Writing about Snow

This week it snowed here where I live. How about you?

Whether you get five feet of snow a year or none, you probably have some feelings about snow. When you see, hear, smell, touch (and even taste) snow falling, what emotions do you feel? 

Do you love the first snowfall of the year? Why? Do you hate snow and cold? Why?

Do you wish it would snow where you live? Do you wish it would STOP snowing where you live?

Let's write about snow. We can use our five senses--taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing--to describe it. We can remember a fun time or a sad time when snow was falling. 

Do you wait at the window for the first snowfall? Do you hope for a blizzard so you'll get a snow day from school? 

However you feel about snow, this phenomenon from the sky is pretty amazing. 

Write about this white, fuzzy stuff that for many of us spells w-i-n-t-e-r. 

A Silly Thanksgiving Poem

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. We get to eat a lot of great food. 

Better than that, we can be thankful for all the good things in our lives. When we add those things up, there's a lot to be thankful for. 

This all sounds pretty serious, doesn't it?

Of course Thanksgiving also has its fun side, which we can celebrate with a Silly Thanksgiving Poem.

Write a poem that tells about the fun, light side of the holiday at your house. Here's mine. How about yours? 

A Thanksgiving Count-Up

One, two, three fours.

Pumpkin pie comes through the doors. 

Five, six, seven, eights.

Put out the best dinner plates. 

Nine, ten, eleven, twelves.

Where are Santa's helper elves?

Oops! Wrong holiday! 

Nine, ten, eleven, twelves.

Place the salads on the shelves.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteens.

 A basket full of jelly beans.

Arrghh. Not again!

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteens.

Is it time for Halloweens?

Back to Thanksgiving!

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteens.

 Do we have to eat the greens? 

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

Thanks for all we have in plenty! 

Getting Stuck

Last week I taught a teen workshop at my local library, and we talked about Getting Stuck. 

I used capital letters for Getting Stuck because it often feels like a Major Problem (capital letters) when we do.

Here's what happens to me: 

I begin a story or novel. Everything's going great. Then…I get stuck. Many of us reach a point where we hit a dead end and we run out of gas. 

How can we move our characters to the end of the story, resolve the conflict, and finish with a satisfying end? 

In my experience, Getting Stuck happens when I don't think through two issues.

• First, who is my protagonist? What does she want? What does this character love, hate, or fear? What are the flaws that keep getting her into trouble? What is the most important thing in my protagonist's life? 

(This last question may be different from "What does she want?" In The Hunger Games, Katniss wants to stay alive. The most important thing in her life is her sister.) 

• Second, how high are the stakes for my protagonist? Is the story conflict something that really matters to him? If it isn't, the conflict may not be strong enough. Who or what is stopping my character from getting what he wants? Why? What will happen if he doesn't get it?

These are questions I now ask myself before I begin a new story or novel. (I ask myself a lot of other questions, too, but those will wait for another post.)

Whether you're a "jumper" (you love to jump right into a story without planning) or a "plotter" (you love to outline), try answering these questions before you begin writing or when you get stuck. 

Write your answers down, then study them. Do you see patterns? What changes can you make to keep your story moving forward?

I can't guarantee you'll never hit a dead end. But you may go from Getting Stuck to getting stuck. And that's progress in my book.

Autumn Tastes

We're always looking for ways to use the five senses in our stories, right? 

Taste can be one of the hardest senses to include. We tend to overlook taste in favor of sight, smell, sound, and touch. 

Since so many yummy foods are associated with fall, this seems like a great time of year to let taste be the star of the show. 

Here are some of my favorite fall foods. What are yours? 

• pumpkin pie
• cranberry sauce
• squash
• maple muffins
• Halloween candy (Do you have any left?)

Choose one of your favorite fall foods and describe the taste. Is it spicy? Sweet? Sour? What about the texture? Is it smooth? Chunky? 

Here's my description of baked squash with brown sugar and butter:

The bite of squash melted in my mouth. It was as smooth as the butter it swam in. The brown sugar felt wonderfully sweet and gritty against my teeth. The squash tasted like Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled up in one. 

And that's just about enough. We never want description or our five senses to slow down our story--just a bit to give our readers a burst of flavor.

Now back to that Halloween candy….

Writing About Dogs

It's been way too long since Yellow Pencils has written about dogs. 

I love dogs, and I especially love our next-door dog, Harper.

Dogs are wonderful in real life, but they can play an important role in our stories, too. 

Sometimes your character needs to talk to someone, but you don't want to have other characters in the scene. Your character may be on a journey, or running away from home, or mourning the death of his or her pet hamster. 

Enter…the dog! 

Write a monologue (one person talking) with a character talking to a dog. Of course the dog can't answer. Or maybe, in your story it speaks words of wisdom. 

Remember to give your dog personality. What kind of dog is it? A purebred or a mutt? Does it have one ear standing and one flopping? Does your dog tilt its head when it listens, or does it lie down with its head in its paws?

What will your character say to the dog? Have fun creating your monologue, and let your dog react….with words or woofs.

Writing Place Names

Take a look at these street corner signs. Whoa! Where is this place?

Warsaw, Poland, to be exact. I took this photo in 2011, and I love it because the photo shows how place names differ in different countries.

This corner is a real place, but when we invent stories, we get to make up place names. Why not have fun doing so?

Write about your very own, made-up street intersection. What will you name the two streets? 

The names can be silly, simple, serious, or impossible to pronounce. They can have special meaning for you or your characters, or be completely random.

When you're done naming your streets, put two characters underneath the signs. Now let them have a conversation. Why are they meeting at this intersection? What is their conflict? 

By the way, one of the signs above means "Krakow Suburb." The other sign commemorates a famous general.

What will your signs say? 

Revision!

Revision is my favorite part about writing. But I know many writers don't agree with me. How about you?

This weekend I went to a workshop on revision led by author Ann Hood. She said, "If you're a writer, you're a reviser."

She added that we writers spend 90% of our time revising. That's a lot of time!

So how do we learn to love revision?

I think of revision as re-vision, or "re-seeing" my story. What works? What doesn't? How can I make my characters deeper, funnier, more alive on the page? 

How can I tighten my plot and make my dialogue snap like a sail in the breeze? And while we're at it, how can I add a simile or metaphor to spice up the story's language? 

Try this exercise. Take the first page of your story, or write a first page. Then read it out loud. Better yet, have someone read it to you. 

Listen. Really listen. 

Then mark places where a character seems dull, the plot has a hole, the dialogue drags, and the language makes you yawn. Type or write in your changes. 

Reread. See the difference? 

Get snappy! Try some revision today!