Prose is usually painting with words, is it not? Particularly anything poetic, we’d suppose. Still, writing any prose is more similar to putting a painting together than one might realize at first glance. Paints or words, it takes an artist to sculpt it into a shape worth enjoying. Whether painting or writing, sketch your ‘story’…
Author: Kerri Bennett Williamson
Character Driven Stories
If you find fiction devoid of action, suspense, mystery, horror, comedy or even history, boring; a much more character driven story might not be your complete cup of tea. Still, does not all fiction need realistic or relatable characters that the reader will care about, to succeed? To me, characters are key. Character driven is…
Jane Austen on the Novel and Novelist
In Northanger Abbey (chapter five), Jane Austen shared her thoughts on novelists who disparage other novelists, and how writing novels draw on many talents to achieve, and are just as worthy as periodicals, news, history and etcetera: “… I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their…
Toggle Writing Method
About a year ago when one of my sons challenged me to try NaNoWriMo for the first time, I confess I was not initially thrilled to accept that ‘write a novel in a month’ gauntlet as thrown down. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do a rough draft of a new novel in…
Fathers, Mothers, Babies: it’s about Family
Babies have been on my mind a bundle lately. I see them everywhere and smile every single time I see one. I love to smile right at them. To get one of their sweet little smiles in return is a big bonus. I love to catch their eye, to make a happy connection. I like…
How I Spent My Grandsons’ Summer Vacation
As a kid, I used to lament more or less that every September back at school I didn’t get to write a story about having gone to Disneyland in the summertime. Everyone I knew went to Disneyland for their summer vacations. Except me. Well, almost everyone. But, not my family and me. No, instead, I…
In Loving Memory
Dear Darlin’ Tamara Grace, You will be much more dearly and deeply missed by many more than you might have imagined. I hope you absolutely and profoundly know that now. You were my favorite cousin. Weren’t you everyone’s favorite? And everyone was your favorite. You loved everyone. You saw even the least goodness. You were…
Got Grapes?
In our Seattle East-side eastward home, I had open shelves in front of the window above the kitchen sink, full of a blue glass collection: bottles and goblets mostly, in turquoise and cobalt blues. It was blue beautiful when the rarely-there sun shone in that window from our back secluded acreage yard. Almost like stained…
One Stunning Portrait of a Lady
Years ago, I first saw this beautiful painting on a book-cover. It was another ‘Wuthering Heights’. I’ve seen it on a number of paperback novel covers since. I’ve long been captivated by this image and after its first discovery, had to know who the lady was, and perhaps more particularly, who painted it. With more…
Composite Characters, Traits and Types
How many times has somebody asked me such as, ‘Is that character actually me?’ or ‘Is that her?’, ‘Did you base that guy on him?’, ‘Did you have an evil stepmother in growing up?’, ‘Were you an orphan or adopted?’ or ‘Is your mother-in-law the sweet one, or the horrid one?’ and any number of…
Kerri Bennett Williamson 