Tag Archives: writing

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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June 15, 2026 · 6:00 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is the story constructed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credits and Attributions:

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

 

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June 8, 2026 · 6:05 am

Dialogue tags, verbal tics, and accents #writing

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

And we talk, talk, talk.

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

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

Eww.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what about exclamations and verbal tics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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June 1, 2026 · 6:00 am

#Writing Interior Dialogues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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May 25, 2026 · 6:00 am

A few thoughts on the craft of #writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s your poem and your choice.

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

Now, go! Write like the wind!

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May 18, 2026 · 6:00 am

What I am #reading, and #writing

Spring has arrived here in the Pacific Northwest.  The weather alternates between too hot, with temperatures up to last week’s unseasonable 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius), and too cold. Then the next day it drops to last Friday’s cold and rainy 48 degrees, or 9 degrees Celsius.

We need the rain, as it has been an abnormally dry winter, and forest fire season always arrives with summer. My local county has already banned open campfires and outdoor burning.

I spend the cold rainy days hunkering down on the sofa with a cup of hot tea and a good book, and the hot sunny ones on the balcony with a glass of iced tea. (And a good book.)

What am I reading? I just finished “Murder at Last Chance Cove” by Kim Griswell. It’s a fast, fun read. Not literary or deep, but a good cozy mystery. The series is set in one of my favorite areas of the world, the Northern Oregon and Southwest Washington coast. I think I’ll purchase the second book in this series.

I am currently reading “Recluce Tales” by L. E. Modesitt Jr. It’s a collection of short stories set at various points in the historical timeline of the Recluce series. I still don’t love his maps, but I love his characters and their world and most of the stories he sets in it. Frankly, the fan-made maps on the Recluce Fandom site are better.

On the home front, I’ve been cleaning out odds and ends stashed in my office. Also, whenever the weather allows, I’ve been sprucing up my balcony. Sunsets in the summer are pleasant out there.

I also spend time on the weekends writing for this blog. It requires a commitment of time and creativity. But no matter what, this blog is one of my great joys, a diversion when things get a little hectic.

And now that Greg is in Hospice, my life is definitely hectic. He is as comfortable as can be under the circumstances and is in no pain.

While his physical health is failing, he still enjoys certain TV shows. Oddly enough, he loves watching baking competitions. And this is humorous because before he became so ill, all Greg wanted to watch was murder and mayhem, or soccer (go Seattle Sounders FC!), or American football (go Seahawks!).

Cooking is still a hobby for me. It’s salad season on hot days, and soup season on cold ones. Either way, finding new recipes on YouTube is fun, and cutting them down to serve one person is becoming easier. I don’t like to waste food, and while I can easily make a small salad, I have very little freezer space in my small apartment-sized refrigerator for leftovers.

All in all, it has been a busy month, with our children visiting overnight at various times and spending time with their Dad. I go to the Adult Family Home each morning and sit beside my husband’s bed, talking to him or quietly reading if he is sleeping.

So, what am I writing? It’s been a long time since the muse lodged in my creative mind, so for most of the year, I have been revising and expanding on what has already been written. But inspiration is back, and I’m going strong on a series of short stories. As scattered as my attention has been lately, it’s easier to complete a short project than to finish my novel. This is because I set myself a strict 4,000-word limit, create a little outline, and divide it into three sections:

  1. where it opens and sets the scene,
  2. trouble in the middle,
  3. how it ends.

Then I begin writing. I get the story written to around 3,000 words, and with the bare-bones on paper, I have room to flesh it out to up to 1,000 words.

I set the limit at 4,000 words per short story because most anthologies and publications often don’t want anything longer. If I can tell it properly in fewer words, that’s even better. I do have trouble keeping a tale down to 1,000, even with my system. For some reason, I can easily write a drabble, which is 100 words, or a 500-word flash fiction. But for whatever reason, nailing a 1,000-word goal without exceeding it by 10 to 20 words involves a lot of cursing and careful rephrasing.

At times, I work on a pencil-sketched map for a world that now has three short stories set in it. I may combine them into a novella, as they feature the same two main characters. Making a map helps me visualize the landscape’s layout more clearly. It also enables me to visualize what the characters can actually do.

I stay busy here on the homefront. As always, I have plenty of books to read, lots to write, and new recipes to try out. I hope you’re enjoying life as much as possible, and that May’s often random weather is going as well as can be in your part of the world.

