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Franco and The Blonde: Fiction Friday
Today, I’m trying my hand at a bit of short fiction. This piece of flash fiction is under 600 words at 595 words. This scene popped into my head last night, perhaps because at dinner, our family was talking about our Italian heritage and the legacies we leave behind (I know…a little heavy for a dinner conversation during a coronavirus crisis). Nonetheless, I knew I was going to write this scene when I went to bed last night, and I banged it out this morning, just to touch base with my creativity. I’m so immersed in teaching 4 online courses right now, that I have little time for something like…
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Writer’s Toolbox: Tips on Writing Successful Description
*** One of the tips I have students practice a lot in my college classes is writing using their senses. In case you have forgotten how to do this from your writing classes, it means to write using your sharpest senses. Start any passage by asking yourself these questions: What did it smell like? What did it look like? What did it taste like? What did it feel like? What did you hear? Sharpening your senses will make your writing vivid. Remember: we are shooting for the ideal, which is to transport people to that moment, place, or situation. When a reader becomes completely engrossed by your words—your magic ability…
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Flash Fiction Friday: Lessons of Survival
Friday fiction. There are no lessons of survival for the survivors. Lessons of Survival Cascading waterfall. A wall of rocks. The ocean, calmly rocking. Alone in her beach chair, she sat, stretched out wearing her sunglasses, dissecting what had happened. The rays of the sun warmed her body as she played the scene over and over in her mind, a movie trailer unable to stop. A dish she was holding crashed to the floor, and her knees buckled and bruised from falling on them hard, unable to stop her body from the weight of its own heaviness pressing down upon her feet. She couldn’t keep herself up; gravity had a…
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Fiction Friday: A Knight, A Princess, and a Dragon make up The Village of Happinyss
When my son was little, I used to tell him stories that revolved around a character I made up called Myron the Knight. I have the original story written down and perhaps, in the future, may do something with it. Nevertheless, for this week’s Fiction Friday, I left behind my usual tragic romantic or happy romantic writing and used this character of Myron in a different type of piece. The challenge from Brian Kiteley’s book was to do the following: “…for the first part, tinge the world in dark hues and show us a narrative style that reflects frustration, sadness, and alienation.” Then later, we were to switch and “use…
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Fiction Friday: Three Perspectives
From the Brian Kiteley book, The 3 A.M. Ephiphany, (a great text that offers exercises to keep writers fresh), I attempted to write the same story in two voices and then use a detached narrator. This exercise was a little tricky to stick to the story, but yet offer two takes on it. Detached narrator is more difficult once you get inside your characters’ thoughts and emotions. Two Voices First Voice: I sit tapping my fingers at the bar waiting for her to arrive. My Cosmo’s half gone, and I’m about to order a second. She’s late, as usual. She had called me from her car to say she was…
