Tag: writing

A Little Experiment with Weather & Emotions

Earlier this year, I did a little study about weather and emotions. Here are some thoughts on what I found.

Thunderstorm

The Thunderstorm Story Model

I’ve always loved the dynamics behind thunderstorms and recently, I’ve been seeing parallels to the standard plot curve many writers have been taught.

Psychological Injunctions, Drivers & Your Characters

In legal terms, injunctions are authoritative warnings or orders, typically given in the court system. Drivers are quite the opposite. They are the things you should do. So how can we relate these to your characters?

Arizona Haboob

On Wind & Emotion

Just like clouds and emotion go hand-in-hand (with respect to literature, anyway), so does wind and emotion.

Clouds

On Clouds and Emotion

Clouds and emotion go together when you think about it. We have been trained since birth to recognize signs in the sky, whether we did so deliberately or not.

Give Your Character a Test

There are a lot of ways to get inside your character’s head: give that character a test, perform some transactional writing with them, or even pull out the all the Gestalt stops and use an empty chair to have a conversation.

Research: Some Odd Findings

As writers, we joke about the research we do and what the NSA or CIA or INTERPOL or whatever other agency out there might think of us. Personally, I don’t really believe any of that. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve looked up how to [redacted] or fit a [redacted] into a…
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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

On Writing a Synopsis, Blurb, Logline and Tagline

It’s the same for every writer, I suppose: the synopsis is a beast that guards the gates of publication, one that rears its ugly head right after finishing a 100,000-word novel. So, how do you best write one?

Short Story: The Royal

I used to own a 1936 Royal typewriter, the “original laptop.” It was a heavy beast, too. This story was written in 2003, back when the typewriter was on the desk beside me. I lost it in a flood about fifteen years ago, but I still have that itch to find another. I just hope the one I find doesn’t come with something attached to it.

What the Devil is Anthropological Science Fiction?

Anthropological Science Fiction sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Maybe when we break down it down, it is indeed. In simplest terms, anthropology is “the study of human societies and cultures and their development” (thank you Oxford). When we think of anthropology, we consider the past (i.e., how did we get here?). Science Fiction on…
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