Creative Writing Prompt

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Greeting and almost Thanksgiving blessing to you from Gail Gaymer Martin at www.gailmartin@aol.com Sometimes writers draw a blank. They face a new novel with an empty page, and their creative process has taken a vacation. I am always looking for creative ideas on writing to add to my blog Writing Fiction Right at www.writingright-martin.blogspot.com I want to tell you about two very creative writing prompts that can help to stimulate your creativity and perhaps get you out of the slump that sometimes happens to writers. The two prompts that I thought were great are Creative Writing Prompts and Story Praxis….

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Unique Settings

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Hi! Sherry Kyle here, writing from my laptop in central California. By definition, setting is the period and place of a story. It gives a story authenticity and gives the characters and plot believability. In other words, your setting is the large frame, which defines the surrounding for your characters. When I wrote my first published novel, it didn’t take long to decide where I wanted my story to take place. I lived near a charming coastal town that would, in my opinion, be a wonderful backdrop for the contemporary fiction world I wanted to create.

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Basic of Poetry Writing II – Images

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                        by                   Donn Taylor     In my last poetry blog we talked about finding strong words and putting them in emphatic positions in the poetic line. The end of the line is most emphatic; the beginning, next-most emphatic. Now we go on to specific kinds of strong words.    As Lawrence Perrine wrote, poetry speaks in "higher voltage" than prose. One essential means of achieving that higher voltage is the effective use of images—words or phrases that appeal to one of the five senses. Why important? Because everything we know about the world we live in comes to us through one…

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The Sagging Character

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Greetings from Gail Gaymer Martin, home from a refreshing Writers Retreat in the Caribbean. What could be better? Drop by to see me at www.gailmartin.com or look for me on Facebook and Twitter. Last month I posted ideas for creating real life characters. This month I'm sharing tips on how to bolster your characterization if you have worries that it sags. This can happen so knowing how to stop it before it begins is always a great idea.

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PUGS Pointers #3

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Hi! I’m Kathy Ide, and in addition to being a published author, I’m a full-time professional freelance editor. For CAN, I’m blogging about “PUGS”–Punctuation, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling…tips for writers based on the most common mistakes I see in the manuscripts I edit. Each blog post will have one tip for each of the four categories, as well as a reason it’s important for authors to “polish their PUGS.” (For more PUGS tips, check out my website, http://www.kathyide.com/, or get a copy of my book “Polishing the PUGS” (available through the website or at the conferences I teach at). If you’re interested…

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Some Basics of Writing Poetry

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    Hello. I'm Donn Taylor. Last month I encouraged aspiring poets to write good-quality poetry that can be understood by ordinary readers. This month we begin on basic elements that can make that poetry good.     Ideally, poetry is more compact, more intense than prose. As the late Lawrence Perrine put it, poetry speaks in "higher voltage." William Baer says further that poetry emphasizes the line, the sound of words, and compression of meaning. All of these things are true, but accomplishing them is achieved only by attention to even the smallest elements. Oscar Wilde famously said he'd worked all…

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Ideas for Real Life Characters

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One day late, but I'm here. Welcome from Gail Gaymer Martin @www.gailmartin.com Writers Digest had an excellent article on characterization in January 2011 written by David Corbett. A small part of that article was subtitled Real-Life Characters, and it offered a list of possible characters you might find in your own life. The author suggested you create a list of interesting people and provide a details, physical appearance, and the effect this person had on you. This activity triggered a double idea which I’d like to share with you.

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PUGS Pointers #2

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Hi! I’m Kathy Ide, and in addition to being a published author, I’m a full-time professional freelance editor. For CAN, I’m blogging about “PUGS”–Punctuation, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling…tips for writers based on the most common mistakes I see in the manuscripts I edit. Each blog post will have one tip for each of the four categories, as well as a reason it’s important for authors to “polish their PUGS.” (For more PUGS tips, check out my website, www.KathyIde.com, or get a copy of my book “Polishing the PUGS” (available through the website or at the conferences I teach at). If you’re interested…

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Storm preparation for writers

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Aloha from Karen, Having survived Hurricane Andrew with half my house damaged and many items blown into the everglades, I know a little about what to expect from a hurricane. Irene is headed my way. It’s important back up files and take other steps.

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Toward Poetry Revival

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   I have loved poetry since the age of seventeen when I discovered Byron, Keats, and Shelley. As I matured, I came to love deeper masters like Virgil, Spenser, Donne, Milton, and Tennyson, as well as Homer and Dante in translation. But something bad happened to poetry about a hundred years ago, so that many of today's readers are completely turned off toward poetry. It doesn't have to be that way. In my CAN blogs I will encourage a revival of good-quality poetry that can be enjoyed by ordinary readers, and I'll describe and illustrate techniques that can make it…

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