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May 11, 2026 · 6:00 am

Books I have read and struggled with #writing

I often tell new and beginning writers to read widely, including genres they don’t normally gravitate toward.  I have a reason for this.

The more you know about how other writers construct their work, the better you will be at expressing your own ideas. Having a large vocabulary is important. Knowing more words helps you express yourself with less repetition.

You gain that knowledge from reading and looking up the words you don’t know.

But knowing how to use that large collection of words effectively is most important, and that is where reading comes into it.

I have read so many novels that I can’t begin to count them. I’ve read biographies, autobiographies, books on natural history, and those are just the books I read as a bored schoolgirl during the long summers of the late 1960s. My first choice was genre works, such as sci-fi, fantasy, mysteries, but when those ran out, even the sad excuse of a newspaper that was our town’s scandal sheet would do.

I was a member of the Nancy Drew Book Club, and we received a new book every month.

My sister and I risked our lives to sneak paperback books out of my parents’ bedroom. A tough one was Robert J. Donovan‘s PT 109.

We read Heinlein, E.E. “doc” Smith, Fritz Lieber, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jaqueline Suzanne, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Nora Roberts, Mary Stuart … we read every book or magazine that came into the house.

Thank you, Dr. Ruth, and Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (but were afraid to ask). Mom didn’t have to go to the trouble of explaining it to us. She just left the book out where we could steal it.

Education handled.

When we ran out of stolen gold, we read the Encyclopedia Britannica and Grolier’s Great Books of the Western World.

The books we read all contained words we didn’t understand until we looked them up in the dictionary.

You can do that online now, but I am a dinosaur. Back in the olden days, we had big fat dictionaries to thumb through.

Here is where I make my confession. I had to take a college class to get through James Joyce’s work, and I’m not sure I exactly understood it. I’m not sure the professor did either.

I read the Diary of Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peeps) when I was fourteen. It was a volume in the Great Books, and I read it because my father insisted. Dad felt my fascination with my mother’s Elizabethan and Regency Historical romances should be tempered with a dose of reality.

Once I had finished the damned thing, he questioned me about it, as if it were a final exam. I didn’t enjoy the book because I didn’t like Mr. Pepys as a person. I felt he was sneaky and would go whichever way would benefit him the most.

But I have always loved history, and I did learn a great deal about the real politics and society of seventeenth-century Britain, and the Restoration of the monarchy after the death of Cromwell.

There have been other well-regarded books I didn’t enjoy too much, but I benefited from reading them.

Unfortunately, I grew frustrated and resorted to listening to the audiobook of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night. Not setting dialogue apart with quotes?

(Insert primal scream here.)

I’m an editor, and it’s my job to notice those things. It’s difficult for me to set that part of my awareness aside, but listening to the audiobook resolved that issue. This is a case where the audiobook is much better for an ordinary reader like me.

I can hear the grumbles now. I just mentioned literary authors, and you are writing a cozy mystery, a fantasy, a romance, women’s fiction, or sci-fi. Shall I toss out a few more names?

One author I love is Tad Williams. He mixes his styles. His Bobby Dollar series is Paranormal Film Noir: dark, choppy, and reminiscent of Sam Spade. In this series, he writes in a style reminiscent of post-WWII crime authors, such as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. Each installment is a quick read for me and is commercial in that casual readers would enjoy Bobby’s predicaments as much as I did.

Yet Tad’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy was a groundbreaking series that inspired countless fantasy authors. Those first three books and the subsequent novels set in that world are solidly epic literary fantasy. They are written for serious fantasy readers, people who want big stories set in big worlds.

These readers are like me and crave BIG books. In that series, Tad Williams employs lush prose, multiple storylines, and dark themes. Beginning slow and working up to an epic ending is highly frowned upon in local writing groups addicted to genres that embrace straight-forward prose and rapid-fire storylines, but Tad broke that rule, and believe me, it works. His powerful writing has generated millions of fans who are thrilled that he’s written more work in that amazing world.

Roger Zelazny wrote one of the most famous fantasy series of all time, the Chronicles of Amber, and numerous other sci-fi-fantasy novels. He was famous for his crisp, minimalistic dialogue. He was clearly influenced by his contemporaries, wisecracking, hardboiled crime-fiction authors. Yes, it’s misogynistic, but it was written in a time when misogyny was the norm.

