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

Top Ten Tuesday – Characters Who Are Great Leaders

Happy Tuesday everyone! This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from the girls at The Broke and the Bookish is an interesting one: Characters Who Would Make Great Leaders. I don’t know about you, but there are certain types of people or roles that naturally come to mind with the word ‘leader’. I think of presidents and prime ministers, I get a movie reel of Ronie Kendig‘s characters running across my mind’s eye. (I’ll just pause and let you enjoy that for a moment 😉 )

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7 November 2017

Top Ten Tuesday – Unique Settings I’ve Visited Through Books

Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! This week the topic at The Broke and the Bookish is unique. Literally! Officially listed as ‘Top Ten of the Most Unique Books I’ve Read’, I’ve decided to put a slightly different slant on the topic and share my ‘Top Ten Unique Settings I’ve Visited Through Books’.

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11 April 2017

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

Word painting

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with adjectives, but here’s a good one to add to your vocabulary: ignominious (adj) – deserving or causing public disgrace or shame It even sounds like you’re looking down your nose at something when you say it.  Go on, say it out loud.  Ig-no-MIN-i-ous. I particularly like it coupled with conclusion or ending. A humiliating defeat has a very different emotional connotation to ignominious conclusion.   There’s something of the stiff upper lip about the latter that is almost the complete opposite of the former, don’t you think? Perhaps that’s why this sentence

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11 December 2015

Reading Between the Lines

I don’t know about you, but I love it when authors manage to say things without actually saying them.  Subtlety in writing is an artform that fewer and fewer authors seem to grasp, but when I read this recently I had to laugh: She climbed the stairs to the second level, where cool marble floors gleamed and the scents of wax and the freesias in their Chinese vase on the hall table greeted her in a silent benediction.  There was much to be said for silence.  Perhaps Mama had not yet returned from paying her afternoon calls. Lady of Devices

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1 December 2015