My Craft Article Published Today 🎉

Super excited that my article, “Hop on Your Horse and Gallop Back in Time: 4 Strengths of Historical and Time-Travel Stories,” was published today at Women on Writing.

Image courtesy of unsplash.com and Kayla Koss

Care to learn more and explore this fun subject as you create your own stories? Ta-da! My latest online class, Leaping Worlds, begins on Friday, September 30th and is is open for sign-ups now.

Read on for my article:
”Hop on Your Horse and Gallop Back In Time: 4 Strengths of Historical and Time-Travel Stories”

By: Melanie Faith

Creating characters whose lives take place in another time can be one of the most enlivening and meaningful writing experiences an author can have. Let’s take a look at four assets writing these stories can bring into the lives of writers and readers alike.

Historical fiction offers maximum flexibility in developing the protagonist. There is no one cookie-cutter image for who the protagonist of your story might be. There are historical fiction main characters of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities. Protagonists can live in literally any place and time (or multiple places and times, should you choose a time-travel tale) that you can imagine and recreate. You even have the flexibility to braid the stories of multiple protagonists within this genre.

Historical fiction protagonists in all types of narratives must have a purpose for being in the story, and that purpose is to inspire change through their actions; to be changed by events, people, or the place(s) where they live; or (ideally) both. All you need to get started is a setting, a time, and a protagonist with a big obstacle to push up against that’ll impact them and the wider world for days, years, or perhaps even decades to come! 

This genre also offers great flexibility of era. Have you always had a passion for the Roaring ‘20s or an interest in ancient Rome? What about a predilection for the early days of TV? Or even (gulp!) the early days of the internet? All include history well worth exploring. Whether a story is set two thousand years ago or twenty-five years ago, the past is at the core and the story is literally limited only by any era or eras that suit your fancy. A great deal of the fun in preparing to write, drafting, and editing within this genre is researching music, clothes, expressions and idioms, and more from the epoch you’ve chosen.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay at Pexels.com

Historical fiction is not a one-trick pony when it comes to styles and formats. Variety, thy name is this genre! Whether you want to pen a magnum opus novel or a flash fiction of a mere 45 words, there’s a style and a format to fit every writer and every project. Great historical fiction time-travel stories, for instance, can be told within a chapbook of stories connected by character or by place or by era, in a novella of a few thousand words (I had a fun time a few years ago writing a Regency novella, Her Humble Admirer, which in the tradition of many historical romance writers, I pen named), or equally well in linked historical-fiction poems (I wrote a collection of thematic poems set in 1918 a few years ago called This Passing Fever ). Historical fiction and time-travel stories also lend themselves well to creating a series. Want to write books about three cousins during the American Revolutionary War: one a Loyalist, one a Patriot, and one a pacifist? A series is born; go for it. Historical fiction allows for great versatility in how stories can be connected, divided, and crafted for maximum reader (and writer) interest.  

At its best, historical fiction sheds a light not only on another time but also on our modern lives. These stories can make us reflect on how far our lives have come and on how far we might go. They can remind us of our own struggles and hopes and setbacks, and they have the power to entertain us as well. That’s a lot of reading happiness in one literary package!  

Try this prompt: Pick a place, a time, and a protagonist. Your protagonist can be a real historical person or a completely fictional person. You don’t need to know everything—or even a lot—about your main character at this point: a name and an initial detail or two will do, even if you end up changing these details later. What does the protagonist, place, or era need the most that it doesn’t have yet? Who or what is blocking positive change? What most excites you to write about this era? Write for twenty minutes. Go!

My Article Published & A Regency Page-Turner

Once upon a time (circa 2015), I started writing a Jane Austen fan-fiction story that over a few months turned into a novella, it was so irresistible to keep writing. Happily, it was published as an e-book a few years later by Uncial Press.

In the time-honored tradition of Romance writers, I pen-named it. Recently, I had the great joy of writing an article for The Uncial Letter about why it’s so fun to read the Regency genre.

Read my article below, and then do pop by the Uncial Press website and/or Amazon to treat yourself to some of their many fabulous books in genres as diverse as Fantasy and Science-Fiction, Westerns, Paranormal, other Historical Fiction eras, poetry, and more.

To subscribe to The Uncial Letter is also a must and easy-breezy: just send an email to uncial-letter-subscribe@googlegroups.com, and you’re all set to receive the latest book updates and many other fine articles, too.

Without further ado, I’m so pleased to announce my featured article:

“Three Reasons Regency Romance Is
   a Perfect Fit for Turbulent 2022”

Enjoy plucky protagonists with minds of their own and strong convictions? Like historical times and places? Want something--anything--today to make a modicum of sense? Regency romance may just be the perfect balm for these tumultuous, wearying days of 2022. Read on!

Regency tends to be character-rich. Readers follow lords, ladies, commoners, clerics, dukes, and duchesses as they populate a British town or city and, best of all, take part in the growth experience of the protagonist. Let's talk about this protagonist for a moment. She tends to be youthful and, while a bit inexperienced, filled with hopes and ideas about how the world works. She's a young woman of conviction with goals that frequently don't pan out as easily or even in the same way as she'd hoped, especially when it comes to her experiences with love. Yet, by the tale's ending, she's realized life lessons about herself and become a more thoughtful, less selfish, more accepting person to her friends, to her family, and to her love interest.

The pleasures of escaping into another world. While I was researching my novel, Her Humble Admirer, it was a great deal of fun to enter back into a place and a time where flowers had secret meanings, from undying friendship to unrequited love to secret passions and more, based on the colors of the blooms. A world where calling cards were on everyone's desk, and ladies and gentleman who were single were only allowed to dance one dance in a row with each other, lest they raise gossipmonger's eyebrows by scandalously dancing away the evening together in public.

The mores and customs of Regency England are far different from 2022, and that's a great thing. Nobody in that era has heard of a thing called Covid nor felt worried and annoyed again because the cost of rent and groceries and gas have skyrocketed yet again this month because of inflation. Nope: readers can time travel and drop in by the fireplace for a cozy conversation (and a bit of village gossip or a reading of the latest Lord Byron poem that's the talk of the Ton) or enjoy an afternoon's carriage ride to visit a relative or the scintillating excitement of a costume ball in a fortnight. Spending time in a different era via characters and scenery is a staycation for the senses that won't cost a penny (and no jetlag!).

Bring on the happy ending! What do we most crave in times of stress and drama? Times when our lives have been upended and are still being put back together? That's right: familiarity. A pattern, order, the sweet pleasure of our expectations being met. What more satisfying pattern could there be than what Regency delivers time after time: the spark of first feelings, obstacles to those feelings, more misunderstandings and a clash, followed by an upturn, a tender admission or a quick reunion, and then together again, this time forever.

While everyday life certainly offers headaches and hassles that don't frequently tie themselves together with a neat little bow, it's a soothing experience to enjoy the protagonist's HEA, page by page. Now, more than ever, that vicarious joy is an especially delightful part of our entertainment, and one in which Regency particularly excels.

So, go ahead: grab a Regency novella or novel today and prepare to encounter another world, a heroine to root for, and a HEA that makes 2022 a bit more palatable and a lot more entertaining.

~*~

We couldn't have said it better. Immersing yourself in a Regency can allow you to escape from yesterday's scandalous headlines that have barely been assimilated when today's upheaval makes news that's followed far too quickly by tomorrow's disasters.

We have a great assortment of Regencies for your pleasure, in all lengths and moods. A great place to start is with Lucy M. Loxley's Her Humble Admirer, a sweetly traditional story with its share of quirky characters, including an innocent maid who is ready for love, a faithful swain who seems interested only in being a good friend, and a sophisticated gentleman from London who wants something from Miss Livia Hightower, but is hesitant about telling her exactly what. Caught up in the summery swirl of country society, Livia weaves romantic dreams about the future...but will they ever be more than hopeless fantasies? [ISBN 978-1-60174-232-2, $3.99]

Awesome Interview Ahead! 🎉

Less than 3 days until my next book releases on Tuesday!

To celebrate the exciting occasion, I was thrilled to be featured on talented writer Kate Bradley-Ferrall’s blog. Check it out: clickety-click!

My Article Published: "Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous"

Excited that Women on Writing published my article today and to share it with you:

“Delicious to Dish: 4 Ingredients That Make Food Writing Fabulous”

Photo courtesy of Vincent Rivaud from Pexels

By: Melanie Faith

What does cooking and writing have in common? A richness of inviting language.

Think about the sheer number of words to describe something “delicious,” for instance. From “decadent” to “delectable” to “delightful” to “exquisite” and “appetizing” and “tasty” and “flavorful” and even “mouthwatering,” each word underscores a very particular quality about the dish.

