Spending Time in the Mess: Writing as Inquiry

Last week, I wrote about reading Shakespeare with my second-year literature students who, no longer bound by the IB exams, are exploring new terrain. My English-language students too have been exploring. We've had some marvelous philosophical discussions, and students have brought in articles, poems, and videos they would like to discuss. Although not many students...

Hamlet at the Globe, Special Effects, and Conflict in Fiction

With IB exams canceled this year, second-year students have been given the choice of continuing with their classes or not. I've had a little less than half my English Language & Literature group stick with me, and freed of assessment's narrow course, we were without direction, of a sudden free. The students said they wanted...

How Much Should I Research?

In the story I have been drafting these last weeks, I've hit up against real edges in my knowledge. I have dived on into research, poring over academic articles, newspapers, and of course Wikipedia. I have taken awful volumes down of notes. I have learned much, and I've asked questions. I am generally not a...

The right story for the right time: context of reception and what it means for writers

It is hard for me to just not finish a book. I hem and haw, delay. I grudgingly slog another page. There are so many books I want to read, after all--why agonize, insist on finishing one I'm not enjoying? Is it the uncertainty of how to mark it on my Goodreads account, or something...

How to Use Sentence Structure to Improve Your Writing

Human languages glitter with variety. Rife with synonyms, recursive structures, nuances of tone and pronunciation--the ways we speak and write possess the subtlety of art. Today, we'll examine how sentence structure in English can be modified to bring our texts to life. Let's see. Linguistic Background Multilingual people often debate the merits of their languages....

Simile, Metaphor, and Symbol: Figurative Language Bootcamp 1―#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

This post is part of October's #AuthorToolboxBlogHop event. Every month, save November and December, we post tips for writers on our respective blogs. Check out other great posts or join the hop yourself here! Figurative language: all those saying-something-we-don't-means, the hyperbole and understatement, bread and butter of the writer, or maybe just the cherry on...

A Plotter Pantsing: what I’ve learned, and what I’m still trying to figure out

In Twitter's #WritingCommunity, the discussion of plotting and pantsing our stories is a common thread. Plotting, the careful outlining of a story before writing, and pantsing, the seat-of-our-pants, unplanned, accepting-what-comes creation of a story, each draws a crowd of strong adherents. Out foraging for mushrooms this week, we came across this beautiful chanterelle, late for...

Why fiction, and why stories?―#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

This post is part of the monthly #AuthorToolboxBlogHop. Read more great posts about writing here! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. The Great Gatsby, Chapter 5 I'm teaching The Great Gatsby this term,...

Dialogue #2: How People Really Speak

This post is part 2 of a series on dialogue. Click here to read the first post in the series about the three core forms of dialogue. This week's post on Words Like Trees pushes forward into the world of dialogue. We'll look at a concern that often arises with this fickle structure: is the...