As my father told me when I was reading the Diary of Samuel Pepys and offended by his hypocrisy and innate assumption of superiority, you can’t judge the literature of the past or the society that produced it by today’s values.

You, as the reader, are an observer, not a participant. But that is a difficult thing to remember when their writing sucks you in and makes you feel like a participant.

Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Alexander Chee, and George Saunders each have a unique voice in their writing. Each of these writers has written highly acclaimed work that requires you to think.

But they can be difficult for an ordinary reader like me to read.

Ernest Hemingway used commas freely, passing them around in his narratives like party favors. Alexander Chee employs sentences that run on forever and doesn’t use quotation marks when writing dialogue.

James Joyce wrote hallucinogenic prose and, at times, dispensed with punctuation altogether.

George Saunders writes as if he is speaking to you. He is almost poetic in one place and choppy in others.

F. Scott Fitzgerald used too many Jazz Age slang terms that must be looked up to understand what he was referring to. Yes, he lifted some of his prose from Zelda’s letters, but try to read it without that bias. He’s dead, so chastising him is useless.

We are writers with our own voice. Our style has its own rhythm, and it may not be popular with everyone. An editor might ask you to change something you did intentionally.

There will be times when you choose to use a comma in a place where a line editor might suggest removing it. If asked, you should explain that you did this to emphasize a point or make it clearer. Conversely, you might omit a comma for the same reason.

Editors know that you are the author, and it’s your manuscript. If you understand the rule you are breaking, you will be able to explain why you are doing so.

Craft your work to make it say what you intend in the way you want it said. But be prepared to defend your choices if you deviate too widely from the expected.

Above all, read. Read everything you come across, whether you love it or not. Dissecting the books you don’t love is a free education if you have a good library in your town.

Reward yourself for all that hard work by indulging in your favorite comfort books. Then, curl up on the sofa and spend the day reading a book by your favorite author.

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May 4, 2026 · 6:00 am

Journaling – a personal odyssey in #writing

I’ve been asked many times what I see as the differences between keeping a journal and writing a memoir.

First, journaling is similar to keeping a diary, but different. You start writing in a stream-of-consciousness style, detailing your observations of where you are in life at that moment.

I find myself journaling when I am unable to write creatively. That is not to say that keeping a journal is not creative, because it is. It is simply a different kind of creative writing.

For example, I’m offering you an excerpt from my journal entry for April 25, 2026. For the second time that month, my husband had been admitted to the hospital, this time with aspiration pneumonia. That morning, I had arrived at eight, expecting to be allowed to visit. Usually, spouses and support people are allowed to be with the patient whenever possible, so I spend the entire day there.

But not that day. Visiting hours began at 10 o’clock, and that was when I would be admitted, and not a moment before. He was in a different unit from the usual one, a short-stay unit with different rules.

So, I sat in the cafeteria, confused and feeling angry at myself for feeling angry. I had a cup of watery tea, which didn’t help my mood, which I knew was unreasonable. So I decided it was a good time to clean out my purse. which was full of unnecessary receipts and other debris of modern life.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes life hits you with a hard dose of your own mortality? In doing that bit of minor housekeeping, I got one that morning. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled out my notebook and began journaling, detailing the lousy event.

April 25, 2026

Today, I threw away a five-dollar bill.

Greg is in the hospital again, and I’m stuck waiting in the cafeteria, so I cleaned out my purse and separated the cash from the trash.

Then I tossed the unwanted papers into the cafeteria’s trash bin.

As I did so, I saw something green go in, something that should have still been in my hand but wasn’t.

The cash wasn’t unwanted, but I don’t usually carry any, so maybe that’s why it happened.

Forty years ago, that would have been a disaster, and I would have ignored the glares of judgmental strangers and fished for it. Today, I was too embarrassed by the blunder to dumpster dive in the cafeteria.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get into G’s room soon. The way things are going, I’ll probably toss a twenty in the bin along with my paper cup just so the fiver won’t be lonely, and because I can’t pay attention to anything right now.

Later, I was able to note what the doctor said and our best options. My hubby is currently back in the Adult Family Home, in Hospice care. He is happy and doing as well as can be under the circumstances.