Speaking of which, even the word “dish” has numerous shades of meaning, tones, and definitions that can lead to descriptive and delightful writing. From the cooking containers to the food itself to an attractive person to giving a friend the scoop by sharing gossip to punishing, as in “you can dish it out but you can’t take it,” the variety of descriptors, contexts, and diction choices make the pairing of writing and nourishment a natural fit. Much like ice cream and the waffle cone that conveys it, they can be a great symbiotic duo.

·         Food writing has ample diction options. Our descriptions of the foods we stir, spoon, swirl, chew, or slurp tend to be precise and as varied as the salad of verbs we can choose from to denote how we compose or eat our meals and certainly how we feel or felt about them and/or the people who made them. One of the reasons writing about food is so fun is that there are endless words that bring our passion, distaste, or other emotions about making or eating food to vibrant life on the page.

·         Food writing has point of view. Some types of writing are easier than others to denote a clear and strong point of view. Food writing tends to have a very focused and clear POV. For instance, people tend to have complicated relationships with certain foods, such as durian fruit or sauerkraut, and it’s often easy to spot the point of view and tone of the author—whether like, love, confusion, or loathing—often in the first few sentences.

·         Food writing has theme. One of my favorite qualities about food writing is that however much the focus is on creating or imbibing or not relishing some eating experiences, it’s never ONLY about the foods at all. Much food writing is rich in setting, imagery, and contextual details that tell the readers something deeper about the speaker’s life or the characters’ lives. Food writing covers a dynamic array of topics, from cultural celebrations and birth stories to addiction, divorce, office romances, first jobs and first apartments, and you name it. Food is present at just about every turning point in our lives, so when writing about food we are presented with endless possibilities, not only for what dishes have meant in our lives in the past but also now and what it might mean in the future. Personal essays, recipes, chapbooks of stories or essays, and/or characters describing foods for children and grandchildren are all food writing. Just about any topic or theme you can imagine from your everyday life will have at least one ingredient, dish, meal, holiday recipe, or family barbecue/picnic/party or road trip associated with it that could make vivid and meaningful prose or poetry.

·         Food writing is not genre restricted. We often think immediately of recipe books or cooking shows when we think of food writing, both of which are kinds of food writing, but that is just the very, very, very tip of the food-writing iceberg. Poems are also food writing. One-act plays with a dinner scene, also food writing. Restaurant reviews, too—food writing. Flash fiction and flash memoir and hybrid pieces, all food writing. Guess what: so are jokes, comedic essays, scenes from novels or novellas, and just about any other genre you can think of. If it has something about eating or being unable to eat, someone making something to eat and failing or succeeding at it, people congregating to eat, people rejecting what’s on the table to eat in favor of something else, the struggles of eating and cooking, people learning to cook, and so on, then it’s food writing. Period. The vast variety of food writing makes for especially fun writing and reading experiences.    

Considering the rich themes, descriptive language, focused point of view, and genre possibilities, food writing is one of the most exciting writing experiences an author can have.  Like a meal to savor, food writing invites a writer’s imagination, memories, and talents to the table, month after month, year after year.

  ***

My Food Writing class begins on Friday, April 8th. I’d love to have you and a friend join me for this delectable and fun class. Click for more details and the sign-up link.

My Article Published Today: "Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?"

Excellent news! My article was published this morning in the WOW newsletter. Happy to share this fun topic with you, and if you’re interested, my next online class begins Friday, January 14th (details here: Fundamentals of Graphic Novel Creation).

Photo courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com

“Why Try Writing Graphic Novels?”

By: Melanie Faith

The initial answer is simple and direct: graphic novels are an exciting mode of storytelling and can encompass several genres. There are comics that are based on vignettes or flash fictions. There are comics that are fully autobiographical and others that are semiautobiographical and based on some real-life events. There are comics that are memoirs. There are comics whose protagonist is entirely fictional as well as comics based on historical figures and events from the past. There are animal comics. There are comics whose protagonist is otherworldly (science fiction and fantasy), from another realm or distant galaxy, from another time period or dimension. There are comics that have everyday protagonists who get stuck in traffic and hate certain foods, like you and me, and comics where the protagonists transcend the daily drudgery as secret superheroes who whip out their cosmic powers just in time.

Even more than that initial answer, however, graphic novels share key traits of meaningful literature that you’re already probably writing to hook readers into these visual stories, such as:

--Graphic novels have strong characters with a perspective and a problem that’s not easily (or forever) solved: whether from a down-on-her-luck office worker who just can’t catch a break or a fairy queen with magical abilities who leads her fellow fae to victory, if you can dream up a protagonist who has something to say and a perpetual conflict to try solving, then you can craft a strong plot for a graphic novel. The office worker decides she’s going up for the big promotion, only to get bested by the office bully, but only for a few panels before she cooks up another plan to aim for that promotion or something equally important to her growth.  Even when the fairy queen swoops in to save her folk today, another destructive force must appear—in the next chapter, page, or even the next few panels—to challenge her abilities and give her a reason to test her powers and lead her fellows past obstacles to victory all over again. Struggle, momentary victory, struggle again is a good motto for graphic-novel planning.

--Graphic novels often have characters who are delightful oddballs or passionate outcasts who question their place in the world through their actions, dialogue, and their inner doubts and fears as they move through these challenges, however slowly, haltingly, or while bumbling sometimes. Insecurities, fears, limitations, frustrations, self-consciousness, anxieties—call them what you will, but graphic novel protagonists are often recognizable and loveable for the very sensitivities that keep readers reading (and putting themselves into the protagonists’ shoes). Just like in short stories and movies, nobody roots for a character who is picture perfect in every way and has it all figured out every step of the way.  Graphic novel protagonists are often thrown into new environments where they feel overwhelmed for much of the narrative or cannot escape their home environments where they have never felt the same as others. In both situations, the protagonists demonstrate their character, mettle, sass, and wit through how they cope (or barely cope or mostly fail to cope) with not having complete (or even partial) control over their lives. Humor and pathos both result from tales of protagonists doing the best they can as fish out of water.

--Graphic novel characters and narratives touch on universal truths. Whether your novel is set on a distant star or in Chicago of 2130 or in your own home office this very year or in Boston in 1850, one of the hallmarks of graphic novels is that they illuminate what it means to live in an imperfect world with others who frequently have different goals that conflict with one’s own. Readers want to identify with and cheer on the situations protagonists navigate through and, as a bonus benefit, feel a sense of investment in the protagonists’ struggles and triumphs and encouragement about their own lives.

Yeah, but comics are written by people who are whizzes at drawing, right? Nope. Graphic novelists don’t have to have the most up-to-date software or even be skilled at drawing or anywhere near professional-artist level. If you can sketch a table or shapes and/or draw a stick figure, you can get your point across based on the story your graphic novel tells and the strength of your protagonist, antagonist, conflict, rising actions, and story arc. Plenty of writers team up with professional or student artists to make their comics, which is another option. Comics can also be created from photography and collage as well as simple line drawings and from various forms of drawing software and apps.

So, if you have elementary artistic skills or can take a photo or sketch basic shapes and draw a stick figure, possess an interest in making good literature with a strong, identifiable protagonist who gets in hot water and feels hesitant about their vulnerabilities and yet finds their own way, bit by bit, it’s likely you can turn a strong character and story premise into an entertaining, meaningful graphic novel. It’s well worth dipping your toes into the graphic-novel waters to give it a try.

Image courtesy of Kelly Sikkema @kellysikkema at Unsplash.com

Insight into Developmental Editing, Part Two 📝☕

As an editor, it’s incredibly fulfilling to work with fellow writers as they sculpt their awesome novels and prepare for publication.

This year, I’ve had the complete joy to work with Ian Rogers of But I Also Have a Day Job and TRAM on his debut novel that drops in April 2022 (Vine Leaves Press). MFA Thesis Novel will leave you entertained, laughing, and thinking deeply about your own life’s path long after you’ve savored the final page.

Photo Courtesy of Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash.com

Wonder what it’s like to work with a developmental editor? Ponder no longer! Ian does a stellar job exploring what developmental editing entails, what it’s like to communicate about your vision for your book with a developmental editor, and how authors and editors can bond over shared goals on behalf of making fabulous books.

Here’s the second (and latest) post about Ian’s developmental editing experience: ta-da! Be sure to check out his first post about developmental editing from June .

Also, make sure to check back on Ian’s site for wonderful reflections and interviews with working writers and at Vine Leaves Press to reserve and order your copy of MFA Thesis Novel in early 2022 as well as to peruse and purchase the many amazing Vine Leaves selections available.

