National Reading Group Month event called Mysteries at Opera Plaza! TheThrill of Shared Reading. October 11, 2014, Saturday, 2:00 to 4:00. Books, Inc., Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. Come meet this year’s award-winning mystery authors as they discuss their new novels over wine and hors d’oeuvres catered by Max’s Opera Cafe. Free […]
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, […]
Red Herrings in Writing
A red herring is a diversionary tactic. In a mystery, a red herring can be a character, an object, a significant time, day, week, year, weather, or place. It appears to be a clue, but it’s a logical implication that leads readers on a false trail. The key is logical. Writers don’t use them only […]
When Characters Take Over the Story
If we imagine a boxing ring with our antagonist in one corner and the protagonist in the other corner, who is the referee? The writer is. Lani Longshore, co-author of Death by Chenille and When Chenille is Not Enough (science fiction genre about quilters saving the world from aliens disguised as bolts of beige fabric), […]
Cause and Effect in Writing
Novels today are tighter than Nineteenth-century novels, for example. With busy lifestyles readers now want the writer to stick to the point instead of going off on tangents and filling pages with descriptions and conversations that may be well-written but aren’t relevant to the plot. Writers are expected to use every item, every conversation, every […]
How Do Other Characters in your Story View the Progagonist?
If we imagine other characters in our story seeing the protagonist through a keyhole view, what would they say or write? If the story is written with a single point of view, the thoughts of the other characters can’t be used or we’d be head hopping. Their judgements can be revealed in dialog, directly in […]
The Power of Three in Writing
The power of three in writing a novel is the idea of using an object, symbol, or some reference three times. For example, in Norman in the Painting, Jill Steele worries about security. She has double locks on her doors, an alarm system, and an extensive collection of Foo dogs. In Feng Shui, Foo dogs […]