Use of Commas

When I was young, I had the habit of writing something and then grabbing a handfull of commas and throwing them in. I'm still not a master of punctuation, but I am getting better at it. Here are a few rules to mesmerize:

1.) Remeber those co-ordinating conjunctions? (and, but are the most commonly used)I remember them by dressing them up in outfits and standing them at intersections (I'm a visual learner). Well, put a comma after them when they are directing two independant clauses.

2.) A comma can be used to set off a clause of a phrase that simply adds information.

Example:
The girl, red hat strategically placed on her head, rode her horse down the road.

It sure beats: The girl gode her horse down the road.

3.) Another method of comma use that's fun is when you want to mess with people's heads.   Everybody has used;  When, After, Before, Because, If, Although...in the second part of a sentence marked by a comma:

Example: The rescue crew launched their boats, after the monstrous waves calmed down.

Reversing this for effect.

Example: After the monstrous waves clamed down, the rescue crew launched their boats.

Use it at the begining or end of a paragraph, but don't use it too often or you'll just irritate people.

4.) This is a good one. It lets you take your character somewhere quickly. In this commas are used in a series.

Example:

John ran down the hill, onto the dock, and dove into the water in an clumsy attempt to drown himself.

By using commas in a series you can really move things along.

5.) The last one I'm going to mention is helpful in creating a disjointing feeling:

Sometimes people write: The calm and placid lake reflected a perfect image of the boat.

Commas inserted to ser off a phrase out of its natural order.

Example: The lake, calm and placid, reflected a perfect image of the boat.

I like the second one, it just feels artsy.

So, I hope you find the following rules helpful.

Plot v. History

I'm onto chapter two in my Elizabethan murder mystery, and I'm very excited about it. There was a while when I was doing research on everything Elizabethan that I was nearly overwhelmed by the detail, but then I had to remind myself of Diana Norman's book "The Mistress of the Art of Death." If there is an example of someone being able to weave a fictional character into the fabric of history, it's that. The secret, I am learning, is not to let the detail of history rise up and overwhelm the plot. The plot is centre stage.  Well, back to writing. Chapter Two will take place at St. Paul's Cathedral, known during Elizabethan times, as Paul's Walk.  It is there that Miao (my albino, female, Chinese heroine) will meet with her mysterious benefactor and discuss the murder of chapter one. The one problem with this is that everybody there knows everybody by the clothes they were wearing.  I'm thinking Miao is going to show up in something silk and purple, which is definitely a no-no, unless you are royalty, which of course, she it.

Harry Potter (the magic of)

My first encounter with Harry Potter was when I was substitute teaching. At the end of the day the teacher was reading to the class: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I've never seen kids more enraptured or a book so quirky. I enjoyed both. This led me to the question: why?

As a species we love order, we love to make sense of things and when literature, or art, or anything creative  accomplishes this, we call it divine. Was J.K. Rowling touched by the Gods? Maybe, and I'm happy it happened in my lifetime. Just as Dickens was able to play the lyre of our hearts, so to did Rowling.

But what is it that entranced us so?  Was it the story of an orphan boy? That's been done, many times before. Was it the battle between good and evil? Or of love and sacrifice? Done, many times over.

You've heard of Quantum mechanics? Well, I don't know much about it, but what I do know is that you can't observe it, because the moment you do, you effect its behaviour.  The feeling inspired by the Harry Potter series is like that, you can't explain it. It was, is, and will continue to be magnificent.

It created within me the desire to write something in that milieu, not because I wanted to write like Rowling, or create a world like she did, but because I wanted to extend that 'quirky', enjoyable experience I had when I read her books. So I wrote the 'Colin' series: Colin and the Rise of The House of Horwood, Colin and the Little Black Box and (I've just finished it: and will release it on Smashwords.com) Colin and The Revenant.

I would be so brave as to say that Rowling has affected a generation of readers and writers (I should say generations, because 'The boy who lived' will be around for a long time.

Thanks J.K.

Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil

I know that history is a very subjective thing, however, Margaret Irwin in her biography "That Great Lucifer: a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh," makes some pretty good points.  It seemed that Raleigh was a person who preferred to trust, and it seemed that Bacon and Cecil were the type to betray trust.  I mean, just think of this. Robert Cecil sends his sickly son to the Raleigh's to be taken care of. They raise Will with their own Wat until he's healthy.  Then, later, when James takes the throne, Robert Cecil sells Raleigh to James as a traitor.