Here’s to writers making it happen and bringing meaningful literature into the world! 📚🌟

"3 Techniques to Write More Vibrant Poetry"

Thrilled that my craft article was published today at Women on Writing! 💗 In the market for an online poetry course that starts in November? Check out my class here. Read on for the article:

3 Techniques to Write More Vibrant Poetry

By: Melanie Faith

Whether we want to write free-verse or a sonnet, a haiku, or a prose poem, some key elements are universal in poetry: vivid imagery and precision of diction choices are two widely agreed-upon qualities of successful poems. The following are three less talked-about techniques that are every bit as vital that could take your verse to an exciting new level.

Everyday is A-Okay: Sometimes, we get the impression poems have to be about monumental subjects or events. Not always so. While there certainly are classic poems to commemorate the big-day events in life, such as high-school graduation or joining the military or marriage or the birth of a child, there are myriad more poems about small observations and tiny moments that, without art, a person could easily move past without reflection.

In fact, the reflections and observations that occur about ordinary topics can, indeed, be extraordinary for readers.  I’m reading a collection of poems this week where dates are the titles of each work. In some of the poems, the poet describes people and events of the day literally. In others, the speaker of the poem is obviously someone different than the author or the author combines time periods.

Something authentic and tangible that we observe from our day might spark a poem and then the poem could veer in an imaginative way that surprises and combines fact with fiction—also totally acceptable and, in many casing, inspiring ground for creating poems.

Open your poem with an image grounded in real-life, but stay open to associative leaps that serve the poem, too.

Empty Some Space: Poetry is a compressed art. When I first started to write poetry, as a fiction writer, my tendency was to write long lines (almost margin to margin) crammed with details. I also rarely included stanza breaks.

One day, in graduate school, a favorite professor took one of my poems and, in his critique, marked several places where empty space (sometimes called “white space”) would improve the poem. Mind blown! When I retyped my poem, incorporating the blank spaces, I immediately saw how the focus was stronger on each image and indeed each line and stanza break as well.

Then, I did another round of emptying space: I looked for unnecessary prepositional phrases, words that were vague or place-fillers, and other ways to focus my language even more. The more I refined by taking away from the page as I edited, the more the theme cohered and strengthened.

Both ways of compressing poetry—including more stanzas or new stanza or line breaks to highlight certain key images or words as well as editing out cluttering or vague phrases—can go a long way to bringing resonance to your poems.

Dialogue it up! One literary technique I don’t see often enough in poems is dialogue. While prose frequently incorporates conversations, quotations, or the inner thoughts of characters or speakers, poetry infrequently does.

There are many styles of poetry that even just a line of dialogue could help to set place/setting, time period/era, tone, characterization of the speaker or character, as well as the theme. Narrative and prose poems particularly work well for integrating dialogue, but no need to stop with these formats.

Sonnets could include dialogue or a quoted phrase or inner thoughts of the speaker, for example. Or, a line of spoken or internal thought could become the title of a haiku, tanka, or other style of poem that sets up the body of the poem’s theme or conflict. Or a famous quote could be used as an epigraph to launch into your topic’s theme.

Many types of poems could benefit from dialogue, from lyric poetry and ekphrastic work (such as a line from a song or quote from an online show or another art form) to formal styles, like villanelles (where a repeated question or thought could work wondrously). The sky’s the limit!

Try this prompt: For 3 days, write down three things that happen in your daily life or 3 things you observe about your day, such as an image or an overheard piece of conversation in passing. At the end of the 3 days, pick one of the observations from your list and write a first draft of a poem from this real-life impetus. If the poem veers off of “what actually happened” or if a new image arrives, wonderful and go with it!

"15+ Creative Methods for Outlining Your Novel"

Thrilled that my article was published today at WOW! Here are some awesome ways to do creative prewriting for your novel that could be great fun to explore.

15+ Creative Methods for Outlining Your Novel

By: Melanie Faith

As a writer, my longer fiction and nonfiction projects have been aided by prewriting. Outlining has numerous benefits that range from organizing initial ideas (which tend to lead to further ideas, like rabbits from a hat) so that they are not a jumble floating (and too-soon forgotten) in the brain to saving time because the story has a natural narrative arc rather than disconnected passages or entire chapters that veer off plot or point.

Just as writing your novel is a creative process, your outlining can be a creative and whimsical process. Feel free to dabble with a few outlining methods and to mix-and-match your prewriting styles.  

What could outlining your novel look like? Great news! There are oodles of formats for outlining. Outlines don’t have to be in the strict Roman-numeral format (unless you want them to be). An outline might be crafted in any of the following styles:

·        a hand-drawn map of your story’s setting(s).

