in my debut book The Donkey’s Song, I wrote very few words about the setting. That book has 150 words, and I did not feel that the lyrical, magical tone of the book could bear a lot of “spelling things out.” But as I wrote the book, I was fully aware of where that story was…
Category: Descriptive Writing
#14DayPBChallenge – Day 4 – February 2023 – How Metaphor and Simile Added Spice to Writing
First, let’s talk about what metaphors and similes are. A Metaphor is a comparative device that helps us better understand the writer’s meaning. A metaphor merely says that one thing IS another thing. The reader is left responsible for deciphering the metaphor. “A man is a lion” is a metaphor. Obviously, a man is not really a…
How to Create a Reading Journal on Your Blog – Free Tags for You to Use on Your Blog Posts
In this post, I am showing you how I used my blog to share my #ReadtoWrite journal on my WordPress Blog, using the following free-to-copy and use tags. This charts my reading on December 26, 2022: Pastoral Day – William Hamilton Gibson – pages 19-26. Sharp Eyes: A Rambler’s Calendar – Gibson – pages 248-252….
Describe the Land around Your Childhood Home
Your journal assignment for today is to describe the terrain or the countryside of the area around your childhood home. When I say describe, I mean just that. Provide sentences that capture how the countryside looked. Don’t just say: “I grew up 40 miles south of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Fort Smith has a population of…
If You Were A Crayon, What Color Would You Be? – Free Writing Prompt
Memoir Mondays Free Writing Prompt for September 24, 2022: If You Were A Free Crayon, What Color Would You Be? Why? Note: As I marvel at all the wonderful names that the Crayola Company has devised to name its various sticks of color, I am reminded of the importance of being specific when we write….
Something Wicked This Way Comes Chapter 3
For this post, I’ll be quoting from the following edition of Ray Bradbury’s masterful novel Something Wicked This Way Comes: Bradbury, Ray. Something Wicked This Way Comes. Large Print edition, Center Point Publishing, 2000. The page numbers will be different if you are reading from another edition of the book. Will and Jim as a Pair–Two Boys…
Looking at Setting in Tuck Everlasting – Descriptive Writing and Setting
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. …the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets…
Word Painting – How to Write Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan
“If I were fully conscious of my surroundings at this moment, I would describe the light through the window, the way it searches out the apples in the glass bowl, buffing them to an unnatural sheen. I bought them for their fragrance, not their freshness, so even if you were to close your eyes, you’d…
Winnie and the Wood in Tuck Everlasting
In Chapter 1 of Tuck Everlasting, we read that the Wood is the hub [of the wheel of life]. In this comment, Winnie is acknowledging the fact that Nature is of utmost importance in the book Tuck Everlasting. In Tuck, Nature is an important Theme. Nature as a Theme in Literature When Nature is a…
Nature as a Theme in Literature
Map of the 100 Acre Wood in Winnie the Pooh Nature is often called The Wood in British literature “Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World,” said the Rat. “And that’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or to me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve…