Barbara Gregorich's Blog, page 19

Punctuation Marks: 1

At some point in my third-grade year, I realized that I loved punctuation — it helped me make clear the meaning of whatever I was writing. All those little marks (!, ?, -, —, and ,) were like codes that others could read. And only those who understood the code could understand the sentence! I was very into mysteries and secret codes, so punctuation marks fit right into my way of thinking.

Which, for a seven-year-old, wasn’t far off the mark: punctuation marks exist not to trip up the writer (...

The Beguilement of Subplots

Subplots are secondary plots within a novel, less important than the main plot but, in most cases, tied to the main plot.

Sometimes a subplot is strongly related to the main plot, perhaps providing contrast to it or perhaps running parallel to it. In Sound Proof the main plot revolves around Frank Dragovic trying to discover who murdered the fiddler. The subplot involving blackmail notes runs parallel to the main plot and even complicates it.

Some subplots have little relationship to the main...

The Threads of Destiny

 

When I was sixteen years old and had just received my driver’s license, I drove my brother and myself to the Warren Public Library, where we browsed the Local Authors shelf and discovered Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan. Never did I think — as we stood in that dark corner and pulled old, well-worn hardback books off the shelf — that I would end up writing a book about the author whose works I held in my hand.

But destiny, if we want to call it that, is woven of many threads, and...

Rewriting: Macro

One of the most difficult things about rewriting is knowing where to begin. The first draft of a book consists largely of the writer telling the story to herself, making things up as she goes along, creating characters and conflict, creating rising action, climax and conclusion. A lot can — and does — go wrong during this process. Knowing that there are many things wrong with a first draft, a writer is often overwhelmed with how and where to begin the changes.

Enter the Sorting Hat, which may...

Bobblehead

One day, extremely annoyed by sycophants and imitators, I penned this poem.

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Fitting In

I long to be
a bobblehead,

my head so huge
it blows my mind,

springing me from
sense and steadiness.

I want to bounce around
in every breeze,

cool as a quarterback
evading a sack,

my connections to a corpus
tenuous or less . . . or less than that.

I fancy bobbing with the boffos,
traveling with the triflers.

I long to be
a bobblehead.

 

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Barbara Gregorich tackles other annoyances in Crossi...

Four More Figures of Speech

Expressive language brings literature (and story) to life, no matter what age level it’s written for. Eve Heidi Bine-Stock shows the truth of this in Volume 3 of her three-volume set on writing books for children. Specifically, she examines different figures of speech and gives examples of them from children’s literature.

Zeugma (ZOOG ma) might sound like something you don’t want to encounter in the dark, let alone in a children’s book. But you have encountered it: you just didn’t know its na...

A play about something that matters – Howard Petrick as V.R. Dunne

The following piece was first published January 5, 2018, on Redline: Contemporary Marxist Analysis.

 

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Being arrested for union organizing, Minneapolis 1934

 

One of the most important battles fought by workers in the United States in the 1930s was waged by the Teamsters Union in Minneapolis.  Through a series of fights, Minneapolis was converted into a union town and the Teamsters were able to spread organising across the Mid-West.  At the heart of the working class struggle in Minneapolis we...

Keeper of the Keys: A Delightful Conceit

[image error]A conceit can be an artistic effect or an imaginative notion. In novel-writing a conceit can be thought of as a concept or setup. In Earl Derr Biggers’ last novel, Keeper of the Keys, the conceit works to control the structure of the plot and also to entertain the reader. The conceit (which must have delighted Biggers) is this: five more-or-less ex-husbands of the same diva meet in an isolated Lake Tahoe home in order to answer a question. The diva herself is invited to attend the meeting. Th...

Women at Play and Libraries

In my previous blog I wrote about my best-known book, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, which is now available as an ebook.

First published twenty-five years ago by Harcourt, Women at Play went into a second printing, and then, eventually, it went out of print. But it has had a long and interesting life through baseball book collectors, through stores that sell used books, and also through libraries. I’m particularly fond of and amused by the way Women at Play has gone into libra...

Women at Play: 25th Anniversary Edition

For the past several years I’ve posted a free chapter from one of my books as part of my New Year’s blog. That book has been Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel: Lots of Examples, Plus Dead Bodies.

But this year’s giveaway chapter comes from my best-known book, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, published twenty-five years ago (Harcourt). The paperback version has been out of print for twenty years, and there has never been an ebook version.

Until today. I’m publishing Women at Pla...