May 12, 2025 · 6:00 am

Foreshadowing and pacing #writing

I’m sitting here on a cloudy Sunday morning in May, sipping tea and wondering what to write for this post. Things have been crazy on the home front for a couple of months. Well, for the last year, really. Now my husband is settled in a good place where he can be properly cared for around the clock. I am adjusting to having more time on my hands than I’m used to.

He’s in a lovely, caring home now. I go there to visit him every morning after I tend our small veggie plot in the community garden. And yes, although I do have the time now, I struggle to find the ambition to reorganize my jumble of an office.

However, while housekeeping still bores me, and I no longer have a valid excuse for not doing it, I always feel like writing.

Which seems more important than filing the pile of medical and legal documents that depress me.

I just don’t always know what to write.

And, sometimes, it’s hard to know where a story should actually begin. Is it the eve of a party? Is it the day of a friend’s funeral? Where does the story begin?

Wherever the story starts, I want the reader to keep turning the pages, and a little foreshadowing can encourage them to do that.

Hints that all is not what it seems are an important aspect of the narrative. They pique the reader’s interest and make them want to know what is really going on and how the book will end.

But what is foreshadowing? It is the subtle warning that danger lurks ahead, a few clues embedded in the first quarter of the story to subliminally alert the reader that things may not go well for the protagonist. We include small warning signs of future events, bait, if you will, to lure the reader and keep them reading

In the opening paragraphs, I will focus on the protagonists and hint at their problems. Novels are built the same way as a Gothic cathedral. Each scene is a small arc of action and reaction. These arcs support other arcs in layers, creating an intricate structure that rises high and withstands all that nature can throw at it.

In the first draft, we all commit sins of craftsmanship. These are secret codes, road signs for us to examine in the second draft:

  1. Clumsy foreshadowing, baldly stating what is going to happen later. We rewrite those scenes to make the clues less obvious.
  2. Or we might commit the opposite sin, neglecting to foreshadow so that events seem to arrive out of nowhere.

Recognizing those signals can be a challenge, but hopefully, our beta readers will notice and comment. My writing group is central to my work process.

We all know the opening paragraphs are vital. They are the hook and must offer a reason for the reader to continue past the first page. These paragraphs usually sell the book.

Getting the pacing right in those opening paragraphs and maintaining it to the last page is, in my opinion, the most challenging part of writing.

How much exposition is needed? What can be cut without making the story choppy and confusing? What must stay? When a possibility is briefly, almost offhandedly mentioned, but almost immediately overlooked or ignored by the protagonists, that is a form of foreshadowing.

Is that hint enough for the reader to understand what is going on? It’s easy to accidentally frontload the opening pages with a wall of backstory. I learned the hard way that long lead-ins ruin the chances of your book making readers happy.

I try to open the story with my characters in place and get the introductions out of the way. Within the first few pages, a question of some sort must be raised, or I must get the inciting incident underway. This is crucial for the pacing as it sets the characters and the reader on the trail of the answer, throwing them into the action.

Usually, there is no reason for the characters to hear the twelve-paragraph saga of the Caverns of Despair before they enter them. The readers also don’t need to know that history. The name is descriptive and is an indicator of what lies ahead. Names of places can be a form of foreshadowing that don’t slow the pacing.

Often, side characters will drop clues regarding things the protagonist doesn’t know, knowledge that affects the plot. Subplots that advance the main story’s plot arc are excellent ways of introducing the emotional part of the story, but beware.

Side quests are often fun in a video game but can ruin the pacing of a novel. They can be distracting and make for a haphazard story arc if they don’t relate to the central quest. I think side quests work best if they are presented once the book’s overall atmosphere is established and the core crisis is underway, and only if they are necessary for the completion of the principal quest.

Like Bilbo finding the One Ring.

Sometimes, we open the story by dropping our characters into the middle of an event. Even if we do that, we still need a pivotal event at the 1/4 mark that completely rocks their world. The event that changes everything is the jumping-off point for the story.

As a reader, I notice when a character suddenly displays a new skill or knowledge, something they never showed before. When this happens, it’s usually explained away as a Chekhov’s Skill. I usually stop reading at that point and forget about finishing the book.

Without briefly foreshadowing that superior ability, the reader will assume the character doesn’t have it, and the narrative becomes unbelievable. A casual mention early on of the characters using or training to use that skill would make it believable.

The most crucial aspect of foreshadowing is the surprise a reader feels when the clues come together to form a complete picture of the imminent disaster. This is the moment when the reader says, “I should have seen that coming.”

We have many reasons to pursue good foreshadowing skills. In my opinion, the most important is that it helps avoid using the clumsy Deus Ex Machina (pronounced: Day-us ex Mah-kee-nah) (God from the Machine) as a way to miraculously resolve an issue.

That literary faux pas occurs when, toward the end of the narrative, an author inserts a new event, character, ability, or otherwise resolves a seemingly insoluble problem in an unexpected and miraculous way.

Pacing is a combination of action and reaction. Transitions bookend each scene. They are a door into the scene and the way out. The way out is always the way into the next scene. How we use those transitions determines the importance of the passage. The bookends determine the narrative’s pacing.