Personally, I can write anywhere. I often find I can sort out a plot hole at the coffee shop on the corner near my apartment. It’s a great place for journaling too, especially when I can’t calm my mind enough to work on my other projects.

Perhaps you have chosen to write in a coffee shop or a public park. You are sitting there with paper and pencil, but where do you start? What do you write?

You could write about your impressions of the people around you. You might include impressions of your environment and how you fit into it.

Some journals are intensely personal. Others are daily diaries, recounting daily activities, lightly touching on conversations. Some journals delve deeply into the writer’s philosophical thoughts.

If you are a novelist, mind-wandering with a pen and paper about your problems can help jump-start your imagination. This can lead to insights that reinvigorate your other work-in-progress.

Although the current state of news journalism in America tends to ignore this fact, fiction is different from truth.

Fiction is spinning yarns, keeping them straight, and making the world believe the tale until the last page. (FYI: American news media isn’t doing too well at that.)

Keeping a personal journal is writing the truth as you see it. Those are the five key words: the truth as you see it.

Sometimes, new authors say their project is a memoir. If a hopeful writer tells me this, I always ask if they have read any memoirs. If they haven’t, there may be a problem. Reading the memoirs written by successful authors is the best way to learn how the plots of outstanding memoirs are constructed.

Memoirists should ask two questions of their work. Will you detail actual memories or write a fictionalized account? Do you dare to name names or not?

  • Naming names could be opening a can of worms, so think long and hard before you do that.

Some who write journals have no intention of publishing their work. Many just want to keep a family history, a fun project. Some may go so far as to explore their family tree through organizations such as Ancestry.com.

Here are some considerations if you are creating a record for your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other young and future family members.

  1. Are you just curious, or are you searching for an identity, trying to discover who you are and where your family comes from? Research from a site such as Ancestry.com or gleaned from family bibles, letters, and other collected papers will greatly help you.
  2. Will you include photographs or interviews with older family members who may remember something about your family’s history?

This is a project I’ve considered taking on, but I know I would never finish it. I don’t need another unfinished project lying around.

Whether you are journaling for fun or posterity, or writing a memoir, the important thing is to write something every day. It’s good exercise and strengthens your ‘writing’ muscles. If I dedicate 3 hours a day to just writing stream-of-consciousness, I will chunk out 2500 to 3000 words. Of course, half those words will be mis-keyed and misspelled.

But hey, no one is perfect. Some words I accidentally invented: first-draft examples of “I meant to do that.”

But imperfections in the first draft are part of writing. The element of “what did I intend when I wrote this word” is an opportunity to explore and expand on an idea.

Or to eliminate it.

It’s your journal and your choice.

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April 27, 2026 · 6:00 am

How need, wordcount limits, and theme shape the short story #writing

Short stories are a real training ground for authors because words must be rationed. Writing short stories and microfiction forces me to consider how the limited number of words I’m allowed can be used to their best advantage. It requires me to tell a large story using a small number of words carefully chosen for their impact.

Word choice and sentence structure must convey a massive amount of information: mood, atmosphere, setting, and hints of backstory. All this must be packed into a space already occupied by intriguing characters, a gripping plot, and a clever resolution.

When writing a short story, it helps me if I know how it will end. I put together a broad outline of my intended story arc. I divide my story arc into quarters, which ensures the important events are in place at the right time.

Assume you have a 4000-word limit for your short story. This is a common limit for submissions to contests and anthologies. Some will be less, and very few will be more.

Editors will be swamped with submissions. You might only have three paragraphs before a prospective editor sets your work aside. If those paragraphs don’t grab her, she won’t buy your story.

If I want to interest an editor in my work, I absolutely must have a good opening paragraph.

  • The first 250 words are the setup and hook. The next 750 words take your character out of their comfortable existence and launch them into “the situation.” Will they succeed or not?
  • The next 2,500 words detail how the protagonist arrives at a resolution.
  • The final 500 words are the wind-up.

You might end on a happy note or not. It’s your story, but in a short story, no matter what else you do, nothing should be left unresolved. Unlike in a novella, you don’t have the word count to include subplots.

Part of being a professional writer is working within and adhering to word count limits. We must use every word we’re allowed to make that story the one an editor can’t put down.

I usually work from an outline. However, I’ve been known to deviate from my outline when a random idea turns out to be better than the original. I need structure when I begin writing, or my story might never be completed. The plot wanders all over the place, and it’s not worth submitting.

