The "Once upon a times" of a Writer

"Once upon a time". . . . Ah! The magic that those words hold! The possibilities of what lies in wait to be spoken, or written, directly following.

The endless wonderment.

The endless enthusiasm.

The never ending intrigue!

. . . Or so it would seem.

But "Once upon a time" can be a rather frightening phrase, for a writer. . . . "Once upon a time," what? "Once upon a time" there lived a duck. . . an ogre. . . a princess. . . a prince? You are the one left to decide. . . .

The endless possibilities. . . .

The endless indecision. . . .

The never ending banging of the forehead against the wall!

. . . Or so it would seem, should seem. . . . But for Christian writers, what would seem. . . should seem correct, may not always be so. Our stories and tales, our ideas and thoughts all teem from another source, a much better source, a source with:

Endless prospect.

Endless decision.

And never ending stream of enthusiastic ideas!

. . . So it would seem, and so it would be. Except that we writers often choose to take the "banging our forehead against the wall" route to solve our "Once upon a time," problems, instead of going to the source of our story idea, the one who gave us the writing talent, and handed us the idea to write this story in the first place. But if we go to our Heavenly Father, our "source," with our problems, our writer's blocks, then perhaps, perhaps we may once again discover the wonder of the phrase "Once upon a time," and again be able to say with full honesty and passion:

"Once upon a time". . . . Ah! The magic that those words hold! The possibilities of what lies in wait to be spoken, or written, directly following.

The endless wonderment.

The endless enthusiasm.

The never ending intrigue!

God bless.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Description; the 6th Sense–Part 4 the Sense of Touch

The next post in the series. (If you have missed the first 3 other parts, you can get to them here: Description; the 6th Sense–Part 1 the Sense of Sight; Part 2 the Sense of Sound; and Part 3 the Sense of Smell.)

Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark whistled its shrill cry, as it swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak. The smell of on coming rain taunted Patience's nose, and she turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head with a rumbling growl that shook the air and disarmed it of all silence.

Touch. . . . What a special thing it is. It's the feeling of the strong arms of someone they trust, which give's a little child the sense of security. It's the softness of a puppy's fur, or a chicks feathers that gives us the delight of holding or touching them. Touch– it is the feeling of warm earth squishing between our toes that we keep wanting to come back to; it is the kiss of a butterfly's wings, or the rush of wind upon our face. Touch. But how do we interpret that onto paper? How can we say what touch is, when you have to feel it in order to truly understand it. But not necessarily. . . . Like smell, you have a memory of things you've felt; the roundness of a ball that you have just thrown; the rough grains of the wood of the chair you have just sat in. That memory, can be harnessed and used to help your writing. Let's say that the character that you are writing about has picked up a piece of cloth. You can phrase what they feel in some way like this: "He ran his fingers over the material, it was like thin silk, smooth and soft, yet in other ways it was different. . . tougher for instance, it almost had a leathery feel to it." You see, first you get the feel of silk, then of leather, mix it together and vwalla! You have the feel of this new material.

But not all things are like that. Many you have to create your own texture for, such as darkness. You can't feel it in the literal sense. And yet, it wears on you, and seems to close in on you. Fog adds a chill to the air, and strains your eyes, so that it almost feels as if it were pressing into them. You can feel someone's stare, although they are touching you in no way. And the list goes on. Experiment, touch things, and see if you can word what it feels like and that way the next time you come to a part in your writing, where you need to describe touch, you will know what to do.

Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark whistled its shrill cry, as it swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak. A gust of wind swept over Patience, gently caressing a lock of hair over her cheek. An especially long piece of grass tickled her ear before springing nimbly back into place as the wind slowed. The smell of on coming rain taunted her nose, and she turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head with a rumbling growl that shook the air and disarmed it of all quiet.

(Thank you Hannah for your suggestion on the last sentence, I do believe it flows much better now. :) )

The 5th, and final part of the series will be coming soon. :)

Assr vísa ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Description; the 6th Sense–Part 2 the Sense of Sound

To continue our series, we move on to the sense of sound. (For those of you who haven't read the last post I posted, I'm doing a series on description. In the series, I gave an ordinary sentence without any descriptions, and am going through all of the 5 senses and adding description to it, until it is completed, and we have developed the 6th sense; description. To read Part 1 click here.)

Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak. Patience turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head.

