Commonplace Thoughts: The Hero and the Crown

By Robin McKinley, 1984 (Spoilers Alert) How I Met the Book The Hero and the Crown was recommended to me by Google Analytics telling me about the top dragons in books. I have a bit of a love for all things lizardy, winged, and potentially fire breathing, so I had been reading up on some…

A Poetry Challenge

I wrote a poem the other day about Covid. What I typically do with my poetry is find a big topic to talk about, and then use a metaphor of something trivial and mundane, so I did the same thing here. The problem is that Covid is such an emotionally rich topic, that the poem…

Writing Stage

I’ve noticed a trend towards writing that seems to develop through childhood and into adulthood. We start out writing simple sentences, “she ran” or “she pet the cat” and then we move on to something more advanced, and it seems to be the same with story crafting too. Fanfiction is a good jumping off point….

Literary Device: The Plot

While many of us were first taught that plot is a mountain, with an introduction, a rising action, a climax, and a falling action, oftentimes that’s not the case. Take a look at some of our recent favorite movies and you’ll see what I mean. If we examine Iron Man, he first begins at a…

Double Standards

If you’ve ever been curious what high school was preparing us for, or better yet, what all of our education was preparing us for, it wasn’t doing quadratic equations to discover the best way to make a 90 degree angle for building houses. Instead, it was preparing us to interact with other people. The sad…

Leaking into Writing

One thing I have noticed is that what we do as other hobbies tends to permiate the others. For instance, I notice that my characters are less likely to be interested in competitive sports, and I am less likely to make a world with huge sports arenas or vast skii resorts. I also know that…

Analyze This: “Men” by Maya Angelou

When I was young, I used toWatch behind the curtainsAs men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.Young men sharp as mustard.See them. Men are alwaysGoing somewhere.They knew I was there. FifteenYears old and starving for them.Under my window, they would pauses,Their shoulders high like theBreasts of a young girl,Jacket tails slapping…

Literary Device: Turn

I’ve used the word ‘turn’ referring to poetry parts a few times and I think it’s about time I go into detail about what that really is. A turn in poetry is the part of a poem, if included, that draws the reader’s perception in a completely different direction from the original direction of the…

Langston Hughes

This particular writer is one that gets a lot of popularity, so I’m going to let other experts walk you through his life. I already talked a little bit about what I know regarding how he had to frame his poetry to be accepted, so I’d like to share this article which goes into more…

Plot in Poetry

A problem I’ve noticed creeps up a lot is the idea that poetry doesn’t really have a plot. This isn’t the case. Poetry can have a plot just like a novel can, it can have a rising action, a climax, a falling action, or just a climax and a falling action, or just a rising…