·        a Pinterest or Facebook page or vision board you create of photographs and posts related to your protagonist or any other element of your narrative.

·        a collage (physical or digital) of images or dialogue.

·        a series of sketches or drawings for the first chapter. The sketches might be free-form, in storyboard form, or comics form, either hand-drawn or drawn using digital sketchpads/software.

·        an audio or video clip—or several—that mirror the rising action(s) or tone of various scenes.

·        a web of catch-phrases, dialogue, or verbal imagery related to your antagonist.

·        a chart with webpage links related to your conflicts and rising actions.

·        a color-coded chart of characters’ backstories.

·        a list in a bullet journal.

·        a free-write passage of dialogue between the protagonist and antagonist.

·        photos that represent the protagonist’s inner thoughts or conflicts.

Outlining is flexible and can include as much or as few details as you’d like, and you can add to the outline as new or different ideas occur.  It’s all a step in the right direction: seeing the big picture of your project.

More great news: you don’t have to plan every single element of a book before writing a single paragraph of the draft, although you could if you want to. Some of the best projects I’ve written (or read) began with enough planning for just a chapter or two at a time, if that. Sometimes, just a few short, scrawled sentence fragments about a character.

You can also outline after you’ve started some of your project, whether you’ve run into a snag or just want to plan for the next steps in your project.

A few more outlining ideas:

·        You could color code or date material on an outline to keep track of when and how your outline evolves.

·        You could outline on computer but also by hand (break out the highlighters, colored pens or pencils and markers, your favorite notebook, pieces of printer paper and stickers—whatever motivates you most).

·        Sometimes, my students have purchased dry-erase boards and erasable markers and put them around their office for ease of planning and adjusting initial ideas.

·        Other students have used giant sheets of brown-bag paper or butcher paper and permanent markers to chart their next narrative course.    

Outlines should be specific enough to encourage a pull towards your manuscript but open-ended and with enough wiggle room that it can be expanded, adjusted, or edited at any part of the prewriting or first-drafting process. It’s perfectly fine to have all or part of an initial outline and then veer away from the outline in your writing. Or to adjust your outline as you go.

Just because it’s written on the outline, don’t force yourself to adhere to your plans if it’s slow-going or if a better idea shows up. The latter happens to me all of the time, especially mid-novel; I just re-plan my next plans when it happens and see where the new ideas take me. In all of my first outlines for my current WIP, my protagonist was on his way cross-country to attend a writer’s colony—until I got a few chapters in as I drafted and it hit me that a storm would prevent his arrival. Take two: a little regrouping, a free-write, and a new list of phrases in my writer’s notebook, and away I went in the direction of the new plot. 

Nothing is set in stone, during or even after planning—and that should be encouraging.

Aim for making enough ground work to invigorate and flesh out your initial characterizations, settings, and plot, while remaining open to restructuring as you begin the writing process and as characters reveal more of their struggles and obstacles in the paths to reaching their goals.

View your prewriting as an exciting, ever-evolving map to where your novel likely might be headed, and enjoy the creativity of the prewriting and drafting processes as the pages of your story accumulate and ideas keep arriving.

Learn more via my online class, Outlining Your Novel with Ease, now taking sign-ups. Check out my fall/early winter online writing classes here.

✨On Developmental Editing: More of the Scoop at …But I Also Have a Day Job ✨

Photo Courtesy of Laura Chouette, unsplash.com

Wonder how a developmental edit works? The answer by super talented writer and fellow Daria aficionado Ian Rogers at …But I Also Have a Day Job. @IantheRoge 🙌

While you’re there, read his insightful interviews with inspiring writing advice from cool writers, such as Gina Troisi.

Also, check out TRAM, the awesome indie zine out of Toyama, Japan that Ian co-edits.

Also, get ready for his debut novel, MFA Thesis Novel, dropping in April 2022 at Vine Leaves Press @VineLeavesPress --it's fantastic and funny. I’m excited for readers and fellow writers to get their hands on this literary gem. 📘📚🖊

Photo Courtesy of Laura Chouette, unsplash.com

"3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other" 🖊📓📸

Thrilled that my craft article, “3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other,” was featured today through Women on Writing. [Article below.]

