Word by Word

Practical insights for writers from Jessica P Morrell

Gathering–words, that is

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Apr• 11•25

I just wanted to drop in and remind, nag, and exhort writers to gather words wherever you find them. I woke too early so lounged in bed reading news stories on my iPad. And since I was reading online, a New York Times headline was set amid a film of giant birds gliding and cavorting across a pale gray sky.

Titled “An Expedition, for Art and Nature;” the subtitle-slash-logline is: Each spring, hundreds of thousands of cranes converge in Nebraska. The phenomenon draws in artists, conservationists, and curious friends alike.

Next this luminous opening paragraph appeared followed by a background information: They look like peppercorns ground into the sky and then like black silk or a stain spreading overhead.

Each spring, for close to a million years, hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes converge on the Platte River Valley in central Nebraska. For roughly a month, the birds rest and refuel on their annual path from the southern United States and Mexico, where they winter, to the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, where they breed. Jane Goodall, who tried to make the trip every year to witness the phenomenon, has called it “without a doubt one of the most spectacular events in the natural world.”

Naturally I was hooked.

Birds compared to peppercorns–hats off.

The story goes on to follow a group of friends led by Sheila Berger, a piped piper of sorts who gathered witnesses to the wonder of the giant cranes taking flight. As the story wraps amid a generous photo montage, we learn that in the previous week 736,000 cranes had been counted–the highest number ever. This evening it felt like there must have been at least as many. 

“It’s so meditative,” whispered Rosanne Cash, whom Berger met over 20 years ago through their mutual friend “M.A.S.H.” star Mary Kay Place. “It looks like an etching.” Ms. Cash’s breath was visible in the dark. “If somebody else had said to me, ‘Hey, come to Nebraska to see some cranes–it’s pretty hard to get to and it’s going to be freezing cold,’ I’d say, ‘Nah.’ But because it was Sheila, I didn’t think twice, and then of course it turns out to be so better than you ever dreamed of.”

The world is so, so noisy, distracting, and distressing these days. But you know that.

Some days it feels like small habits and noticing wonder are all that keep me sane. And words ground me, help me describe these strange times and my own joys.

Keep gathering, keep dreaming, have heart

How Are You Showing Time Passing in Your Stories?

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Apr• 10•25

Pale skies with an overlay of chalk here this morning that gave way to fine, spring day. Of course, rain is arriving later, but there’s time for work, a walk, and weeding.

I turned on my TV earlier as I exercised, and HBO was playing a Game of Thrones episode. It’s the epic fantasy based on the novels of George R.R. Martin. It’s season 7 of the 8-season series and the camera focused a closeup shot on Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion Lannister, a crucial player in the sweeping drama.

Earlier in the series Tyrion had taken part in The Battle of Blackwater, a major battle to defend Westeros from invaders. He was injured by a sword slashing his face. In the novels, Tyrian, a dwarf, is ugly, misshapen and brutish while Dinklage is attractive. And in the novels, his face is seriously maimed in the battle including losing part of his nose.

The TV series downplays his injury likely since it would have required CGI, but his face is never the same after the battle.  And no doubt the showrunners knew a television audience would have no stomach from such gruesomeness–though the series offered up gruesomeness and senseless cruelty and diabolical cunning and rat tortures, and slavering dogs episode after episode. And that’s without dragonfire.

Because in Georgie R.R. Martin’s storytelling no one is safe. And because fictional people suffer. A lot. 

The closeup in season reveals how the wound has been healing—in other words, it’s showing the passage of time. I’ve advised how writers should take great care with wounding major characters and how the scenes that follow the injuries, surgeries, heart attacks should reveal healing or grievous damage.

How are you showing the passage of hours, days and seasons? Your characters growing or diminishing? Becoming hardened or hopeful? This can be especially tricky when your story covers years or generations as children become teenagers, then adults. When adults become elderly and governments fail, worlds crumble.

All fiction requires fallout and repercussions. Aging and declining. Birth and revival. Plan for downstream effects.

You can find more information on pacing and using time passing in my book Between the Lines: Master the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing.

Keep writing. Keep dreaming. Have heart.

Resist.

 

April

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Apr• 07•25

Wonder is a liberation practice

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Mar• 27•25

It can feel  foolish to pause to marvel

at the stars when the world is burning.

or to find the world beautiful when

you’ve known it to betray you.

