A serene image to get your week started. Where do these stairs lead? Who is walking up these stairs and what do they hope to find? What stories await?
Let me know how this image inspires you this week!
Author Archives: storytellergirlgrace
Homophones: Some Commonly Misused Words
Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. English is full of these little confusing gems, which can cause people a lot of difficulty when it comes to the written word. Spell check likely won’t catch homophones, because the word you’ve used is spelled correctly, but is just the wrong word for the sentence. Here are a few homophones that often cause a lot of confusion:
Principle/Principal
Principle: an accepted code of rules, like the principles of mathematics, or a person who has strong moral principles.
Principal: first and foremost, or highest in rank, like the principal of a school.
Peek/Peak/Pique
Peek: to take a quick look, like peeking around the corner.
Peak: a summit or the top, like a mountain peak.
Pique: to provoke an emotion or reaction, like to pique his curiosity. Continue reading
Inspiration for the Week: Writing Quote #MondayMotivation
Here’s a quote to inspire you this week, for your writing and all your other endeavors:
Let me know how this quote inspires you this week!
Creating Fantasy Creatures: It’s Okay to be Unoriginal
Everybody loves Hobbits and Thestrals and Wookies.
A Thestral from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
What do these creatures all have in common? They are unique to their particular stories or worlds (as in Middle-Earth, the Harry Potter series, and Star Wars, respectively). It’s fun to read about (or watch) new creatures in fantasy stories, and it’s just as fun to create them. Inventing the name for your new creature, what the adults look like versus what the babies look like, culture and language, what they eat, where they live. All of these are important world-building tasks, especially if you’re inventing a new species from scratch. We all want to be original and have our fantastical races stand out in the fantasy-creatures crowd.
But I’d like to make the argument that it’s okay to be unoriginal – at least to start with. Thousands of years of human culture has given us hundreds of amazing and creative creatures in mythology and folktales from around the world. Continue reading
Inspiration for the Week: Music to Write By – Defying Gravity #MondayMotivation
In 2016, this song from the musical Wicked was sort of my personal theme song for the year. Every time I listened to it, this song helped motivate me to dream bigger and reach for something greater. May it do the same for you!
Let me know how this music inspires you this week!
