what we want our work to say comes into play.

For most of my work, the thoughts of my characters can be shown through their actions. However, this is a case where actions don’t always speak louder than words, so  I do include internal monologues as needed.

The observations our characters make can be an aspect of worldbuilding. My opinion is that interior monologues are an organic component of some kinds of narratives, but not necessarily all narratives.

I feel that when they are done well, interior monologues can create an intimate connection with the characters.

My final opinion is that italics should never be used for long passages, as long stretches of leaning letters are difficult for people with compromised vision to read.

How you choose to use interior dialogues is up to you. It is your work, and you know what you want to convey to the reader at each stage of the story. Now, go forth and write!

 

3 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

May 25, 2026 · 6:00 am

A few thoughts on the craft of #writing

This week I found myself looking at random notes I had taken when reading. Some were from trade paperbacks and others from cheap eBooks. Only one was a deal breaker. All had one issue or another, but their good points far outweighed the flaw.

So, one book made the “Oooh! Gross!” list in my notebook, and it happened to be from a traditionally published author. It contained all of the fatal flaws within the first two chapters. I confess I didn’t finish it.

One: Be careful to not write self-indulgent drivel. Go lightly with the praise, adoration, and general lauding of your characters’ accomplishments throughout the book.

Please. We know they are the children of your creative heart, but truthfully, they may be unruly, spoiled little monsters. An author who constantly praises a character and rehashes their accomplishments is asking for readers to put their book down without finishing it.

An author I love occasionally indulges in various side characters repeating how much everyone admires the main character. He rehashes that character’s exploits whenever a new side-character is introduced, which detracts from an otherwise stellar story. I can’t give his work more than a three-star review because of that failing.

Two: Don’t waste words describing each change of expression and mood. Consider this hot mess of fifty-four words that make no sense: Joan looked at Gary with concern. His voice changed so much in the telling of the story as his emotions came to the surface that it still seemed so raw, as if his son’s death had happened only days ago. In addition, his expressions also changed, and his current one was akin to despair.

It could be cut down to sixteen words that convey the important parts of the sentence, and it won’t feel choppy: Gary’s raw despair concerned Joan, seeming as if his son’s death had happened only days before.

Three: Commas and Conjunctions: Some people don’t know what to do with commas and attempt to do without them altogether. Don’t fall into the snare of the lazy author, the one who doesn’t have the patience to learn a few simple rules of punctuation. Commas are to clauses what traffic signals are to streets: they govern the flow of traffic.

  1. Commas follow introductory words and clauses. Instead, they took a left turn.
  2. Commas set off “asides.” Her sister, Sara, brought coffee.
  3. Commas separate words in lists: We bought apples, oranges, and papayas for the salad.
  4. Commas join two complete sentences, and once joined, they form one longer sentence. When used too freely, linked clauses can create run-on sentences.
  5. Commas frequently precede conjunctions, but only when linking complete clauses. When linking a dependent clause to a complete clause, don’t insert a comma. “I intended to go back to Seattle but found myself here instead.”

Once an author knows and understands how sentences are constructed, they can choose to break those rules, IF doing so conveys their idea more clearly.

This is where an author’s “intention” comes into play.

If a client tells me they want a comma in a place where it wouldn’t ordinarily go, I don’t argue. I say this because an author’s voice is as much how they break the rules as it is their word choices and the rhythm of their habitual sentence structure.

Conjunctions need the same kind of attention as commas. How many sentences have you linked together with the word and in that paragraph? Could brevity strengthen your prose? Conjunctions and commas are the gateway to run-on sentence hell. This is where the revision process sometimes fails. It often takes an unbiased eye to see that a sentence or paragraph doesn’t make sense. However, if you are deliberate in how you use these connectors, your work will be readable.

We all want our work to be readable. However, sometimes the pacing of our narrative demands that we break them. Knowing the mechanics and rules of grammar well enough to break them with style is what sets an author apart from the crowd. Craft your prose, but for the sake of your readers, use grammatical common sense.

Four: Use active phrasing. There were Small colorful fish swimming swam in a large, clear pond.

All the forms of the word “be” must be used carefully. “There were” is a form of the verb “was” and must be used with care.

Five: If you are writing genre fiction, simplicity is sometimes best. Please don’t write something like, “Delicious sounds captivated their eardrums.” Just say the music touches the protagonist’s soul, or something similar. We want to convey the feeling that the music was wonderful, or the smells were mouthwatering, etc., but let’s not get too artsy.

No one wants to write boring prose. However, when we try to get too highfalutin, the prose can become awkward. Odors and sounds are part of the background, the atmosphere of the piece. While they need to be there, we don’t want them to be obtrusive, in-your-face. This is an instance of prose working better when it isn’t fancy.

BUT feel free to go for the gusto if you are writing poetry! Use all those fabulous words you have been saving for a special occasion. Rhyme them if you want or don’t.

It’s your poem and your choice.

So, thanks to the hard work of several authors I have never met, I was able to compile a few thoughts to get your writing week started.

Now, go! Write like the wind!

3 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,