So, it now has sight. The most basic of the senses, and the one which we most often look to first, before moving deeper. Sometimes we forget to look deeper though, and just stop here (I've done this many a time). And though this does work in many situations, think of how much deeper, how much more real the seen you are laying before the reader would feel, once you get all (or at least most) of there senses participating, not just their eye. The sentence above seems complete, and I must admit, I felt that it was finished. And yet, as I thought about it, I found small ways to worm the other senses. Just small changes here and there that make not near as much difference as when we added sight to it. But once it's finished, it will feel more complete.

You're ears are probably the second thing you move to, once you've viewed everything with your eyes. You hear the thudding of boots, or the rustle of grass. When you're blindfolded, or in the dark, you can't rely on your eyesight any longer, so your ears become more open. You hear every creak, every bump or stir in the darkness. You can hear chains clinking, or voices. Let's go deeper into the voices; you can make it rough and rugged, with slurs, and/or an accent. Or you can make it proper and learnt, with long words, and saying things in a more correct way. But you can also make them demanding, or curious, simply by saying so. 'Why?' Gregory piped up again in his curiosity. You see? You don't just have to make sounds, but use words to describe it. Like if someone is nocking on a door, you don't necessarily have to type out; nock-nock, or tatt-tatt, or something like that. You can just say, he rapped his knuckles twice in quick succession against the wooden door. I'm not saying at all that you can't type out the noises, it all depends on your preference, or style of writing, whether you want to do that or not.

Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark whistled its shrill cry, as it swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak. Patience turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head with a rumbling growl that shook the air and disarmed it of all silence.

Keep a look out for Part 3, coming soon. :)

Assr lei∂r ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~

Description; the 6th Sense–Part 1 the Sense of Sight

It seems that a lot of you are wanting tips on writing and stuff like that. So I decided to do a series on description. (Take note, that I am by no means an expert, feel free to comment, and tell me what you think, or if I have stated anything wrong–though I will ask you to please state your mind respectfully, I want to hear from you and your thoughts on the subject.) Description holds a certain wonder on me, how it magically turns plain, uninteresting sentences into ones that captivate you, never ceases to awe me. Simple words, like dark, and ominous, can make a reader shudder. While other words, like bubble, and beautiful, can make them smile with contentment.

In this series I'm going to give you a sentence, a plain, ordinary sentence, with no descriptions what-so-ever. Then, slowly, we'll add description based on the 5 senses; sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. To end with the 6th sense; description. And a much more intriguing, and satisfying sentence (or sentences, depending on how long it gets.)

Are you ready?? Alright, here is the sentence that we'll be using:

Patience sat in the meadow, when she saw a storm coming on. 

So we've go the sentence. Nothing fancy. . . like the string of a necklace, now we just need to add some beads to it. First, we'll start with sight.

So we've got Patience sitting in the meadow (btw, I named her Patience, because she must have been sitting in the meadow a very long time, and she'll be remaining there until we've added all of the senses, so she's got to be very patient. . . . ). Now close your eyes, and put yourself in the meadow, we're she is. Picture everything. You don't need to worry about touch or sound or any of that, we'll work with that in another post, just focus on the sights. Are you sitting beneath a tree? Or in the open grass?? Are there lots of flowers in the meadow? Perhaps is there a bird flying around?? Dig into the deep things (because though you don't always need to add the little things, it's good to know what they are, just in case an opportunity rises.) like the bugs. If you really think about it, bugs inhabit the grass. Most of the time you can't see them, but when you walk, they sometimes go jumping off, in order not to be squashed. So perhaps you want to add a few crickets, or grass hopers hoping about on the grasses. Is it windy?? With a storm coming on, it may just be, otherwise the clouds wouldn't be moving very fast. Are the dark clouds rearing up like a monster? Or are they spreading across the whole of the horizon, like a deadly plague? 

Alright, you can open your eyes now. Now let's add some sight to this sentence.

Patience sat amidst the tall grass in the meadow. A lark swooped into the violently waving grass, before soaring back into the quickly darkening sky, with a cricket gripped tightly in its thin beak.  Patience turned her eyes to the horizon, where a large black monster crept silently over her once peaceful surroundings. Lightning flashed inside it's belly, as it reared up it's angry head. 

As you can see, sight can change a whole lot about the atmosphere of a scene.

I hope this has been helpful! :) In a few days or so, I'll continue the series with the sense of sound. 

Assr lei∂r ykkarr or∂.

~ElizabethMarieKauffman~