Transition scenes get us smoothly from one event or conversation to the next. They push the plot forward and control pacing.

  • Action, reaction, information, reaction, action, reaction, rinse, and repeat until the story reaches its conclusion.

So, now that I have rambled on about writing, I will get busy and clear up my office. I always feel better once a disagreeable task is properly finished.

And then, maybe I will make some headway on my work in progress. Working in a lovely, organized space—what a concept!

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse, 1902. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:John William Waterhouse – The Crystal Ball.JPG,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:John_William_Waterhouse_-_The_Crystal_Ball.JPG&oldid=1009616986  (accessed May 11, 2025).

IMAGE: The One Ring, Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:One Ring Blender Render.png,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:One_Ring_Blender_Render.png&oldid=914989927 (accessed May 11, 2025).

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May 9, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a closer look at “Calais Pier by J.M.W. Turner, 1803”

Calais_pier_Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_024

Artist: J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851)

Title: Calais Pier

Date: 1803

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 172 cm (67.7 in); width: 240 cm (94.4 in)

Collection: National Gallery

What I love about this painting:

The art of Joseph Mallord William Turner holds a large place in my heart. His originality, his later lack of deference to artistic conventions of the day often made his life hard. But what wonderful works emerged from his view of the world. Much like Van Gogh would do thirty years later, Turner’s work eventually evolved into a style that was original and sheer genius. His ability to paint what he saw and felt rather than the accepted classic literal depiction of a scene inspired the next generation of artists, the Impressionists.

Caiais Pier is one of his earlier works, painted when he was still influenced by his classical training. And yet, it is an emotion-packed image, the scene of a near-tragedy. The packet boat has arrived at Calais with a full load of passengers. The storm dominates the scene with lowering clouds and a heavy swell, but the sun breaks through and lights on the sail. A shaft of light shines down to the sea illuminating the center of the composition.  The young artist put his experience and terror into the image, depicting the ferocity of the sea and the violence of the landing.

The National Gallery website says of this picture, “Although it had a mixed response when first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803, the critic John Ruskin declared it to be the first painting to show signs of ‘Turner’s colossal power’. Calais Pier is based upon an actual event. On 15 July 1802, Turner, aged 27, began his first trip abroad, travelling from Dover to Calais in a cross-channel ferry (a packet) of the type shown here. The weather was stormy, and Turner noted in his sketchbook: ‘Our landing at Calais. Nearly swampt.’” [1] Joseph Mallord William Turner | Calais Pier | NG472 | National Gallery, London

About the Artist, Via Wikipedia:

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolorist. He is known for his expressive coloring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolors, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840 and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.

Turner was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, to a modest lower-middle-class family and retained his lower class accent, while assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. A child prodigy, Turner studied at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1789, enrolling when he was 14, and exhibited his first work there at 15. During this period, he also served as an architectural draftsman. He earned a steady income from commissions and sales, which due to his troubled, contrary nature, were often begrudgingly accepted. He opened his own gallery in 1804 and became professor of perspective at the academy in 1807, where he lectured until 1828. He travelled around Europe from 1802, typically returning with voluminous sketchbooks.

Intensely private, eccentric, and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He did not marry, but fathered two daughters, Evelina (1801–1874) and Georgiana (1811–1843), by his housekeeper Sarah Danby. He became more pessimistic and morose as he got older, especially after the death of his father in 1829; when his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, and his art intensified. In 1841, Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property in that year’s census. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845, and died in London in 1851 aged 76. Turner is buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. [2]

Credits and Attributions:

“Calais Pier” by J.M.W. Turner, 1801. Wikipedia contributors, “Calais Pier,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Calais_Pier&oldid=1287504024 (accessed May 9, 2025).

[1] National Gallery contributors, Calais Pier, Joseph Mallord William Turner,  https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-calais-pier (accessed May 9, 2025).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “J. M. W. Turner,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J._M._W._Turner&oldid=1289276733 (accessed May 9, 2025).

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May 5, 2025 · 6:00 am

Worldbuilding – Calendars and Maps #writing

I discovered early on that keeping a calendar and a map gives me a realistic view of my plot arc. A calendar of events helps me remember in what season an incident occurred when something arises later in the first draft that pertains to it. Foliage changes with the seasons, and weather is a part of worldbuilding. Spring foliage is very different from autumn in the part of the world I am from.

And there are other reasons for keeping a calendar as well as sketching a simple map that no one but yourself will see.

A calendar of events helps you with pacing and consistency. In conjunction with a map, a calendar keeps the roadblocks moving along the story arc. It ensures you allow enough time to reasonably accomplish large tasks, enabling a reader to suspend their disbelief.

When it comes to calendars, I suggest you stick with what is familiar, and here is why. In 2008, a lunar calendar seemed like a good thing when creating my first world. The storyline and world of Mountains of the Moon was originally for an anime-style RPG that was never built due to several reasons, a tech crash being only one. When the project was scrapped, I still had the rights to my storyline, maps, and calendars.

My calendar for that world was (and still is) a hot mess.

In the game as we envisioned it, the calendar wouldn’t have been a problem as the days of the week were only mentioned in terms of when a shop was open. But that storyline eventually became my Tower of Bones series, which is set in the world of Neveyah. The calendar I devised so long ago for the game is an annoyance to me now.

