Have you ever read books like Black Beauty, Charlotte’s Web or Where the Red Fern Grows? Books about pets and animal friends are very popular and very powerful because animals tend to be very pure and love unconditionally. It’s much easier to have a relationship with an intelligent animal, of course, which is why there…
Tag: creative-writing
Muse on Monday – June 10, 2024
One thing that you usually don’t want to put in your stories is daily tasks. If you write a page or two about someone’s morning routine, the reader will get impatient for you to get to the important part. The difference is if something is different, especially if there is some point of conflict. For…
Muse on Monday – May 27, 2024
Hello and happy Memorial Day if you are in the United States. It’s pretty common to have an elderly relative, often an aunt or uncle, in a story as a helper character. They are good sources of mystery (either something they know or something in their house), a source of sudden wealth when they die…
Muse on Monday – May 13, 2024
These days spring is turning into summer and everything (at least where I live) is green and growing. Plants in stories are not usually the main focus but sometimes are used as signals of the mood or atmosphere of the story or setting. For example, if plants are dying, that is a bad sign but…
Muse on Monday – May 6, 2024
Have you ever read the book Dracula? That was the first story I ever read that was told completely through secondhand sources, like letters and diary entries. In some ways, this kind of writing can seem more distant since you are not there in the moment: you are reading what they wrote after the fact….
Muse on Monday – April 29, 2024
It’s almost May, which means it’s almost summer. Where did the spring go, right? As the students start to finish up the school year and go on summer vacation, it is a time of relaxation. The Green-Walled Treehouse will still be here and this is a good chance to do some summer writing. Story Prompt:…
Muse on Monday – April 15, 2024
When we think of a war story, we usually think of fighting. However, there are a lot of stories that take place in a time of war that are far away from any battlefield. Here are some ways: How much the war overshadows the story depends on how much the characters or the people they…
Muse on Monday – April 8, 2024
If you were in certain parts of North America today, you could have seen a total eclipse. I am lucky enough to be in Erie, Pennsylvania, which is right in the path of totality, so we got a good view of it here. We all knew long in advance the exact minute that it was…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 