Tag Archives: Plotting

How does perspective affect mood in a novel?

. The word perspective has several synonyms including perception, angle, outlook, and viewpoint. Granted, each of them carries a slightly different nuance, but how often do we consider the importance of that when deciding which point of view to use in our stories? After we decide on the main characters, there is always the questionContinue reading “How does perspective affect mood in a novel?”

Finding the Way

In the far corner of the back lawn a sagging cedar arch begins the short trail to our marsh. Everything changes when I step through the archway. The sky disappears behind a confusion of overhead branches. Shadows linger on trunks and stumps, while slices of sunlight punctuate a path of fir needles and moss. SometimesContinue reading “Finding the Way”

On What Rock Do You Build?

Today’s mail brought a glossy brochure advertising the opening of a new CornerStone Church in our area. I like the name. A cornerstone isn’t a complicated thing to understand. The dictionary defines it as a keystone, foundation, or basis – an important quality or feature on which a particular thing depends. It makes me thinkContinue reading “On What Rock Do You Build?”

I’m Not Here, I’m There

Today you’ll find me guest blogging at Joylene Butler’s blog. Joylene invited me to share with her readers my idea for a method of story design that is a compromise between plotting and “pantsing”. If you have a minute please pop over there and check it out. (Joylene Nowell Butler is the author of theContinue reading “I’m Not Here, I’m There”

Is it Outlining or Plotting?

Sometimes I get hung up on semantics. “Plotting versus pantsing” is a popular topic of discussion among writers.  Writing by the seat of my pants got me through my first two novels, and with a germ of an idea in mind it’s how I write most of my articles. During revisions of my second novelContinue reading “Is it Outlining or Plotting?”

Where Does the Mind Go?

My brain does its “musings and mental meanderings” at the most unexpected times. Yesterday we were driving north from Vancouver en route to visit family in the Okanagan. Mesmerized by a monotonous landscape of brown rolling hills splashed with old snow my eyes slid into “unseeing” mode. I wasn’t asleep and yet somehow I passedContinue reading “Where Does the Mind Go?”