Handshakes communicate dominance, submission, or equality. When hands meet, if one person turns his or her palm facing down, it’s called the Upper Hand and means that person wants control of the meeting. The submissive handshake is from the person whose palm faces upward. In social situations, women often offer a soft handshake to men […]
Your Characters’ Handwriting
Vimala Rodgers wrote a book called Change Your Handwriting, Change Your Life. The description on the back cover, states that handwriting is “a road map to the psyche, a clear path through the winding labyrinth of our personality. Every loop and flourish reveals an attitude, each line and slant displays a quality.” Several years ago, […]
Overheard Conversations for Writer Inspiration
One of the assignments in a writing class I took several years ago was to listen to a conversation in a restaurant and use it to inspire a story. I choose a few words I overheard by two women who sat at a table near us one evening in Utah. The story I wrote had […]
Characters’ Decisions
As writers we have to put our main character in tight spots where decisions have to be made. We make the decision harder when there are no right answers. The character has to weigh what is better between two actions where neither one is guaranteed to turn out right. The deep tension, which is more […]
Writing Body Language with Gestures
When writers describe body language, it’s often done with one simple sentence, such as Viv furrowed her brow. The meaning can be misleading without supportive evidence in how she’s feeling. Is she confused? Is she angry with what was said? Or is she in pain? Gesture clusters reveal more accurate information. For instance in this […]
Writing Weather in the First Paragraphs
Elmore Leonard states in his book, Ten Rules of Writing, “Never open a book with weather.” He explains that the reader looks for people and will skip ahead to find them if the author writes on and on about the weather. Sheldon Siegel, author of several modern legal novels, spoke at the California Writers Club, […]
The Rhetorical Term Oxymoron
Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which seemingly contradictory terms appear side by side. Often we read them as normal unless we think about the incongruity. Some examples I’ve heard and read several times in the past are deafening silence, dull roar, and crash landing. In Norman in the painting, my novel in progress, […]