StorytimeWednesday

I've been asked many times to explain what it means to insert symbolism into a storyline. So here are my two cents on the symbolism in writing. The answer is simple, it's when you take a real-world object and insert it into a storyline making it represent the abstract idea within your mind. In other words, you take your ideas and use objects to communicate the literal meaning of the concept at hand. For example, water symbolizes the rebirth of an idea or a person. Picture this a beautiful woman elegantly dressed walking out of a lake onto the dry sandy beach and sitting down on a downed tree trunk that was washed up on shore. She lays down, tired from swimming to shore, and falls asleep. The symbolism here is not only rebirth (the water) but also how much work a woman does to survive and the struggles she faces and she needs a break from it all in order to rest. The imagery is powerful and the scene takes on a greater meaning because it opens the door to the trauma a woman endu...

  Secrets to Writing Better stories Every one thinks that writing is as easy as a piece of cake, unfortunately, those who think that have never written an article, or even a book to know or understand how difficult it can be to string words together that make sense and tell a story at the same time. Writing a story is the hardest thing of all. To come up with characters with good names, a back story and a goal within the story is really the hardest of all, besides the overall story itself. Then you have to string out that story with an antagonist and a protagonist that reaches 120,000 words to fill the pages of a book. If your really good you can write the movie script to tell the story which is only about 100 pages long. Either way, the concept of telling the story is the pinnacle of writing first and foremost and that can take up to a few years, or only a few months, depending on how good you are as a writer.   I’ve written several books in my career, my first one took 6 m...

  Short Stories can help in writing process Many authors didn’t start out writing the preverbal 125,000-word novel first time out, they actually honed their talents by writing short stories and holding on to them, then later on digging them out and adding to them to make them into a novel. Even I have at times written maybe 10-25 pages or less type of short story. I just get the story out of my head and put it away until I have the time to flesh out the story or add to it.   Today the 24 th of November 2021 starts the Thanksgiving holiday weekend here in America, why not spend Friday sitting down and begin writing a short story? If you already have a story concept in your head, just sit down in a calm place and write. See what happens. You never know you might spark a full-length novel in my mind. Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing if there is company in the house, just quietly do it on your own. A short story is just that, short so you don’t have 30 pages to describe th...

    Grammar is for editors Many writers prevent themselves from finishing a book or script because they’re hung up on editing their story for proper English grammar. Guess what, that’s not your job. Your job is to create the characters, the storyline, the plots, the ending and most of all the flow of words that describe all of the above. Your job is not to concentrate on the grammar, you’re not an English teacher grading a paper for some student. Thinking about grammar and how it looks on paper is the editor’s job not yours. As I stated in my last post “get the story out of your head”, concentrate on the story and forget about the grammar until you’re done with the book. You can worry about how it sounds or inserting grammar once you’re in a position to reread the draft. Trust me when I say you will go through a minimum of 4 drafts before you are done, so you’ll catch any grammatical errors along the way and you can fix them as you find them at that point. In the meantime, jus...

So what type of book are you thinking about writing? Fiction or Non-Fiction? Will it be a short story or a novel? The type of book you plan to write has a lot of planning needed before you actually begin to put pen to paper or your fingers to a keyboard. It's just not that easy to sit down and begin to write. Over the next few weeks we're going to break down the story/book writing process to help you better comprehend what you are undertaking in order to help you better understand the process and help you fulfill the desire to write a book or story. So let's get started.  What type of story will you write? The genre is important as the picture above depicts the type of stories that go under each type of book, fiction or non-fiction. Then you have to decide what type of writing will you write, a short story, a novella, a novel, or an epic novel? Knowing what type of book you plan to write helps you to understand how many words you will need to achieve in order to fulfill tha...