How to Begin Your Story.  How Do you have a good or a bad opening for your story? How can you tell? Here’s an article on the Institute for Writers blog that addresses this topic. “A fantastic story can be hindered by a bad opening,” starts the article off. Then we are given three pointers: (1) Something Happening – Strong openings are about thrusting us into a specific moment of the story and getting the thing moving. (2) A Surprise – A really strong opening almost always contains a surprise. (3) An Interesting Voice – Your writing should sound like your writing and no one else’s. Click on the link above to read more about beginnings of stories. 

And here’s another great piece from another Institute for Writers’ blog. This one offers “Five Common Character Motivations” for young readers. They list five: (1) Survival, (2) Peer Pressure, (3) Curiosity, (4) Guilt, and (5) Fear.  So after reading these, let’s get back to work on our writing.

I’ve been busy working on poetry and some picture book manuscripts. I also just signed up for a poetry workshop. Will let you know how that goes.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever. – Will Self