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About Kim Firmston
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Blog postIn case you haven't noticed. I'm kind of dreadful at keeping up with blog writing. I've never been a journaler or had a diary. I live through my characters - who lately it turns out, have zero in the way of plot armour at the rate they're being killed off in this first draft! Sorry to anyone overly sensitive about character deaths. It's space. Space is harsh. Anyway! Back to the topic at hand. One of the reasons I've been so dreadful about checking in and uploading handy writing tips and less ha
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Blog postBam! There's a woman standing in the rain, mud all around her ankles, and she's wearing a wedding dress.
The reader is left asking - what the heck happened?
Stupid. Maybe I am stupid. Stupid for doing this.
The opening to my book, Stupid. It is meant to make the reader wonder what the speaker is about to do.
Hooks, they make the reader - in a very short amount of time - wonder, what is happening or want to know more. They grab attention and hook the reader in, just like -
Blog postOne other thing I see a bunch when working with young or newish writers is issues with dialogue punctuation and formatting - so I thought I would give a quick overview of the how to's of dialogue.
PUNCTUATION
Periods
"He stole my hat," Laura said.
Notice how the period turns into a comma.
Question marks and exclamation marks
"He stole my hat?" Laura asked.
"He stole my hat!" Laura shrieked.
Notice how th -
Blog postHi writing fans!
I've been reading a lot of student written stuff lately as well as comics (I'm so addicted to comics it's getting expensive) and I've been thinking a lot about dialogue tags. You know the part where you write She said. John screamed. Mary huffed like a kettle about to shriek.
Yeah, those.
They can get pretty out of hand with all the metaphor and similes that sometimes the tags can take away from the writing. But I get it. Writing He said over and over aga -
Blog postDialogue is something I've always been told is my strength. I think that's because I started my writing life with scripts. My first big success was having my play produced when I was seventeen - so I've been focused on moving plot forward using dialogue for quite a while.
The thing that new writers often don't understand about dialogue is that it's not really how people talk. It's how we would like them to talk (especially in those romantic or heartfelt scenes). Real life dialogue is full -
Blog postSo I was listening to an interview with a, now dead, Brazilian writer, who is a big deal in the Magical Realism genre. I would tell you his name, but I'm bad with names and have forgotten it. Sorry. Anyway, he was describing his mother and the trials she went through by saying she was a "strong woman" and it struck me that when men are described as strong, this refers to their physical strength, but when women are described as strong, it describes their spirit. It's interesting, how sp
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Blog postI'm finally taking some downtime to edit some work of a budding new author and write something of my own. I'm thinking of how to write theme music into my work on the page. I don't know if this is possible, but, you get no where without trying and I don't believe anything is impossible.
Of course last month was hugely inspiring as I worked with two sets of kids at WordsWorth Creative Youth Residency - teaching my Word Magic course. It was great! Those kids always challenge me to think in n -
Blog postI've been seeing a lot of these "Write for our Website" things this week. When I check them out there is no mention anywhere on their site about what - or if - they pay. I am very leery when anyone looking for writers isn't upfront about payment. Writers need to get paid. Exposure isn't enough. The latest one is an online magazine called Butch Please. It has this statement hidden in the Support Butch section, "At present, our writers are volunteering their time and talent for free
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Blog postA couple of months ago the youth writing and creative program I direct (and founded with my daughter), Reality Is Optional, teamed up with the creative team at Rocket House to write a story celebrating the 30th anniversary of Calgary's International Children's Festival. It was to be tweeted out one line at a time over the course of six weeks. Eight kids from the club gathered their creative forces and worked together to write the story in just under three hours. Through their words they got peop
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Blog postHello loyal fans! I have not fallen off the Earth. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've posted anything here, but there's been some really great reasons for that. One of them is that I've been rebuilding the Reality Is Optional Creative Kids' Website (RIO). We now have art galleries. It takes a really long time to upload as much art as the kids produce. However, it's totally worth it. Check out what is up so far (www.realityisoptional.com). More is coming - so keep heading back.
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