Writing Corner: Fantasy Names

Let’s say you are writing a story in a made-up world. The good news is that you can create the world however you’d like. Here is more discussion about that. However, now you have a lot of names to create, both for characters and places. How do you do that? We’re going to look at…

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,…

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…

Writing Corner: The Magic of Language

The Magic of Language There is a certain kind of magic around language that we don’t realize very often since it is so much a part of our lives. On one hand, language is a way to transmit all the deep things inside of you to other people. There is nothing else that can do…