But wonder is a liberation practice. A

reminder that we contain more than

tragedy. Beauty is our origin and our

anchor.

~Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley 

Richard Bausch on finding out your base matter

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Mar• 23•25

You do not have to be particularly smart, or fast, or even very widely and deeply knowledgeable in any way the world considers ‘useful.’ You need only to be willing, and pitted, and stubborn enough to find out the base matter on which you are building your story. Finding out what you need  to know specifically to convince a reader, you learn what your story requires; you may even discover what your story is truly about. And of course the ILLUSION you create in working this magic is that you know everything. It all about that illusion, and I say often, only half joking, that one really ends up writing fiction because one i a ‘natural born liar.’ Try to ingest everything that’s ever been written that’s worth remembering, and write out of that. And as you mature and grow, then, you find that you are no longer quite imitating, finally, but vying. Challenging. Trying to be as worthy of the respect of the living and the dead, by being as faithful to and respectful of this blessed and beautiful task as they all were and are, all the good men and women who came before us, and are with us who have made and making a path through the terrifying silence, for all of us to take. Trust that. ~ Richard Bausch

Yes. Disturb.

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Mar• 20•25

The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians–because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize  injustice and to speak out loudly against it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people….

So let us look for beauty and grace,  for  love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy, affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, “Yes, I disturb the universe!”   ~ Madeleine L’Engle

 

Ursula speaks:

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Mar• 06•25

Modernist manuals on writing often conflate every story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.

Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing. ~ Ursula K LeGuin

MARCH

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Mar• 02•25

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Feb• 20•25

Nurtured by Books: Laurie King

Written By: Jessica Morrell - Feb• 16•25

We had snow in western Oregon last week and it’s still melting around here. It was utterly lovely and created such a hushed, soft world. And I enjoy few things more than watching heavy snow tumble from the sky. Talk about a magic show.

I want to call your attention to a fascinating autobiography piece written by Laurie King, the creator of the  rollicking, and well-researched Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. Holmes is a retired detective and beekeeper in Sussex Downs when readers first meet him in The Beekeepers Apprentice. It’s the first year of the Great War and Holmes recognizes a kindred spirit and a great intellect in the newly-orphaned Mary. She’s a mere fifteen in the introductory adventure and mystery, and after reading this piece I’m aware of how much of herself King endowed Mary with. And, as I’ve always known,  how bookworms, as we used to be called, are my kindred spirits.

Years ago I studied the first six or seven books in the series and learned so much about how to create living people on the page along with other techniques. And have since passed on this knowledge to my clients and students over the years. Here she talks about her childhood and states, “I am a writer because I love and have been nurtured by books.” I paused at that phrase ‘nurtured by books’ because it describes my heartfelt appreciation for all that books have given me. I’m sure you feel the same.

And her description of the Santa Cruz Public Library reminds me of the atmosphere in the Carnegie library in my home town in northern Wisconsin. She writes, “The Santa Cruz Public library was a tall, dark-shingled Aladdin’s cave of riches which I remember draped with vines though I  suspect later imagination might have provided that decoration.” I paused on that sentence because I recall ivy vines on the red brick building of my childhood. I might call my cousin to verify.  But I digress.

She goes on to write about the pleasures of “looking up during a signing and seeing myself in the back row.  The book, which begins when the heroine is fifteen years old, yet easily capable of meeting the great Sherlock Holmes as an equal, is the story I wished I’d had when I was twelve or fourteen. Fantasy, affirmation, a hint of romance, a dash of adventure: along with those shy girls in the back row, I am Mary Russell. Or, I was at that age in my mind.

In truth, I was socially inept, physically awkward, excruciatingly shy, and always an outsider.”

I cannot recommend this revealing and delightful  autobiography enough. And I’ll bet you  just might relate to this sentence, “It’s extraordinary in life how often ideas or  teacher reach out and grab a person.” It happened to me too. But do read this piece in its entirety which  includes how she came to writing.

In summary: study author’s techniques, read their biographies, autobiographies, and articles about writing, attend writer’s conferences where you can meet them, or join their online classes. In the case of King, there are a number of You Tube videos where she teaches storytelling. She will astound you.

Be well. Fight for the truth. And have heart.