Tag Archives: writing

August 21, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Indian Canoe by Albert Bierstadt ca. 1886

Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: Indian Canoe

Date: circa 1886

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 69.2 cm (27.2 in); width: 90.8 cm (35.7 in)

Collection: Blanton Museum of Art

What I love about this painting:

I love the quiet beauty of this faithful and respectful representation of a Native American paddling a canoe. It shows a scene from the times just before the native peoples were taken from their lands and forced onto reservations.

A time when the land was theirs, and future troubles seemed far away. Bierstadt was criticized in his time for portraying the native peoples with dignity and respect. It was a different time, and as most people now believe, that criticism was only a hint of the terrible prejudices that destroyed an entire culture’s way of life.

The landscape itself is reminiscent of the coastal landscape of the Pacific Northwest and is beautifully done. I especially like the way Bierstadt portrays the late afternoon sun as it slides into dusk. The evening mist rises, lending a mystic quality to the scene.

This is a moment of quiet serenity, and I am fortunate to be able to share it with you!

About the author, via Wikipedia:

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

Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choice of subjects and for his use of light, which they found excessive. Some critics objected to Bierstadt’s paintings of Native Americans, believing that including Indigenous Americans “marred” the “impression of solitary grandeur.”

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

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Albert Bierstadt – Indian Canoe.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Albert_Bierstadt_-_Indian_Canoe.jpg&oldid=1059522793 (accessed August 20, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1365544126 (accessed August 20, 2026).

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August 17, 2026 · 6:00 am

Guest Post: The Flu Season Saga – How I Didn’t Structure a Series #writing

It’s always good to see things from a different point of view. I think and work in a linear fashion, and I talk (too often) about my process. My dear friend, author Stephen Swartz, thinks and works very differently from me, and he has kindly agreed to share some of his wisdom with us.

Stephen is a fellow co-founder of Myrddin Publishing Group and is the author of twenty-one novels (and counting). He writes in whatever genre suits his mood, and his work is always original and bold. I especially enjoy his unique voice and dense, literary style. So, without further yak-yak on my part, I bring you Stephen Swartz’s guest post:

Somehow I have created a series. I confess it wasn’t planned, just worked out that way. You see, I began with a single idea: a boy and his mom – and her tuba – escaping a city in chaos in the sixth year of a pandemic much like the worst days of the pandemic we experienced. A journey with things happening. But what about when they get to their destination? That becomes almost a different story. And from that realization, I was off and running. If the destination is like another story, what else would happen? Before the end of this first book, The Book of Mom, I knew there would be another book. I had to know what would happen next. I already had some ideas.

For Book 2, The Way of the Son, I envisioned another adventure for the son, Sandy, leading him to what would be his young family’s survival home in the woods of a national park. I knew with the start of Book 2 that there had to be a Book 3 to make it a trilogy. Then, for Book 3, Dawn of the Daughters, I switched narrators: having Isla, the daughter, growing up and telling the story of her parents and herself, then of her own children. I found it easy to keep going with characters who were already familiar to me and had gained my trust. I knew them well and wanted to give them more.

I had to choose a good character to tell what happens next. Whose perspective works best for the story? And what things will be familiar in the newly developing world of the story: a pandemic and survival years, then civil war and reconstruction. What level of development would they have by then? It is a new history unfolding and I can bend it in ways that make the next story interesting but also move it in ways that reveal a plausible direction for the new society. A lot, I will admit, came to be according to how my immediate interest shifted while writing the books. That is one reason the location shifted from the dirty capital in Book 4, The Book of Dad, to the western territory for Books 5 and 6.

In Book 1 I wanted to portray the immediate danger of the situation my characters, then bring them to a place of refuge which turns out to have its own dangers. But with Book 2 I had to invent more: what situations could they run into, both the bad and the less bad. I decided where they would eventually go, but I had to get them there – as well as wrap up some loose ends. Once settled, I could switch narrators for Book 3. Again, deciding what events would happen and how the main character is effected by them is a major thought-experiment. This might be where another writer may pause to do some planning but for me, it was all in my head although I may jot down notes to keep things in order or so I don’t forget to add them. It is all about feeling what the main character feels in the situation.