  • Thirteen months, twenty-eight days each, named after astrological signs. Capricas, Aquis, Piscus, etc. (Not that many people know what time of year Taurus or Capricorn are unless it’s their birth sign.)
  • The names I assigned to the dates and months are problematic: Lunaday, Tyrsday, Odensday, Torsday, Frosday, Sunnaday, and Restday.

Not confusing at all. Nope.

In 2008, I had no idea just how awful my choice of names for the days and months would end up being. The calendar could have been scrapped and switched to our real-world calendar when I decided to turn it into a novel, but that didn’t occur to me.

And now, seventeen years later, I’m stuck with it. It’s why all my other books are plotted using the modern Gregorian calendar.

So take my advice and keep it simple.

But lets go back to the maps. 

Maybe you think you aren’t artistic enough for mapmaking.

Original Map of Neveyah from 2008 © 2008 cjjasperson

You don’t have to be an artist to draw a rudimentary map of an imaginary place. The rudimentary elements of the first map of my World of Neveyah series were scribbled on graph paper during a phone conversation. It evolved from there to the map you see at the left.

Later, it evolved into an art piece for the books because I love pretty maps, such as those in the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

I use pencil and graph paper at this stage because the story chooses the geography. As the rough draft evolves, sometimes towns must be renamed. They may have to be moved to more logical places. Whole mountain ranges may have to be moved or reshaped so that forests and savannas will appear where they are supposed to be in the story.

Maybe you think you don’t need a map. If your characters are going from hither to yon, and you are writing about their travels, you probably should at least make good notes. But truthfully, it’s not a lot of work to scribble a few lines and note towns and landmarks. If you are designing a fantasy world, you only need a pencil-drawn map. Even if the story is set in a town, it helps to know where our characters are going in relation to their home base.

These maps and notes and calendars are for your use only, a way to avoid introducing confusion into the story. So, your map doesn’t have to be fancy. Lay it out like a standard map with north at the top, east to the right, south to the bottom, and west to the left. Those are called cardinal points, each at 90-degree intervals in the clockwise direction, which is standard in modern maps.

Many towns are situated on rivers. Water rarely flows uphill. While it may do so if pushed by the force of wave action or siphoning, water is a slave to gravity and chooses to flow downhill. When making your map, locate rivers between mountains and hills. Rivers flow to a valley and either continue on to the ocean or pool in low spots and form lakes and ponds.

You might want to note where rivers and forests are situated relative to towns, or in the case of towns, what streets and cross streets our Heroes must travel. We need to take into account the fact that detours add to the distance and increase the time it takes to travel using the common mode of transportation.Rivers, mountains, lakes, and ponds make travel difficult, forcing a road or trail to go around them. This creates opportunities for plot twists in a fantasy story. Thieves, highwaymen—a lot of good plot fodder can be had with the right geography.

If your work is sci-fi, consider making a map of the space station/ship if that is where the story takes place. Billy Ninefingers is set in a wayside inn. I made a drawing of the floor plan for my purposes, noting who resided in each room, on the Rowdies’ floor because the inn is the world in which Billy’s story takes place.

If your characters travel, I suggest you keep the actual distances a bit general in the narrative because some readers will nitpick the details, no matter how accurate you are. Readers may not see it the way you do because their perception of a league might be three miles, while yours might be one and a half.

Both are correct. League (unit) – Wikipedia

Fantasy readers like maps. If you are writing fantasy but feel your hand-drawn map isn’t good enough to include in the finished product, consider hiring an artist to make a nice map from your notes.

No matter what genre we write in, we want the narrative to feel real for the reader. We do this through worldbuilding. Maps and calendars, no matter how rudimentary, are foundation tools of worldbuilding in my writing process.

I hope this little two-part series on worldbuilding has helped you visualize your work more easily.

Previous in this series:

Worldbuilding – the stylesheet/storyboard #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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May 2, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Gathering Wood for Winter by George Henry Durrie 1855

Title: Gathering Wood for Winter

Artist: George Henry Durrie (1820–1863)

Date: 1855

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 26 in (66 cm); width: 36 in (91.4 cm)

Collection: Private collection

Why I love this painting:

Durrie shows us a day in late autumn. His characteristic use of reds and browns juxtaposed against lighter shades of white portrays the stark beauty of late autumn in New England.

The first snow has fallen, and the season is turning to winter. It’s more important than ever to gather as much wood as possible. Fortunately for our wood gatherers, a giant has fallen victim to a storm, snapping off halfway up.

This is not necessarily the end of the tree. Leaves still cling to the branches below the wound and will continue to provide shade and habitat for as long as it can. Someday, it may be cut down, as the fact it broke in half shows that it is nearing the end of its life and may present a hazard to those who walk beneath it.

Regardless of the tree’s future, the farmer and his son are taking advantage of the bounty so close to their home. They will stack it in the woodshed and allow it to dry out or “season” before they must burn it, hopefully not before the end of spring.

The more wood they gather now, the warmer they will be when winter’s grip tightens.