I have found that a strong theme is an essential tool for writing a coherent short story. Also, many anthologies we might want to submit to are themed. This ensures that even though the entire volume was written by many authors, readers won’t be jarred out of enjoyment.

Before I begin writing a themed story, I ask myself:

  1. What will be the inciting incident? How does it relate to the theme?
  2. What is the goal/objective? How does it relate to the theme?
  3. At the beginning of the story, what could the hero possibly want to cause her to risk everything to acquire it?
  4. How badly does she want it and why?
  5. Who is the antagonist?
  6. What moral (or immoral) choice is the protagonist going to have to make in her attempt to gain that objective?
  7. What happens at the first pinch point?
  8. Where is the group at the midpoint? What is happening?
  9. Why does the antagonist have the upper hand? What happens at the turning point to change everything for the worse?
  10. At the ¾ point, our protagonist should have gathered her resources and companions and should be ready to face the antagonist. How will you choreograph that meeting?

How does the underlying theme affect every aspect of the protagonists’ evolution in this story?

Then, I have to consider the narrative mode. Who is the best person to tell the story? One of my favorite short stories to write was Thorn Girl. It was published in the anthology Swords, Sorcery, and Self-rescuing Damsels.

I could easily have told her story in third omniscient POV, but I had a compelling main character with a real, gut-wrenching story.

It was a great theme, with so many possibilities. I love damsels who rescue themselves. And what fantasy author doesn’t love sorcery and a good sword?

The premise for a great short story had been rolling around in my head. I loved the idea of my character and had wanted to give her an adventure. So, I began writing her tale in my usual third-person narrative mode.

However, that mode didn’t feel as close, as intimate as I wanted. My main character had to tell her own story.

The theme really intrigued me, but I knew I had to avoid the obvious. It was a challenge to write something original and not overdone. It was an excellent opportunity to think widely.

In the first draft, there were several places that I thought were the beginning. As always, I had difficulty deciding where the story actually began. After reading that first draft, my writing group pointed out where the story faltered. The narrative had to begin at the point of no return, as there is no room for backstory.

I tossed out the first half of the original story and began at what I had originally thought was the middle. That was when things began to fall together.

If my character were going to tell her own story, exactly what would she know? After thinking about it, I realized she could only know what she witnessed.

I spent some time figuring out what she really could have witnessed or overheard and then worked only with that information.

What did my protagonist want? At first glance, it seemed obvious, but the purported quest was only an impetus, a prod to move her down the path she needed to travel. Her true quest was to find herself as a human being, as much as it was to honor a promise made and quickly regretted.

What was she willing to do to achieve it? I didn’t know. She didn’t know either, and until I wrote the last line, I didn’t know what she was capable of or if she had the backbone to accomplish it.

So, now we know that need drives the short story, theme stitches it together, and word-count limits force us to be concise.

Go forth and write that story. You might be amazed at what you can produce when you are limited by word count.

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April 20, 2026 · 7:05 am

#Writing Advice: the good, the bad, and the ugly

We humans find it easy to remember simple sayings, little proverbs, if you will. New authors are bombarded with many axioms about the craft of writing. Some will be good, and some will lead to later problems.

The commonly repeated writing proverbs were originally intended to encourage writers to craft stories that readers would understand and enjoy.

Writers must know the basic rules of grammar. You don’t have to memorize the Chicago Manual of Style. With so much information available online, you don’t necessarily have to buy it unless you are an editor. However, knowledge of the most basic rules enables a reader to understand your work.

It is also true that writers should develop a broader vocabulary, work on character arcs, and use words to show the visual world in which the story is set.

If we are open to learning, we gain knowledge and confidence, and our work improves.

The craft of writing is a vast subject. It fascinates me, and I know I’ll never learn all there is to know about the subject.

I’ve been writing professionally for more than twenty years. Online writers’ forums are usually good places where good people offer good advice. However, there are a few gurus, those whose voices are so loud they override the rest, and they are often too harsh in applying the “rules of writing.”

One must use common sense when writing. I’ve seen many an online kerfuffle between strong egos, especially if they are protected by anonymity in a forum.

Cover of Book, Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeguinToday, I’m discussing the eight commonly repeated mantras found in these forums. They are fundamentally good but also have the potential to backfire. An author with too rigid a view of these sayings won’t be able to see beyond the rules that imprison them and limit their creative existence.

