Author: Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen is a pioneering XR Innovator and WordPress leader, tech educator, keynote speaker, and producer bridging virtual reality and digital innovation. Co-founder of Educators in VR, founding WordPress community member, and passionate advocate for emerging technologies and human rights. Expert in immersive education, VR/XR event production, UX, and digital transformation.

A Kaleidoscope Market

Cardamon, cumin, cinnamon, and sumac wafted, mingling with unfiltered cigarettes, rotting garbage, and urine, and the unmistakable stench of oily, perfumed bodies pushing past in search of their next meal or treasure. My foot shifted as it slid across a rounded stone in the narrow corridor, made wet by the dripping ice under the raw fish on display in one stall. Next to it, the source of the sweet scents, a ground spices carved into patterns and textures, their earthy orders turning heads to admire the edible artwork. Squeals screeched from another, brightly banded birds in gold cages matching the scarves next door of gold, blue, and red fluttering in the breeze of those hurrying by. Cut flowers in white buckets offered a momentary respite from the kaleidoscope of smells, sights, and sounds. A honking bray parted the crowds as I paused, a heavily laden mule clomping its way through a well-worn and practiced path on autopilot, unaccompanied Its baskets swayed back and forth as people inhaled to back away, then swelled together behind it, a never-ending stream of humanity snaking its way through the dark.

Location: Egyptian Spice Market, Istanbul, Turkey

Prompt: Describe a Place by Smell

The prompt focused on an excerpt from the book Weep No More by Mary Higgins Clark where she described a place by its smell. You didn’t have to know where it was but you knew its location based upon the signature scents.

The prompt is to describe a place using smell as the main reference without naming the place.

In our case, the group attempted to guess where the location was based upon that description.

Writing Fiction Tips For May 2015

From time to time we may share links to writing tips we’ve found on the web to help us improve our writing. The majority of these are focused on fiction because our workshop motto is everything we write is fiction, whether or not it is. 😀

Five Essential Tips for Anyone Trying to Write A Book – Forbes: Brett Arends offers excellent tips that may seem simple but are really the things that get in our way and hold us back. These include practice writing, finding a writing space and time, planning your book, and so on. He also highlights how a writing group helped him, which is what we are here for! Come join us.

Writing tips by Paul Coelho: Hard to argue with a master and award-winning author. A favorite:

I write the book that wants to be written. Behind the first sentence is a threat that takes you to the last.

10 Writing Tips from Legendary Writing Teacher William Zinsser, May He Rest in Peace – Open Culture: The world of writing is a little smaller with the recent loss of William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, a staple of how to write since 1976. The article paying tribute to him selects some of the best writing tips he’s offered.

“A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.”

12 Writing Tips I’ve Learned After 20 Books and 3,000 Articles Over 20 Years – Inc.com: Inc’s Andrew Griffiths offers us some great tips that are not just about writing from a writer’s perspective, which they are, but also from an avid book reader. There is something to be said about good advice from those who love books such as:

I had the great pleasure of seeing Seth Godin in Sydney recently and he said something that really resonated with me: “If you are just writing to get ‘shares’ or ‘likes,’ you are writing too safe and too conservatively. If we really want to connect and engage our community, we have to be prepared to write content that is not popular, but it needs to be written.”

20 Writing Tips from Fiction Authors – iUniverse: This is a collection of quotes from modern writers, for the most part, on writing. There are some great ones in this collection including:

“The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying ‘Faire et se taire’ (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as ‘Shut up and get on with it.’”
Helen Simpson

Writing tips from the CIA’s ruthless style manual – Quartz: Finding out that Struck and White were CIA sources – well, their writing styles were sourced by the US government in their style guide for writing “Intelligence Publications” – was fascinating, but the tips and advice in this collection of their tips celebrates their “crisp and pungent” language “devoid of jargon,” something that I’m not sure the US Government, or any government, practices much any more. Still a good set of tips for the rest of us to practice.