About the author, via Wikipedia:

George Henry Durrie (June 6, 1820 – October 15, 1863) was an American landscape artist noted especially for his rural winter snow scenes, which became very popular after they were reproduced as lithographic prints by Currier and Ives.

For many years, Durrie made a living primarily as a portrait painter, executing hundreds of commissions. After marriage, he made frequent trips, traveling to New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey,  and Virginia, fulfilling commissions and looking for new ones. His diary reveals that he was an enthusiastic railroad traveler, in the early days of the railroads. Durrie also painted what he called “fancy pieces”, whimsical studies of still lives or stage actors, as well as painting scenes on window-shades and fireplace covers. But portrait painting commissions became scarcer when photography came on the scene, offering a cheaper alternative to painted portraits, and, as his account-book shows, Durrie rarely painted a portrait after 1851.

Durrie’s interest shifted to landscape painting, and while on the road, or at home, made frequent sketches of landscape elements that caught his eye. Around 1844 Durrie began painting water and snow scenes, and took a second place medal at the 1845 New Haven State Fair for two winter landscapes. Although he had some training in portrait work, Durrie was self-taught as a landscape artist. He was undoubtedly influenced both by the American Hudson River School, and also by European artists, by studying exhibitions of their work at the New Haven Statehouse, the Trumbull Gallery, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, as well as in New York City. Durrie himself exhibited regularly, both locally, and in New York City at the National Academy of Design and the American Artists’ Union, and his reputation grew. Durrie was especially known for his snow pieces, and would often make copies or near-copies of his most popular pieces, with modifications to order.  The landscapes painted by Durrie offered a more intimate view than the panoramic landscapes painted by the Hudson River School, which was the leading school of American landscape painting. Colin Simkin notes that Durrie’s paintings took in a wide angle, but still “close enough to be within hailing distance” of the people who are always included in his scenes.

Currier and Ives

Durrie’s early landscapes were often of local landmarks, such as East Rock and West Rock, and other local scenes, which were popular with his New Haven clients, and he painted numerous variations of popular subjects. As his portrait commissions declined, Durie concentrated on landscapes. He wanted a wider audience, and he seemed to have a good sense of what would sell. Durrie realized that his paintings would have a wider appeal if he made them as generic New England scenes rather than as identifiable local scenes, retaining, as Sackett said, “a sense of place without specifying where that place was.” The New York City lithographic firm of Currier & Ives knew their audience; the American public wanted nostalgic scenes of rural life, images of the good old days, and Durrie’s New England scenes fit the bill perfectly. Lithographic prints were a very democratic form of art, cheap enough that the humblest home could afford some art to hang on the wall. Durrie had been marketing his paintings in New York City, and Currier and Ives, who had popularized such prints, purchased some of Durrie’s paintings in the late 1850s or early 1860s, and eventually published ten of Durrie’s pictures beginning in 1861. Four prints were published between 1861 and the artist’s death in New Haven in 1863; six additional prints were issued posthumously.

The popularity of Durrie’s snow scenes received an additional boost in the 1930s, when the Traveler’s Insurance Company began issuing calendars featuring Currier and Ives prints. Starting in 1946, the January calendar always featured a Durrie snow scene. Historian Bernard Mergen notes that “84 of the 125 paintings attributed to him are snowscapes, more than enough to make him the most prolific snow scene painter of his time.”

In Durrie’s time, winter landscapes were not popular with most curators and critics, but nevertheless, by the time of his death, Durrie had acquired a national reputation as a snowscape painter. Durrie died in 1863, at age 43, probably from typhoid fever, not long after Currier and Ives began reproducing his paintings as prints.

Durrie was dismissed by critics as a popular artist, an illustrator rather than a fine artist. Although Durrie’s Currier and Ives prints were popular, his name was still relatively unknown. But a revival of interest in Durrie began in the 1920s with the publication in 1929 of Currier and Ives, Printmakers to the American People, by collector Harry T. Peters, Sr., who called Durrie’s prints “among the most valued In the entire gallery [of Currier and Ives prints]”, and says that Durrie was known as the “snowman” of the group. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Gathering Wood for Winter by George Henry Durrie 1855. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:George Henry Durrie – Gathering Wood for Winter.JPG,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:George_Henry_Durrie_-_Gathering_Wood_for_Winter.JPG&oldid=853995324 (accessed May 1, 2025).

[1]Wikipedia contributors, “George Henry Durrie,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Henry_Durrie&oldid=1282714933 (accessed May 1, 2025).

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April 28, 2025 · 6:00 am

Worldbuilding – the stylesheet/storyboard #writing

If you want to succeed at completing a project with the ambitious goal of writing a novel, I suggest planning in advance. I have mentioned before that I like to storyboard all my ideas.

That way, if I become lost or find myself floundering in the writing process, I can come back to my stylesheet and remind myself of the original concept of the story.

Many people use Scrivener for this, but I was a bookkeeper for most of my working years, so I still use a spreadsheet program. Excel works for me because I have used Microsoft products since the early nineties and am comfortable with that program.

Some people use a whiteboard, and others use Post-It Notes or a combination of the two.

