“An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” ~Stephen King One of the most important lines in a story is that very first one that you write. But as important as that is to grab the attention of a reader, a first line can …
A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. (Proverbs 17:22 NKJ) Usually when I think of the above Bible verse, I just want to remember the first part of the verse. I like thinking about the good medicine of smiles and laughter, but it’s not as good thinking about those with broken spirits and …
I’m continuing from Sunday’s post about my writing journey to Hollyhill. To get there I had to mine my memories of and experiences in my hometown and my little country church. This is a picture of that church and the congregations in 1962. That was before I attended there, but a lot of these people were still there when I …
Thanks to all of you who commented on Wednesday’s post with suggestions for future character interviews. I’ll be sharing some of those in the weeks to come since character interviews are one of my favorite things to write. Janet mentioned Jocie from my Hollyhill books. That had me remembering about how much I enjoyed letting Jocie take over a story. In …
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Main Street, Hollyhill. Well, I would be reporting except I have to do this science report for school about plant stamens and pistils. I know. Boring!! But Dad says grades are important and I can’t just make something up. Pistils sounds like something made up to me. Anyway, since the report is due Monday, I’m …
A few years ago when I was trying to think up a new story, I came across a story about Louis Sansbury in a book about little known Kentucky heroes. Reading about Louis and what he’d done for the town of Springfield and then what the town of Springfield later did for him fired up my imagination. What kind of …
Thanks to all of you who played along with my rewriting the old proverbs game. You came up with some great rewrites – some that were smile-worthy with a fun twist and others that had some good wisdom added. The Bible has a whole book of proverbs full of wisdom. A good definition of a biblical proverb is “a short …
Proverbs are the children of experience. (An English Proverb) Thank you all so much for playing my Rewrite the Proverbs Game. I hope you are having fun with it and with exercising your imagination. We all need to exercise and an imagination is one of the best things to exercise. That’s what we do when we read a novel or …
Proverbs are the wisdom of the street. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on Wednesday’s proverb post. I enjoyed reading all your thoughts and rewrites of the familiar proverbs. One that several of you chose to edit a bit was about the pesky squeaky wheel that gets the oil or grease. Some of you were ready to …
Thanks to all of you for jumping into this new game with enthusiasm and smiles. I need to come up with a name for the game. Any suggestions? All I can think of is Rewrite the Proverb Game. That could be because rewriting is always part of my writing game. When I’m working on a new book the way I …