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It’s been there for about a year now.  Over that time it’s changed, mutated, grown, evolved.  But I haven’t got any of it down on “paper” yet.  It’s still just “there” changing over time, becoming longer, shorter, more mature.  I haven’t written a single word of it, but it still grows.

“Why aren’t you writing it down?” you ask.

“I’m not sure.” would be my answer.

Perhaps I’m worried that once I start, it will lose some of its magic, or that I’ll lose sight of why I wanted to write this tale in the first place.  You see, it’s a very personal story.  Based on my life and the life of my stepson, though neither of us will be mentioned.

It’s the story of someone who would like nothing more than to fit in, to belong in a society that has a certain idea of who and what you are supposed to be, how you should act, and a very critical view of anyone different.  this may seem strange to another writer.  All of us tend to be a little “different”.  We were never what the world expected of us, no matter what that happened to be. But when I’ve been this way all my life.  the loner, the dreamer, that kid in the corner who could never stop fidgeting, who spoke out of turn, whose enthusiasm was unbridled and out of place in a nice idyllic school setting.

S o goes the life of the main character of the tale in my head.  An elf in Santa’s workshop that just can’t quite fit in.  that is until the big guy steps in and finds a place for him.  A story for every kid out there who lives on the outside of his friends, his class or his family.

A story for kids like I was.

What do you think?  Should I write it,or just let it continue to grow?

Jerry Announcements, Character Development, Personal, Story Ideas Personal, questioning, Story Ideas, writing

One of the most common mistakes I see writers make when writing historical pieces or fantasy stories is a simple and glaring lack of research into the common day-to-day existence of people living in tymes of olde. It’s easy to overlook the little things, and to simply assume that “they did it every day, so the characters don’t take note of it.”

While that may be true, there is no more certain way to immerse your reader in a story than to describe some of the minutiae of daily life as seen through the eyes of your characters. If you are setting a story in the highlands of Scotland in the 14th century, you’ll need an understanding of everything from how they cooked and ate, to the clothes they wore. I doubt I need to mention that Celtic clothing of the period differ wildly from the clothes you are most likely wearing today, or that the roles people played in their society bears little or no resemblance to what you would find in your daily life.

A great resource for clothing research comes in the way of renstore.com.  not only can you order actual reproduction clothing, but they offer lessons on topics that your characters might run into on their journeys, like Viking embroidery.

You might just want to order your very own suit of armor…  Hey, I know I’ve been wnting s good formal for a while.

Take a look at renstore.com and get inspired!

Jerry Character Development, Story Ideas, Tools of the Trade, other articles, thanks!

I’ve added this into the writing tips category, but it should be considered tips on what never to do!

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners…..

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

*Note: I got this in email, and assume that this is an actual communication. Aside from most being terribly wrong, (and pretty funny!) I find I may actually use #19 as the beginning of a short story.

Enjoy the day!

Jerry Diversions, Story Ideas, Writing Tips

We’ve all heard that we only have the first three chapters to capture an editor’s attention. While that’s all well and good for a novel, it’s not going to get you anywhere with a short story.

You’re going to have to catch the reader with the first line.

I feel that this applies to any work of fiction, but the short story or novella relies on this principle even more heavily than a full length novel. With a short piece, your reader expects to be immersed in the tale quickly, which stands to reason, since the story is going to end pretty quickly.

Honestly, I sit around just thinking up first lines for stories. My wife is a writer as well, and her notebooks are full of lines I’ve blurted out while watching T.V. or working on another writing assignment. She’s using at least three of them as a basis for stories of her own right now, and has kindly asked me to sop distracting her until she’s finished something.

Say you’ve decided to write a story about an outbreak of zombies in a small Georgia town. There are a lot of ways to open a tale like this, depending on the tone you’d like to set. Let’s assume that we’re going to go with something a bit campy, since the zombie genre is a bit flooded, and hey, what’s more fun than poking fun at zombies, they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs.

Read more…

Jerry Observations, Story Ideas, Writing Tips, Writing Tricks