I took a pause after finishing the trilogy. But I had nagging thoughts of what would happen next – again. I imagined a rebuilt society mirroring that in Orwell’s 1984 and chose the right narrator – Isla’s youngest child, Frank – to tell the story of his struggle to exist in this “Ideal Society” then escape from it. In this way I could write a dystopian story but also link it to the trilogy as a sequel. But unexpectedly I had to go on. At the end of Book 4, The Book of Dad, Frank’s wife and children flee to the western territory. That was a bold decision, but it fit the end of the book. What could I do with that for another book? In Book 5, The Granddaughter (i.e., Isla’s), Maggie, Frank’s 10-year old daughter in Book 4, is now an adult and gets her own turn as narrator. While Book 1 was full of Sandy’s mother’s musical references, Book 5 is a chance to return to the musical side of the series with Maggie paying homage to her great-grandmother.

With two sequels crying out to be another trilogy, I felt the need for a sweeping epic to conclude the series. I saw a post-apocalyptic Western with gunslingers. Maggie, the granddaughter of Isla, has a son who gets lost in the wilderness. His adventures form the centerpiece of Book 6, The Grandsons. The frame story is what happens when this son of Maggie comes home. That seemed a fitting conclusion to the series.

But wait a minute – or a few weeks! A new idea had been boiling under my mind while I was writing The Grandsons (Book 6). I conceived of a ridiculous story set in a future medieval Missouri. Two brothers, descendants of the same family as the Flu Season Saga, are on a mission. It would be full of comedy, puns and jokes, lively wordplay, farce, and plot twists nobody could guess were coming. And thus The Warriors Baumann was born. I had thoughts of it standing on its own yet it still had ties to the Flu Season Saga. Ironically, the characters attend a play based on the opera composed by Maggie which was based on the notebooks written by Sandy (Books 1-3) about their experiences going to the island sanctuary and then having to leave it.

Meantime, I had been planning to write my magnum opus, A Time of Kings, all of my life and I finally felt ready for it. Considering how I linked The Warriors Baumann to the series by making the brothers Baumann descendants, I chose to do the same for my latest novel. The Prologue mentions a Baumann character and his son. The son is given the name Jack and uses it for most of the book even though he knows he is a Baumann. Jack observes the medieval world of this future America – like in The Warriors Baumann. He becomes part of the Royal family and interacts with them as a side character. Later, after accomplishing much, he stands out as the protagonist in the final third of the book.

Each book developed from the preceding book. Always the same question prompted me forward: What happens next? I let the developing world unfold in each book but the family remained, generation after generation. Therefore, I can say I did not sit down one day and make a grand plan for eight books to be a series – or even the first three as a trilogy. It just happened. The pros and cons are obvious. Continuity issues come to the fore. Might want to keep notes. But having characters cross from one book to the next, seeing them at different ages, in different situations, is a bonus feature. Different characters, different views of the changing world. Wishing to experience that change myself is what drives me.

Thank you, Stephen! About the Author:

Stephen Swartz is the author of literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and contemporary horror novels. While growing up in Kansas City, he dreamed of traveling the world. His novels feature exotic locations, foreign characters, and smatterings of other languages–strangers in strange lands. You get the idea: life imitating art.

After studying music and even composing a symphony, Stephen planned to be a music teacher before turning to fiction writing, and taught writing at a university in Oklahoma. Stephen Swartz has published poetry, stories, essays, and articles for scholarly journals in the U.S. and Japan.

You can find him blogging at:  DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire

You can find his books at: Amazon.com: Stephen Swartz: books, biography, latest update

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August 10, 2026 · 6:00 am

Revisiting the Layers of the Scene: conversation #writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Drawing what?”

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

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

“This is how I earn my living.”

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

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

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

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

The layers that form this scene are:

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

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

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

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, just drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The layers that form this scene are:

Family Camping Clipart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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August 3, 2026 · 6:00 am

Lack of information drives a plot forward #writing

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

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

At first, it seems easy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mishaps and dead ends build tension.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I’m enjoying writing it.

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

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July 27, 2026 · 6:00 am

More random thoughts about the process of #writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July 24, 2026 · 9:14 am

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

Albert_Bierstadt_California_SpringArtist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: California Spring

Genre: landscape art

Date: 1875

Medium: oil on canvas

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

Current location: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

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

What I love about this painting:

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

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

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

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

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

Credits and Attributions:

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

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

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July 20, 2026 · 6:00 am

Random thoughts on why some novels stink #writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not a good visualization.

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

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

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

  • Backlash
  • Blinded
  • Blood
  • Blunder

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

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

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

Overused words and phrases become clichés.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A research side note: Storyboards are your friend.

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

What the style sheet/storyboard should cover:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July 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.

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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).

 

 

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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).

 

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