About stories of all kinds
I have a problem that’s been going on for quite sometime. I’ve sort of noticed it off and on in the background, but always dismissed it as something I don’t really need to take steps to fix. Until now. It came to a head when I went back to a WIP and started thinking about… Continue reading Secondary Characters: The Curse of the Dark Horse
When I first started writing stories, I probably had a setting, a few characters, and an inciting incident. Nothing more. I did not know the meaning of the word “plot,” as noun or verb. I embodied the method of "pants-ing" and, consequently, didn’t finish a single story until I was in my early teens. It's… Continue reading The Plot Thickens: A Writer’s Guide to Looking Like You Knew What You Were Doing All Along
Ah, time travel: creator of paradoxes, destroyer of timelines, and conveniencer of plots. I like a good time travel story, whether it be the new Who (Moffat loops and all) or the good old Back to the Future. Time travel tends to frequent science fiction, but is also exploited for its potential in the historical… Continue reading Time in Flux (Capacitor): Ruby Red and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
"Will the real John Donne please stand up?" This was the question that greeted the class on the forum during our study of the works of John Donne. If you know anything about John Donne, it's probably that his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation 17 is the text from which Ernest Hemingway got the title… Continue reading On-Line English Literature Discussion: John, I’m Donne
In any work of writing, even this blog, whether we are conscious of it or not, there is a voice that comes through. It's what you hear in your head while you're reading. It's how it makes you feel--is it whimsical? Informative? Tense? Know-it-all? It's up to how you interpret what you're reading on the… Continue reading Writing in Style: Authorial Voice
Canadian literature. Yawn. Why are we like this? Probably because Canadian art, like that of other British Commonwealth nations, is a) recent: comparatively speaking to other literary traditions; b) slow to develop: why make your own art when your "mother" nation has a pre-established canon?; and c) difficult to maintain: why patronize upstarts when, again,… Continue reading On-Line English Literature Discussion: Canadian Authors
A couple summers ago, I got the chance to share some books I love with my older brother and sister. When I asked each of them separately how they’d liked their individual selection, I got opposite (and therefore mirrored) responses: from my brother, “You can sure tell it’s written by a woman,” and from my… Continue reading “You Can Just Tell…”
In recent years there has been growing awareness of the troubling trends in fictional romances, especially, but not limited to, YA romances. It seems to have come to the surface along with the acknowledgment of rape and abuse in society, which is telling. The issues in fiction largely centre on male love interests, particularly the… Continue reading The Wrong Man
Batman Begins--The Land of Oz As deadlines loom and assignments pile up, I'm growing worried that, like L. Frank Baum's Scarecrow, I have no brains left, or that what brains I do have only consist of the Wonderful Wizard's placebo: bran, pins, and needles. Although, I've noticed that some professors have the pictured attitude towards… Continue reading Brains of Bats, Pins, and Needles
I've loved stories since I can remember and have been reading and writing them since I was able to. But when I was probably ten or eleven years old it expanded from general love of stories to a love of books: the physical containers of such awesome worlds. That was about when lots of things… Continue reading Recovering Book Collector
Fictitiously Yours 