Scrivener currently (in 2025) costs around $60.00, which is not too bad. I have never invested in it, but some of my friends swear by it. On the good side, they have a 30-day free trial period, so if you are interested, test it out. #1 Novel & Book Writing Software For Writers

However, Google Drive has a free program called Google Sheets. This program is similar to Excel (which I use), so the principles I will be discussing are the same.

Admittedly, this program doesn’t do what Excel does, but it is perfect for this if you don’t have Microsoft Office.

However, you can create a stylesheet in any way that makes you happy, even using a notepad and a pencil.

The important thing is to organize your plot notes, research, and background materials in a way that is accessible and makes sense to you.

On line one of page one – I give my project a working title and write that at the top of the spreadsheet (line 1). I save it with that label, something like Strange_story_stylesheet_05-May-2025. That label tells me three things: Working title (Strange Story), type of document (stylesheet), and date begun (May 5, 2025).

  • If my outline is an idea for a short story meant for a specific purpose, I include the intended publication and closing date for submissions. (This is necessary for anthologies but not needed for a novel)

On line two, I label my columns with the categories listed below. Then, on the ribbon, I open the view tab, highlight the third row, and click freeze panes. This allows me to scroll down the spreadsheet while keeping the title and column headings visible.

Page one of my storyboard works this way: I make a list of names and places with four pieces of information pertaining to the story, all on the same line.

Column A heading – Character Names: list the important characters by name and also list the important places where the story will be set.

Column B heading – Role: What their role is, a note about that person or place, a brief description of who and what they are.

Column C heading – What do they want? What does each character desire?

Column D heading – What will they do to get it? How far will they go to achieve their desire?

Page Two contains a brief synopsis of what I imagine the plot will be. This will be the jumping-off point for when I start writing and will change radically by the end of the process.

Page three of my storyboard contains An OUTLINE of events, including a prospective ending. I keep this page updated as things evolve. In every novel, a point of no return, large or small, comes into play, so I will make a note of when and where it should occur in the timeline of the plot arc.

Page four might be the GLOSSARY. This page is a list of names and invented words, which I list as they arise, all spelled the way I want them.

Page five will have MAPS. They don’t have to be fancy. All you need is something rudimentary to show you the layout of the world.

Page six will feature the CALENDAR of events. This is especially important, as readers despise mushy timelines.

This is how the tabs for the storyboard are labeled, allowing me to easily access what I need:

But what if your book spawns a series? The next novel should be easier to write if you kept a storyboard for book one. The storyboard will grow with each installment in that series.

The stylesheet/storyboard is a good tool for fantasy authors because we invent entire worlds, religions, and magic systems. We don’t want to contradict ourselves or have our characters’ names change halfway through the book with no explanation.

Creating the storyboard/stylesheet helps me to know who my characters think they are in the first draft. Having an idea of their story and seeing them in their world is a good first step. Write those thoughts down so you don’t lose them. Keep writing as the ideas come to you, and soon, you’ll have the seeds of a novel.

Storyboarding plays a direct role in how a linear thinker like me works. It takes advantage of the ideas I have that might make a good story as they come to me. Those notes inspire me to begin writing the first draft and keep my imagination running.

Next week, we’ll talk about how maps and calendars are essential tools, how to make them, and why I include them in my storyboard.

Credits and Attributions

The Screenshots of the Sample Storyboard Template are my own work, © 2025 Connie J. Jasperson, All Rights Reserved.

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April 25, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday – a second look at “Fishing for Oysters at Cancale” by John Singer Sargent 1878

2560px-John_Singer_Sargent_-_CancaleArtist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

Title: En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish) Fishing for Oysters at Cancale

Date: 1878

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 77 cm (30.3 in); width: 121.6 cm (47.8 in)

Inscription: Signed and Dated: John S. Sargent Paris 1878

Collection: National Gallery of Art

What I love about this picture:

Every time I see a painting by John Singer Sargent, I love him more. He is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists of all time. (Don’t be jealous, Rembrandt. You are still number one in my heart.)

Sargent paints a perfect summer day for us, a good day to be out near the water. John Singer Sargent was a complicated man, as most artists are. Famous as a portrait artist, he painted landscapes that conveyed a sense of mood and emotion that few of his contemporaries could match. One of Sargent’s great skills was the ability to convey the sensory impressions of an environment.

He found beauty and drama in the lives of ordinary people and showed his characters outdoors in all the seasons. His paintings of working-class people didn’t romanticize how they dressed, conveyed their moods. Sargent showed the environment they lived and worked in, no matter how good or bad the weather.

Sargent had a gift for painting rare and expensive fabrics, yet no one is dressed in finery in this painting. On the contrary, the women are dressed in shabby clothes that protect them from the sun and salty wind, garments that have seen a great deal of wear. The children are bare-legged and barefoot, while the fishers wear clogs. These women carry baskets and the hope that they will find enough oysters and other shellfish to not only feed their family but have plenty to sell to the fishmonger.

About this picture via MFA Boston: Sargent’s choice of subject was not revolutionary – a similar scene of oyster harvesters had previously won a medal at the Salon. However, his ability to paint the reflections in the tidal pools and the light sparkling on the figures and clouds dazzled viewers, clearly demonstrating that his talents extended beyond portraiture. [1]

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal. During the year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England, where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.

From the beginning, Sargent’s work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for its supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life, Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.

The exhibition in the 1980s of Sargent’s previously hidden male nudes served to spark a reevaluation of his life and work, and its psychological complexity. In addition to the beauty, sensation and innovation of his oeuvre, his same-sex interests, unconventional friendships with women and engagement with race, gender nonconformity and emerging globalism are now viewed as socially and aesthetically progressive and radical.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:John Singer Sargent – Cancale.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:John_Singer_Sargent_-_Cancale.jpg&oldid=745727074 (accessed April 25, 2025).

[1] Quote: MFABoston contributors, Fishing for Oysters at Cancale – Works – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org) (accessed April 25,2025).

[2] Wikipedia contributors, “John Singer Sargent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Singer_Sargent&oldid=1223506386 (accessed April 25, 2025).

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April 21, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story part 12 – theme, plot, and the character arc #writing

Two months ago, we began our series, Idea to Story. The previous eleven installments are listed below. We have created a sample story, a romantasy. We have met our protagonists and the ultimate antagonist. We know what their world is like and have given them a worthy quest, and we discovered what genre we are writing by paying attention to the tropes that arose as we were laying down the plot.

Now, we’re going to examine the themes that have emerged. We will strengthen the story arc and make the characters more vivid by ensuring a strong central theme is woven through the story.

But first, what is a theme? It is an idea, an unspoken message that winds through the arc of the story and generates action. Themes are subtle but move the characters to action and define why the action happens. For an incredible list of themes, go to A Huge List of Common Themes – Literary Devices.

Before we talk about the themes we want to incorporate in our story, let’s look at how the master of themes, Henry James, wove them into his work.

Henry James is a 19th-century writer you might have heard of but never read. However, he can teach us so much about using a story’s themes to create memorable characters. You may be familiar with the titles of some of his works, such as The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl. Filmmakers and playwrights are still turning his work into movies and plays.

Henry James was a master at writing one common theme into a story—lust. Lust for sex. Lust for money. Lust for control.

Lust for power.

Henry James wrote one of the most famous novellas ever published, the Turn of the Screw.

On the surface, the Turn of the Screw is a gothic horror story. The four main themes are the corruption of the innocent, the destructiveness of heroism, the struggle between good and evil, and the difference between reality and fantasy. A fifth theme is the perception of ghosts. Are the ghosts real or the projection of the governess’s madness?

However, there are several subthemes interwoven into the fabric of the narrative:

  • Secrecy.
  • Deception.
  • The lust for control.
  • Obsession.

What I take home from the longevity of Henry James’s work is this: find a strong theme and use it to underscore and support our characters’ motives.

So, now we know that literary themes are a pattern, a “melody” that recurs in varying forms throughout a story. They emphasize mood and shape the plot.

The main theme of our story is the struggle between good and evil. In Donovan’s well-planned manipulation of Kai under the guise of brotherly mentoring, we have the subthemes of deception and the corruption of the innocent. In Val and Kai, we have the dangers of ignorance and the subthemes of arrogance and class prejudice.

Our three main characters are people. In real life, people are a mix of good and bad at the same time. Some lean more toward good, others toward bad. Either way, their intentions are logical, and they desperately want what they think they deserve.

Most importantly, our characters lie to themselves about their own motives and obscure the truth behind other, more palatable truths. These unspoken truths are the themes we must weave into the fabric of our story by subtly showing a pattern.

Two themes we want to emphasize in Donovan are the desire for power and the use of fear as a means of control. However, at first, we want the tug-of-war for control of the child king, Edward, to be focused on the regents, Kai Voss and Valentine.

The story opens from Val’s point of view, so we lean a bit toward her. But not entirely, as Kai’s chapter shows he has good intentions.

By hinting at the pattern of Donvan’s actions in the first quarter of the book, his lust for power becomes clear. We hope to create in the reader a sense of helplessness to stop what we see coming. This is emphasized as clues appear, indicating that Val and Kai are acting on misinformation that is deliberately fed to them.

Once Val and Kai find themselves in the dungeon, new themes will join the story. Both are in their mid-thirties and are established and respected in their respective peer groups. However, both must have a coming-of-age arc. Despite their apparent adulthood, they each have a lot to learn about real life.

But what about young King Edward? For Val and Kai, the theme of parental love is shown in their actions of caring for him from the beginning. While he is not their child, he is in their care and both love him as if he were their son and are secretly jealous of each other. They have differing goals for him, which causes friction, but the reader doesn’t doubt their sincere love for the boy.

Edward is sickly, cursed with a wasting disease. All through this tale, he has been a McGuffin, the object of the quest and a pawn in Donovan’s game of power. His character arc is limited because he is bedridden and unaware of the war for control centered on him.

When she wakes up in the dungeon, Val realizes who truly set the curse on Edward and who murdered the boy’s parents in the first place. She realizes that if she can’t rescue Edward, Donovan’s curse will kill him, and Donovan will become king. She is miserably aware that she will need a wizard to counter Donovan’s sorcery. Unfortunately, the only sorcerer she has access to is Kai, which means she must rescue him first, something she despises having to do.