5 Writing Tips: Jane Smiley – Publishers Weekly: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Jane Smiley shared a few fantastic tips including:

Exhaust your own curiosity about your project before showing it to someone else. Let your own ideas play out without getting input from others, then, after you show them your work, use their responses as input to push you forward. It may take you several drafts and a long time to come to the end of your ability to tackle a given subject, and when you do, you might be satisfied or dissatisfied with your product. If you are dissatisfied, the input of others will give you ideas for how to shape your novel further. If you are satisfied, the input of others will let you know if your novel is readable and accessible.

Prompt: From Two Points-of-View

The prompt was based upon a fictional perspective between the thoughts of a dog and a cat, telling the same story from two points of view. Other suggestions were with a doctor and patient, husband and wife, police and prisoner, and mother and child.

The children’s book, I Am the Dog, I Am the Cat by Donald Hall is a good example of a story told by alternating points of view. A famous alternating point of view is Gary Larson’s famous Farside comic strip featuring what the human says and what the dog hears.

Gary Larson comic strip: What the human says and what the dog hears.

The prompt is to tell a story from two opposite points of view.

Prompt: Words Have Texture

The prompt is based upon “Hiatus,” a poem by David Feela published in LabLetter in April 2015.

A pot of tea steeping
on the marble sill, its steam
clouding the window.

Sunrise on the counter
like the yolk of a broken egg,
oh happy disaster of morning…

Write a descriptive poem or short prose. Edit it to focus writing with texture adjectives and verbs. Choose words that are visual, painting a textural picture such as marble sill not just window sill, steam clouding the window not just steam rising, sunrise on counter not light, etc.

The Inciting Event

The Monday morning workshop recently focused on scriptwriting, specifically tracing inciting events and the patterns of storytelling for television, film, and even books.

An inciting event in a plot is the shift forward in a story, the twist, hook, and plot points of the story.

K.M. Weiland, author of the book, “Structuring Your Novel,” helps us understand the confusion in and around an inciting event in a story in “Your Book’s Inciting Event: It’s Not What You Think It Is” on Helping Writers Become Authors.

What the heck is the Inciting Event? That’s a question just about any writer can answer. The trouble is that sometimes we all have a different answer.

Is the Inciting Event the first thing that happens in the story?

Is it the moment that kicks off the plot and the conflict?

Is it the First Plot Point at the end of the First Act?

Is it something in between?

Is it something that happens before the story ever starts?

The chief trouble with identifying the Inciting Event is that the term is used rather wildly to apply to just about any of the above. One writer calls the Hook the Inciting Event, another calls it the First Plot Point. Argh! No wonder we’re all so confused.

Weiland demonstrates three examples.

  • The Hook: The opening moment in your opening scene, the first moment something happens that keeps the reader reading or “hooked.”
  • The First Plot Point: The thing that happens at the end of the first act that changes the course of the story. She calls it “where your story really begins…the moment that fully engages your character in the conflict. He couldn’t walk away now, even if he really wanted to.”
  • First Act Turning Point: This is the moment that is the “call to” adventure or action, the no-turning-back point, the lit-match moment. She explained that most writer’s don’t include nor think of the turning point in the first act as the inciting incident, but it is. It is the moment that can be pointed to throughout the rest of the story, the moment when everything was shaken up and decisions needed to be made and action inspired. This is the inciting event.

Weiland explained that the first act turning point, or inciting event, should be placed at the 12% mark or 1/8th the way into the story. The first eighth of the story is character development, the time the audience needs to connect with the main characters, the time, and the place, the set up. (more…)

Lend an Ear 2015

The annual Lend an Ear, Come and Hear event sponsored and produced by Writers in the Grove is set for July 11, 2015, Saturday from 11am to 1pm at Plum Hill Winery in Gaston, Oregon. Mark your calendars!

July 11, 2015
Saturday 11am-1pm
Plum Hill Vineyards
6505 SW Old Highway 47
Gaston OR 97119

The event is free and open to the public.

If you would like to participate as a reading writer, please see the instructions and submission application on Lend an Ear Come and Hear Submission Guidelines and forms. Submissions must be able to be read out loud lasting no more than 4 minutes.