The Tiktok Talk Hello son, thanks for coming. Have a seat. Don’t worry, your mother and I just wanted to have a chat with you. No, it’s not the Talk. We’re a bit concerned about your internet habits. No, it’s not about that. Or even that. Oh dear, we didn’t even know about that. We’ll…
Muse on Monday – January 31, 2022
One part of writing fiction is putting yourself in your characters’ shoes. Sure, you know what you would do, but what would they do? Everyone has their own personalities and histories. It’s up to you, as the writer, to decide not only what your characters do, but why they do it. Which brings us to…
Writing Corner: Quality vs. Quantity
One piece of writing advice you will hear a lot is to write every day. This makes sense since, like any skill, you need to practice to get better. You become a good swimmer by swimming, not by thinking about swimming. However, what should you be writing? Should you write a lot of new stories…
Puggle
The puggle felt the sun’s warmth seeping down through the high canopy. He pulled himself out of the burrow ahead of his mother. His mother was digging through the dirt just behind him. The puggle turned and nosed in the fresh dirt, sensing an earthworm just below the surface. He reached towards it but his…
Muse on Monday – January 24, 2022
It is a beautiful snowy here and looking out the window of the Green-Walled Treehouse, all you can see is white all around. It maybe be blinding, but all that white just makes the green walls of the treehouse stand out even more. Writing, just like a green blob in the middle of a white…
Writing Corner: Ellipses
Ellipses When you see three dots together (like this: …), this is called an ellipsis. Because of English’s entertaining grammar rules, the plural of ellipsis is ellipses (just like other words that come from Greek and end in -is). Whenever you see this, it means that something is missing. You usually see these in non-fiction,…
Shy Pain
Shy Pain There are many kinds of pain. There are the small angry pains of a papercut and the dull, lumbering pain of sore muscles after walking home when your mom forgets to pick you up from school again. Pains also live in different places. The pain that happily splashes around in a pot of…
Muse on Monday – January 17, 2022, featuring “The Birthday Present”
Happy Monday! It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, so many schools and businesses are closed today. Scroll down to read a story based on last week’s prompt: The Birthday Present, by Lyailya. This week’s prompt is based on the picture below. It was taken in a hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. Write…
Writing Corner: Story Series
Story Series There are times when you might write a story and realize that there is no way to contain the whole story in the amount of space you have. In that situation, there are several things you can do: Cut the story down to make it fit. This would mean either taking out some…
Muse on Monday – January 10, 2022
It’s time for Muse on Monday again. This week’s prompt is a first line of a story. The world ended on a Friday, which was a surprise. Try this exercise: Think of a sentence to go with this first line. It doesn’t have to the one after it, just one that might be connected somehow…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 