Conversely, Kai is glad to be free but not pleased that it is Valentine who has rescued him. He doubts her motives and refuses to believe his brother betrayed him, until they overhear the guards talking.

Val and Kai must learn to work together. As they do, the theme of romantic love will emerge.

What other themes might emerge as we write our story? How will we recognize and underscore the patterns, the melodies that appear in the narrative?

This is where writing becomes a craft, and to excel at any craft, we must work at it.

Thank you for sticking with me as we worked our way through this long and involved process of taking an idea for a story and building the characters, the world, and the plot.

While the story of Val and Kai is just a sample plot for demonstration, I have used these weeks to reexamine the different aspects of my current work in progress. Talking my way through a plot with my friends really helps, so thank you!

Previous in this series:

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 5 – plotting treason #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 6 – Plotting the End #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 7 – Building the world #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 8 – world-building and society #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 9 – technology and world-building #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to Story part 10 – science and magic as world-building #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 11: Genre and expected tropes #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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April 18, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a second look at “Canal in the Spreewald in Spring” by Bruno Moras

Artist: Bruno Moras, (1833 – 1939)

Title: Kanal im Spreewald im Frühling (Canal in the Spreewald in Spring)

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions Height: 79 cm (31.1″); Width: 119 cm (46.8″)

What I love about this picture:

I first featured this painting in March of 2020. I particularly like how comforting this scene is, how ordinary and yet how special. I grew up in a house on the shores of a lake, and waterside homes attract me. I would love to live beside this canal.

Spring is a hopeful season for me, a time of promise. Trees that have slept all winter are waking and blossoming, bringing color to the dark, gray world.

Moras captured the trees as they are when the leaves first burst forth, with a bright, yellow-green. The apple and plum trees, the first signs of spring around here, are blossoming. The water reflects the  colors of the world, yet a slight breeze moves it. The small boats drawn up to the shore can carry one or two fisher folk comfortably.

About the artist:

I have been unable to find much about Bruno Moras, other than he was the son of Walter Moras, was born, lived, and died in Berlin, and never achieved the fame his father had. This is too bad, as his works are just now becoming more in demand at auctions.

Still, his work survives. In a time when modern art was moving away from traditional landscape painting, Moras painted beautiful images of what he loved most: the countryside of his Germany.

Credits and Attributions:

Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Bruno Moras – Kanal im Spreewald im Frühling.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Bruno_Moras_-_Kanal_im_Spreewald_im_Fr%C3%BChling.jpg&oldid=835727555 (accessed April 16, 2025).

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April 14, 2025 · 6:00 am

Idea to story, part 11: Genre and expected tropes #writing

Two months ago, we began our series, Idea to Story. The previous ten installments are listed below, but over the last ten weeks, we have met our protagonists and the ultimate antagonist. We know what their world is like and have given them a worthy quest. Also, we know how this story must end.

As we were meeting the characters, we realized that the sample plot is for a “Romantasy,” a subgenre of Fantasy, and we gave it a title that plays to that category, Valentine’s Gambit. If we choose to publish this story, we know which “shelf” (category) in the e-bookstore will best fit it: Fantasy Romance.

We will want to read books in that genre by well-known authors. This way we will know what our target market wants. The tropes may be anticipated by the reader, but we want our novel to incorporate them in a creative and unique way.

The expected tropes we have included when we plotted the story arc are:

  • Enemies to lovers Romance
  • Child in jeopardy
  • Quest
  • Gaining control of magic
  • Wise mentor
  • Battling the powerful enemy

This will ensure our novel fits its genre and subgenre. But what exactly are genres? Publisher and author Lee French puts it this way, “Literary genres are each a collection of tropes that create expectations about the media you consume.”

For a deep dive into the many genres that exist, go to List of writing genres – Wikipedia. Be prepared to spend some time looking into every aspect of the category you think you write in. If you do the research, you will be better able to market your work to its intended audience.

Genre and tropes are intertwined. If we are going to find readers for this novel, we must understand who we’re trying to sell it to.

We need to know what that reader expects to find in their favorite kind of book. Genres are like a display of fruit at the grocery store. Each kind of fruit has it’s own spot in the display, such as bananas and oranges and grapes. But each kind of fruit, such as apples, are divided into several varieties, and each variety of apple is a little different from its neighbor.

In novels, the different subgenres (flavors) within a genre are created by the tropes the author has chosen to include in the narrative.

Mainstream (or general) fiction is an all-purpose term that publishers and booksellers use to describe works that should appeal to the broadest range of readers and has a chance for commercial success. Mainstream authors often blend genre fiction stylistic practices with those considered unique to literary fiction. It will be both plot- and character-driven and may have a narrative style that is not as lean as modern genre fiction, but won’t be pretentiously stylistic.

Science fiction features futuristic settings, science, and technology, along with space travel, time travel, faster-than-light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.

  • Hard Sci-fi is characterized by attention to detail in theoretical physics, chemistry, and astrophysics. Accurately depicting worlds that more advanced technology may make possible is critical.
  • Soft Sci-fi leans toward the social sciences, exploring psychology, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology.
  • Other main sub-genres of Sci-fi include Space-operas, Cyberpunk, Time Travel, Steampunk, Alternate history, Military, Superhuman, Apocalyptic, and Post-Apocalyptic. Go to the internet and look up the typical tropes of these subgenres. Then write me an awesome Space Opera – my favorite sci-fi subgenre.

The main thing to remember is this: Science and Magic cannot coexist in the genre of science fiction. The minute you add magic to the story, you have Fantasy.

Fantasy is a fiction genre that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting. The genre of Fantasy has its share of snobs when it comes to defining the sub-genres, the same way sci-fi and literary fiction do. The tropes are:

  • High Fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional world rather than the real world. It often includes elves, fairies, dwarves, dragons, demons, magic or sorcery, wizards or magicians, invented languages, quests, and coming-of-age themes. Readers expect and demand multi-volume series. Often, the prose is more literary, and the primary plot is slowed by many side quests. Think William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien.
  • Epic Fantasy can be dark and serious but is always epic in scope. It usually explores the struggle against supernatural, evil forces. Epic fantasy shares some typical characteristics of high fantasy, and its readers also demand multi-volume narratives. Tad Williams’s Memory Sorrow and Thorn is a classic Epic Fantasy.
  • Paranormal Fantasy often focuses on romantic love. It includes elements beyond scientific explanation. Think ghosts, vampires, and the supernatural.
  • Urban Fantasy can be set in historical, modern, or futuristic periods, and the settings may include fictional elements. It must be primarily set in a city.
  • Romantasy contains all the elements of a classic fantasy story. However, the developing relationship between the two main characters is as central to the story as the primary quest. It must have a happy ending for the protagonists.

Every genre has a subgenre of horror. In Romance, the horror subgenre might be Gothic or Paranormal, but the focus must be on a developing romance. The roadblocks will not feature blood or gore, but terror and a perception of danger will be a feature the pair must overcome.

Romance—Novels of this type of genre fiction place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people and must have an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. The story will be character-driven, and the roadblocks must be believable but surmountable. There must be a happy ending for the couple, or it will not be received well by readers of Romance.

I mention Classic (Literary) Fiction last because it is the most complicated and least understood genre of all. These works are considered difficult to read because the style of the prose uses a wide range of vocabulary and may be experimental. This requires the reader to go over certain passages more than once, which many readers dislike doing. However, these books can be satisfying as they present ideas that require the reader to think beyond their usual bounds. Stylistic writing, heavy use of allegory, and the deep exploration of themes and ideas are strongly represented in these novels.

Our final installment in this series will explore how to recognize and make use of the themes that emerge in our work. We will focus on the themes in our sample Romantasy, idea threads that will wind through the narrative, and subtly reinforce our characters’ stories.

Previous in this series:

Idea to story, part 1: novel, poetry, memoir, or short story? #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 2: thinking out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 3: plotting out loud #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 4 – the roles of side characters #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 5 – plotting treason #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 6 – Plotting the End #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 7 – Building the world #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 8 – world-building and society #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to story part 9 – technology and world-building #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Idea to Story part 10 – science and magic as world-building #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

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April 11, 2025 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: A closer look at “A Boating Party” by John Singer Sargent ca. 1889

RISDM 78-086

Artist: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) 

Title: A Boating Party

Date: circa 1889

Dimensions: height: 88.3 cm (34.7 in) width: 91.4 cm (35.9 in)

Collection: Rhode Island School of Design Museum  

What I Love About this Painting:

This painting first appeared here in last autumn, and my mind keeps going back to it. This is one my favorite paintings by John Singer Sargent. He created this scene early in his career, but already his ability to show the many moods of water and the personalities of his characters is a strength.

Sargent painted portraits for commissions and was highly successful. However, he painted informal studies like today’s scene for himself, painting for sheer love of it. This scene seems like the perfect visual prompt for writers searching for inspiration.

We’re looking at a fine day toward the end of summer. The day is warm enough that light jackets are all that are needed. The trees along the riverbank have begun to turn, and some leaves have fallen. One thing that stands out to me is the way he shows the shrubbery along the bank. 

One thing I have always appreciated about John Singer Sargent’s subjects is the way he captures people in the act of doing something. The eye immediately goes to the lady in white who is carefully stepping from the riverbank and into a boat, aided by a man in the shadows on the bank. Her reflection on the still waters is masterfully done.

In the right foreground, a man lounges in another boat that is tied up at the pier, with his leg thrown over both the boat’s gunwale and the dock’s rail. Beside him, another lady sits on the pier. Judging from the way Sargent has positioned them, I feel they are a married couple, and they are in no hurry to go anywhere.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

[1] John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris, but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.

From the beginning, Sargent’s work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. Art historians generally ignored artists who painted royalty and “society” – such as Sargent – until the late 20th century. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:John Singer Sargent – A Boating Party – 78.086 – Rhode Island School of Design Museum.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:John_Singer_Sargent_-_A_Boating_Party_-_78.086_-_Rhode_Island_School_of_Design_Museum.jpg&oldid=809452828 (accessed April 10, 2025).

[1]Wikipedia contributors, “John Singer Sargent,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Singer_Sargent&oldid=1283813769 (accessed April 11, 2025).

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