Grace…., a photo by Acoustic Soul on Flickr. It always happens this way. A shooting takes place in our nation. A person and/or others are killed while going about their day. Voices cry out, those of the bereaved family members and others in shock and anger. Stories of the incident make a virulent trek across […]
Of Mothers, Sons and Actions that Leave Us Eternally Changed… Read More »
The outset of the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, shows Eros leaning over the sleeping mortal, Psyche, and fervently prepared to strike Psyche with one of his arrows and create a wound that will command her to fall in love with a beast.
Eros’s mother, Aphrodite sent him on this mission out of her jealousy of the beautiful, young Psyche.
And yet something about Psyche and/or her beauty evoked sorrow in Eros.
A silent knowing moved between them even with Psyche asleep and her eyes closed.
Perhaps he saw himself, weak and driven at the merciless hand of his mother, Aphrodite’s less than virtuous and ethical desires.
Though Eros is careful and quiet,
Of Arrows, Psyche, and Moments of Empathy, Grace and Redemption… Read More »
In my recent interview with Tabitha Vinson of Praise and Worship ICU (PWICU), we discussed human intimacy, an aspect that, for Tabitha, played heavily in my recent novel, The House.
That night, it struck me that as with The House, and all good works of fiction, intimacy plays an important role in not simply the emotional narrative of a story.
Intimacy heavily contributes to the establishment of the opening of a work of fiction.
Through presenting the protagonist in a series of intimate relationships, readers get to know the personality of the central character, flaws and all.
From this we gain entrance into their yearnings.
And yearnings always relate to desires and wants, ultimately inner conflicts that get ignited once the protagonist enters the quest to achieve her or his goal.
Of Intimacy, Revelation and Redemption… Read More »
The greatest revelation in a novel often comes, quite understandably, during the end. The context in which this occurs involves releasing underlying knowledge, all of which provides the stage upon where the ultimate truth of everyone’s motives comes forth.
Protagonists that draw on our senses and emotions not only face tough dilemmas and challenges they also encounter wonderfully treacherous antagonists whose actions force the main character to dig deep within themselves, assess and display their strengths.
Of Revelations, Redemption and Grace… Read More »
“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.
We are speaking, of course, of The Muse.”
–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity
Many people imagine the life of a writer as one of awakening each morning to a flowing stream of words that pour onto our writing tablet or through our fingers and onto the computer string, our greatest challenge being that of writing or moving our fingers quick enough on the computer keys to catch the words.
There are times like that. But more often than not, we struggle to find those words that ideally give readers a smooth ride into the escape of our stories and novels.
A more honest way of describing what we do is to say that the smoother our sentences flow and the more intense a readers entrancement into at story, the more the writer toiled at kneading and carving that ease of journey presented in the magic carpet of our words.
But what of The Muse?
The Muse, Mystery and Grace… Read More »
The Rook, Tower or Castle in the game of chess speaks to boundaries.
Towers and Castles of the medieval era served not simply as homes, but also places of protection, that place to which rulers, those of their court, and the soldiers guarding them retreated and from which they waged battle.
The Tower provided a place from which the sentry or guardsmen could look out and view those coming to do battle or offend–those who sought to defeat the monarch and occupy her or his home.
Each time we set out to write a story or novel, we wage a war.
Of Towers, Castles and the Battles Writers Wage… Read More »
The area of a novel that follows climax brings renewal. Yet writing this part of the story gets tricky.
Rolling towards the finish line authors can easily lose control of the narrative. We must remain upon the horse of our story.
Climax has delivered a delayed and second crisis a second form of transformation, what some might call the aftershocks of the major earthquake of the peak crisis bringing everything to its head.
In this way novels can be seen to have three major crises or turning points from which others hurricanes or twisters of change spin off.
First comes the initial shake up, the initiating problem that rises from the dilemma rooted in back-story. Then comes the arc of action where the protagonist meets with her or his archenemy, that from which she or he has been running or pursuing the length of the story.
Then comes the crisis.
Of Swords, Inner Demons and the Waters of Renewal… Read More »