Sydney Avey's Blog, page 18
January 27, 2014
Great Settings Advance a Plot
Location, location, location
Forums are great places to troll for talent and flush out ideas on how to use great settings to advance a plot. Many of the contributors to my Writing California blog series raised their hands in the LinkedIn Fiction Writers Guild and the She Writes forum, Novelists (Struggling or Not).
I posted a question about how place can also function as a character. Clare O’Beara pointed out that settings behave like characters when they intrude on people’s lives and affect th...
January 22, 2014
Writing California: San Francisco
Who doesn’t like a good chase out of San Francisco? What better place to stage tom-foolery on wheels? Well-traveled John Bird chose to set his fast-paced comedy thriller Aristocrat at Large in California in the Fifties because he lived and worked in San Jose in the Sixties.
In John’s words
Some of the episodes in the book, both in California and other western states, are loosely based on experiences I had whilst in the States. I feel the use of locations like as San Francisco and the Napa Valle...
January 17, 2014
The Power of Place
There is nothing quite like the power of place. Whether we stand in a field or on a shore, or merely recall a time when we did, being in a special place stirs our senses and releases memories.
Dag Hammarskjöld wrote in Markings:
A landscape can sing about God, a body about Spirit.
Setting has a diverse songbook. I asked some members of She Writes about the landscapes that stir their passions.
Kate Powell is writing a book set in ranch country in the mountains above Santa Rosa and Napa. Here is ho...
January 15, 2014
Writing California: Chico
Susan Aylworth
Former university professor Susan Aylworth describes Chico, her hometown of 38 years, as a small-ish country town with a major state university all plopped into a rural, agricultural setting. The rich mix of rural-vs-urban, town-vs-gown produces creative tension that works nicely for plotting purposes.Susan enjoys researching backgrounds and careers for her novels. “It’s one way to live many lives all at once,” she says.
Being married to a newspaper reporter who has covered the p...
January 8, 2014
Writing California: San Gabriel Mountains
The first is a series about stories set in the Golden State.
Daniel Acosta finds the heart of his story along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks at the foot of the San GabrielMountains.Fiction writer and playwright Daniel Acosta was born and raised in San Gabriel, California. The son offirst generation Mexican-American parents, Daniel writes stories that reflect his Mexican-American neighborhood and community.
In Daniel’s words:
The story
A dead hobo, a racist cop, and an ex-con uncle are the a...
January 1, 2014
A Clean Start: The Seasonal Sort
I’m a seasonal sort, programmed for certain activities at specific times of the year. My Friends are posting about happy New Year’s Day traditions, parades and football games, gourmet breakfasts, birding walks. Not for us. Every January 1, we make a clean start by sorting through the Orchard Supply closet. It’s our tradition.
This year I told hubs to pretend we’re moving (we aren’t) and toss whatever we wouldn’t take with us, old electronics, unidentifiable power cords, half burned candles, ma...
Celebrate the Golden State
Santa Cruz, CA
This year I am going to feature California, the Golden State, on my blog. My friend Charise has a website titled Prayers and Cocktails with Charise Olson; I love that title! It is so – California. Charise describes her fiction as “having a certain flavor that is distinctly Californian: opportunity, diversity, and an oddball (or two). And befitting the state with mountains, beaches and redwood trees – beauty. Beauty that stirs your spirit, soul and funny bone.”
But California does...
December 30, 2013
365 Short Stories (Last Post)—Week Fifty-Two
© Oliver Suckling | Dreamstime
This is my last post is my 365 Short Stories series. I fell short of my goal of 365 stories, but not of my vow to post a weekly progress report. (At a word count of 24,100, that’s a novella!) I intended to read another seven stories this week, but the family came in for Christmas and I made a choice to to spend time with them instead of my anthologies.
In my excitement near the beginning of the year I said, “next year I’ll do poems! The year after that, I’ll do es...
December 27, 2013
A Secret and a Super Blogger Award
© Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos
On December 9, 2013 I received a Super Blogger Award from the lovely Alexandra Caselle. I met Alexandra on She Writes. There are strings attached. I have to reveal a secret and and pass the award along to a deserving someone I consider a super blogger. These are my instructions:
Alexandra Caselle
Take the award for yourself, then pass it along to someone who inspires you or you just think is “super” in one way or another. Tell us why you think that pers...
December 23, 2013
365 Short Stories (Metaphors)—Week Fifty-One
I love metaphors, figurative language or suggestive phrasing folded into a story like raspberry filling in vanilla layer cake.
“ ReMem ,” by Amy Brill, One Story
This brilliantly crafted story spins our present technology out into the future. The raspberry filling is the riff on memory. Among the many sentences I underlined, this one:
For my concern I earn a look beamed directly from the border of Pityland.
And this one:
One could tuck a basketball between her chin and the top of my head.
(Geeky writ...