The rules most likely to backfire (in my opinion) are as follows:

  • Remove all modifiers.

This advice is complete crap. Use common sense, and don’t use unnecessary modifiers. Why do I say this? Some adverbs and adjectives are necessary. When we refer to modifiers, what do we mean?

Any word that modifies (alters, changes, transforms) the meaning and intent of another word is a modifier. Adjectives modify nouns, and adverbs modify verbs. These words can add emphasis, explanation, or detail to an otherwise bald statement.

List of words ending in "ly"We also use them as conjunctions to connect thoughts: “otherwise,” “then,” and “besides.” However, the overuse of “ly” words can fluff up our prose and ruin the taste of our work.

  • Don’t use speech tags.

What? Who said that?

Too many speech tags, especially odd and bizarre ones, can stop the eye. When the characters are snorting, hissing, and ejaculating their dialogue, I will put the book down and never pick it up again. My favorite authors seem to stick to common tags like ‘said‘ and ‘replied‘. Or, they show who was speaking by including an action or other visual in that paragraph.

  • Show, Don’t Tell. Don’t Ever Don’t do it!

Nothing is more disgusting than a scene where a person’s facial expressions are described in minutia. Yes, lips do stretch into smiles, and eyebrows draw together, and that is an important part of showing mood.

But expressions are only part of the signals that reveal the character’s interior emotions.

Another extreme is the scene where the author leans too heavily on the internal, describing the stomach-churning, gut-wrenching shock and wide-eyed trembling of hands.

And don’t forget the recurring moments of weak-kneed nausea.

For me, the most challenging part of writing the final draft of any novel is balancing the visual indicators of emotion with the more profound, internal clues.

  • Write what you know and don’t dare to write something you don’t.

Please, use your imagination.

Cover of book, the Hobbit by J.R.R. TolkienYour life experiences shape your writing, but your imagination is the story’s fuel and source. J.R.R. Tolkien understood senseless conflicts and total warfare because he had experienced them.

His books detail his view of the utter devastation of war. However, they are set in a fantasy environment and feature elves and orcs, neither of which abound in England.

We must understand what we’re writing about. Are you writing a police procedural? Research the subject, and if necessary, interview people in that profession.

  • If you’re bored with your story, your reader will be too.

That’s NOT true. You have spent months, years even, immersed in that story. You know it inside and out, but your reader doesn’t.

And the commonly bandied writing proverbs go on and on.

  • Kill your darlings.

We shouldn’t be married to our favorite prose or characters. Sometimes we must cut a paragraph, a chapter, or even a character we love because it no longer fits the story. But remember, people read for pleasure and because they love good prose. If a sentence that you particularly like works, keep it. If you must cut a character, use them in another story.

  • Cut all exposition.

Exposition informs both the reader and the characters. The timing of when we insert the exposition into the narrative is crucial. The reader wants to know what the characters know. But they only need that knowledge when it becomes necessary, and they don’t want paragraphs of information dumped on them.

Bad advice is good advice taken to an extreme. But all writing advice has roots in truth.

  • Too much telling takes the adventure out of the reading experience.
  • Too much showing is tedious and can be disgusting. It takes effort to find that happy medium, but writing is work.

Cover of Book, Damn Fine Story by Chuck WendigProverbs help us educate ourselves because they are easy to remember. Unless an author is fortunate enough to have a formal education in the subject, we must rely on the internet and handy self-help guides to learn the many nuances of the writing craft.

That is what I have done. I buy books on the craft of writing modern 21st-century genre fiction and listen to the advice of the literary giants of the past.

But we have to use caution. While the majority of online writers’ forums are great, some aren’t helpful because they have become a soapbox for a few self-proclaimed gurus. These are people armed with a bit of knowledge, a large ego, and a loud voice.

My advice? Be careful, and don’t share your work with any group until you have seen how they treat each other.

Cover of boo, Activate by Damon SuedeI study the craft of writing because I love it, and I apply the proverbs and rules of advice gently. Whether my work is good or bad, I don’t know. But I write the stories I want to read, so I am writing for a niche audience of one: me.

However, I read two or three books a week. I love books where the authors clearly know the rules but break them when necessary.

So, my friends, go forth, and write. Now, more than ever, the world needs your stories.

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