The power of fiction, the beauty of words, and the God who made us to wield them for His glory.

Wordpainting – Creating the Mood

As an Australian, travelling in Europe is awe-inspiring.  Walking into places like Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame, breathing in their history, singing in services that have been taking place in these building since before my own country was fully charted on the world map… It is a deeply visceral experience that I struggle to put into words. In Davis Bunn’s latest release, The Fragment, the main character, Muriel Ross, is offered the opportunity of a lifetime when she is asked to accompany a long-time family friend to Paris in the early 1920s.  Her hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, seems ‘trapped in

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20 February 2016

Word Painting – The Weight of Sorrow

Sorrow can be a crippling emotion.  One of the things I love about good fiction is that it allows us to experience and learn how to process heavy emotions from a ‘safe’ vantage point – one that involves us emotionally without involving us physically.  It can also be just plain cathartic. The Feathered Bone is all that and more.  I will have a full review up in the next day or so, but I wanted to share one description that elicited a physical response when I read it. With each step my chest caves deeper against my heart. What a

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8 February 2016

Something To Which I Aspire…

Have you ever wondered how an author would describe you if you were a character in a book?  I’m not sure it would be entirely flattering in my case, but today I found a description I dearly wish was true of me: The woman wore serenity like a perfume… – Alarmingly Charming from ‘Austen in Austin’ Having five children aged ten and under may not be the optimal conditions for exhibiting this character trait, but it brings to mind this well-known prayer: If this was my daily prayer, perhaps even the mother of five children aged ten and under could

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20 January 2016

Smile!

Smiles can be so expressive, can’t they?  When we interact with someone, reading their smile plays a significant role in the impression we form of them and the way we interpret what they are saying. For the writer, there are any number of adjectives that can be applied to smiles: wry, embarrassed, half-hearted, coy, smug, gloating.  There are also several synonyms for smile, each of which will create a slightly different impression in the reader: grin, beam, leer, smirk.  Using the right word or combination of words is important if you’re going to convey the right image and tone to

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21 December 2015

Memorable Characters

I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty boring when an author introduces a character by simply describing what they look like (or by relating their life’s story).  But I love it when an author captures the essence of a character in two or three well-written sentences. Like this description I just read today: “The mayor’s wife mirrored his girth and utterly lacked Norvin’s good humour.  She was both rotund and big-boned and greeted the world with the sharp edge of her tongue.”                              

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25 November 2015