Bacon was no better. After Raleigh is released after thirteen years of imprisonment in the Tower, the King (James) gives him permission to go find gold (some mine located of the Orinoco), but he won't rescind the death sentence on his head.  Raleigh is concern about this, so he talks to his friend, Francis Bacon, who says 'don't worry, the King made you an Admiral!'  Well, James betrays Raleigh to the Spanish by sending them the expedition's plans, Wat (Raleigh's son is killed), and the expedition ruined.  When Raleigh returns home, Jame's wants his head. So, to make the king happy Francis Bacon informs the King he can kill Raleigh any time, since the decade old death sentence was never removed. Result, Raleigh is killed, and the Elizabethan age is at an end.

So, do you think this double dealing, two-bit snake wrote as Shakespeare?

Elizabethan Murder Mystery

I've been doing a lot of reading about what we call the Elizabethan era.  Seems to be a very smelly time, and that includes the judicial and the political system.  I've also, much to my delight, found out that there were a lot of colourful characters: Dr. Dee, the queen's astrologer, Thomas Harriot (who was mapping the moon before Galileo), Christopher Marlowe (Anthony Burgess believes he was gay), I'm not so convinced.  A couple lines in a poem, or play doesn't mean a person is homosexual. Then, there's the 'School of Night,' or the 'School of Atheism,' ran by Walter Raleigh. Both terms are inaccurate, and were coined by his enemies, set at bringing him down.  It was more like a group of men who wanted to talk about anything interesting and new and intelligent. No doubt Raleigh and Lord Strange and the gang listen to Marlowe discussing atheism, but that didn't mean they were all atheists. Anything I've read about Raleigh seems to indicate the man had a love of knowledge. He once said "He'd rather kill a man than a good book."  And that charge of Atheism that the Privy Council had hit Marlowe with...The Baine's report hangs on a lot of hear say, and some document they managed to take from Thomas Kyd. Listen, if a bunch of scary dudes break into my place, find a piece of paper that could get me drawn and quartered, I might be tempted to say Marlowe wrote it.  Even after that they still tortured Kyd, and they weren't kidding. So, fertile ground to write a murder mystery, very fertile.

Shake or Bacon?

I've been reading this great book "The Shakespeare Conspiracy."  Nice work. This is why I don't think Bacon wrote the Shakespeare plays.

1.Bacon was a very active politician and lawyer, and none of the materials about him links him with the theatre scene in London.

2.In his work De Augmentis Scientarium, published the same year as Shakespeare's First Folio, he even attacks Drama.

3. In 1614 the King's Men (Shakespeare's company) appeal to King James to establish a theatre in an area object to by the local tradesmen.  The appeal is refered to the Commisioners for Suits. Bacon is one of the Commisioners and the proposal for a theatre is rejected. Why would Bacon, if he was Shakespeare, reject his own company?

4. Part of the argument is that in Shakespeare's plays there is reference to legal material which indicates a legal mind, like Bacon.  Yet other playwrites have legal material in their plays and weren't playwrites. Enter Robert Green, Thomas Nashe and Philip Massinger.

5. This leads me to the conclusion that Bacon is no more responsible for the Shakespeare plays than his brother Ham. 

Interesting stuff, eh?

Why write?

With a world that places more and more emphasis on the visual, on the vicarious, why should anyone spend any time writing?  Perhaps that in itself is enough of a reason.

A lot of people are writing all the time.  They're texting here, they're texting there, but are they saying anything?  Are they saying anything of any depth?  I signed up on Twitter, but couldn't Tweet.  I tried to, but immediately felt myself turning into a Chinese fortune cookie. For me, I need the substance, the desire to delve thoughts, ideas and place them on the alter of sharing.

I asked a music teacher once what made a professional, and she said it wasn't money, it was how you approached your art, the effort you put into your craft.  Good writing isn't easy.  It's difficult and takes a lot of work. 

I thought, when I was in High school, that my English teacher could write a book.  It seemed he had a solid understanding of literature and technique.  I was wrong.  You can ride on the winged Pegasus of  Blake, but when it gets right down to it, you have to face what you can and can not do.  If you have trouble with dialogue, then you have to confess and set about correcting you deficiency.  If you have difficulty with timing, then you've got to study artists whose timing is impeccable.  But I suppose the key here is recognizing that your work has a problem, because once you do that, then you can fix it.

I've noticed that some writers refuse to rip their own prose apart.  As a result they never improve.  If you are reading a friend's work, please, if the characters are wooden and flat, tell them.  It might be the best thing you ever do for them.  However, if the person giving the advice is wooden and two dimensional...which leads me to the point that writing, good writing, is difficult, but there is nothing like it.