Also check out my July-August online Imagery Power: Photography for Writers class that starts Friday, July 16th. Sign-ups open for a limited time! I’d love to work with you and your creative friends. 🙌📸📕

“3 Ways Writing and the Visual Arts Inspire Each Other”

By Melanie Faith

            Over the years as a writing teacher, I’ve discovered that many of my talented writing students are also visual artists.  From fellow photographers to sculptors, painters, and collage artists, there’s something about the skills used to write vivid imagery and/or scenes that also translate well into other art forms, and vice versa.

            So, what can a writer learn from photography (or another visual art) that will enhance their prose or poetry projects?

·         Focusing on bite-sized portions create resonance.  When you write a scene, chapter, stanza, or paragraph, there’s a format you have in mind—after all, a single chapter or poem can’t last forever. Just as you can’t include everything into a single scene or chapter or poem, you can’t include everything in visual art. A visual artist focuses on parts of a scene for a landscape photograph or painting; it has to stop somewhere. As writers, we make decisions, especially in later drafts, about both what details are extraneous to the whole as well as details or images that must remain to create a unified whole that speaks to a reader’s/viewer’s own experience.

One of the many definitions for “resonance” at Dictionary.com, states: “The ability to evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions,” while Merriam-Webster.com defines the term as “a quality of richness or variety” and “a quality of evoking response.” Ultimately, in both writing and visual arts, this is exactly what we want: layers of meaning from the writer/artist that are interesting and hook the reader/viewer so much that the imagery presented stirs their own emotions just experiencing our art.

Made with my ‘90s Canon and Kodak Gold 200 film: “Curlicue L3.” 📸✨

That’s one of the great joys of reading, writing, and making art: the more specific and focused our own works are, the more others will click with the work and want to spend time with it. Creating bite-sized portions of art informs, entertains, and captures the human need to be understood. What could be better than that?

·         Layer it up: the more meaning the merrier! In an essay or poem or novel, no matter what the theme is, there’s more going on in the writing than just a sentence-or-two synopsis of what literally happens or what its main idea is. Reaching into the grab bag of literary analytical terms, there might be one or several concurrent elements that contribute to make a scene, chapter, poem, or visual arts piece seem so real-to-life, including but not limited to: symbolism, auditory or taste or visual imagery, synecdoche, metonymy, juxtaposition, simile, and/or metaphor, and more. Below the immediate level of what the work is “about” literally, the deeper, gooier, more subterranean meanings reside and represent where the creator does some of their best work.

Working subtly to show something deeper about human life beyond the immediately obvious—indeed, the word crafting is splendidly apt here—writers and artists work emblematic representations of ideas, emotions, and conflicts into their work to deepen and connect with reader/viewer experience. Real-life ain’t easy or simplistic, so our writing and art better not be either—there should be more-than-meets-the-eye occurring concurrently with the easier-to-spot initial image or dialogue.

As writers/artists, we shape and sculpt ideas so that they are both what they appear to be and also much more than they at first suggest. That kind of composing requires both literal and figurative decisions that make the utmost of each word, each line, each paragraph/stanza, each page, or each canvas, digital chip/pixel, and/or paint.

·         Both writers and visual artists actively compose reality. That is, we consider how parts of a whole interact with each other, we leave in necessary imagery and crop out unnecessary or cluttering details, we omit and/or change the pace of reality by slowing down/zeroing in focus on some elements so that others fade into the background, and more.

The element of careful and mindful composition is somewhat subconscious (at first draft, before editing, anyway), and it’s also where a lot of the plain fun of being a writer or artist occurs in the conscious stages of making.

Some subjects, themes, and ideas we might be innately drawn to, such as trains, but the majority of our work revolves around recurring ideas or symbols from an array of life experiences that seem to recur, both in our lives and later in our work—to take the train example further: the artist’s father might have been a 9-5 commuter for many years and so the recurrence of trains in the artist’s work may suggest a whole host of ideas from family responsibility related to jobs, feelings of missing a parental figure, to what it means to live in the suburbs but work in a city, and more.

Writing and the visual arts integrate many decisions at both the conscious and subconscious level of creation: exciting and complex composition that continues to inspire, mystify, challenge, and motivate our work from the first experiments in each medium through all of the works we produce and share.      

Clearly, writing and the visual arts are meaningful, rich explorations into self-discovery and also important genres for commenting on and sharing ideas about the complexity of human experience.  One art form—writing—can inform and inspire growth in visual arts as we reach to become better self-expressing writers and insightful communicators to a wider audience.