If you missed this before, spend a little time this week with this great four-minute animated video written by Nalo Hopkinson on writing great fiction.
It is also helpful for the nonfiction writer because you, too, tell stories. But yours happen to be nonfiction!
Once you are done watching, you can take a short quiz and even go deeper on the TED-Ed site. (Click here for the quiz.)
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Writing descriptively…in the dark of morning, I would really rather not. Not today.
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I don’t want to write this now,
of salt tears in stinging eyes.
I don’t want to write ’bout how
a dear ancient Chihuahua dies.
There can be no narrative
that will tell of his great days,
and the sole palliative
is to offer thanks and praise
to the God who sent him here,
and entrusted us with care.
He came with mistrust and with fear,
but slow resolve brought all things fair,
a tiny blessing, joy, and boon
that must go now, far too soon.
Aww Andrew, I’m so sorry for the loss of your sweet pup. A painful blow, I’m sure.
Liz, thank you. It does hurt. I really didn’t feel like writing a descriptive anything, but writing is what writers DO.
Dusty. Faded. Battered.
Only a whisper of lilac.
Words of love.
Treasured for a lifetime.
Commitment.
Sixty summers past.
Commitment.
Another love, another calling.
Danger. Healing. Death.
The shade of that old oak
on the edge of the cemetery.
Sixty summers past.
See the path, leads to the guardian oak?
His fingers brush the outline
of a carved heart,
Two sets of initials, a date.
And that love note,
he treasures both reminders of
Nineteen-sixty four.
A first draft
Gordon, I think it’s beautiful, and compelling.
You addressed perfectly what I was trying to say, that the heart, even wounded and reticent, has to inform our writing, because (again, as I see it, and I’m no professional), we write to hold open doors through which we’ve passed, even (and maybe especially) to the hard, sorrowful places. Not to share grief or hopelessness; precisely the opposite, to illuminate the blessings that reside in the dark pain, the chiaroscuro of life in Christ.
I’m so sorry, Andrew. It hurts so much when we lose our pets.
Thanks, Judi. They become, and in a sense define, family.
Dusty. Faded. Battered.
Only a whisper of lilac.
Words of love.
Treasured for a lifetime.
Commitment.
Sixty summers past.
Commitment.
Another love, another calling.
Danger. Healing. Death.
The shade of that old oak
on the edge of the cemetery.
Sixty summers past.
See the path, leads to the guardian oak?
His fingers brush the outline
of a carved heart,
Two sets of initials, a date.
And that love note,
he treasures both reminders of
Nineteen-sixty four.
Oh, boy, does that “poem” ever need work!
Thanks. I need to go back and edit with that in mind.