Monday, October 31, 2011
Writing Tip #10: Go Vertical
Grow from writing “Dick & Jane” style sentences, created for early readers and be a complex story teller. Do this by going vertical.
To "go vertical" means go deep and to also go high. You are invited to infuse aspects of your story with detail which could range from sensory (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight) to observational.
EXAMPLE:
You could write: The little boy pulled a wagon down the street. The wagon was full of sticks.
Or you could go vertical and write: Henry, four years old and not more than three feet tall, used two hands to tug his one Radio Flyer—candy apple red—down Skidmore Street. A pile of twigs, perhaps thirty in all, were stacked Lincoln Log style in a crisscross pattern that was stable but also unstable evidenced by the way the pile teetered right to left and left to right. Henry sported a pair of khaki shorts, the kind with so many pockets upon pockets upon pockets—big, small, deep, shallow—and each of these pockets bulged heavy with secreted chestnuts, feathers, rocks and bits of rubber collected from the road. Only the twigs, on display for all to see, were evidence of his obsessive collecting habit.
The first sentence is easier to write, and certainly faster, but it is also flat language. Memorable stories are built on the images we create with our word choices and when we unpack our sentences, we dip down into the deep well of description.
A simple way to think of this tip is that every time a significant noun (ie: a person such as Henry or a thing like the twigs or his wagon) presents itself in your story, stop and consider adding at least three levels of detail/description that can actually draw the noun into an image that another can see in their own mind. (IE: A pile of twigs, (1) perhaps thirty in all, (2) were stacked Lincoln Log style in a (3) crisscross pattern that was (4) stable but also unstable evidenced by the way (5) the pile teetered right to left and left to right. In this example, I use five additional details to describe the twigs).
Going vertical is also an opportunity for the writer to enter the story via their own memory or interpretation of what they are describing. This phenomenon is beautifully described in Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller, where she writes (pg. 30) about people who write about nature and then pushes on to talk about how important it is to go beyond just weighty description and infuse work with "human consciousness." IE: "While fine description is dandy, it tends to wear thin after a while. Even if your prose about the soft rosy beauty of the alpenglow is first rate, if you don't move beyond that, readers are likely to want to put down your writing and go see for themselves. What holds readers...is the sense of a human consciousness moving through...."
….(let’s pick up with the Henry tale)….
As I watched the little boy from my front window, I thought of myself so long ago. Had I ever been that young? Had I ever been that small? Had I ever been that strong? What had happened to the boy in me who collected everything—pennies, bugs, dried leaves. My goodness, I even collected moss from trees and bits of shells from our trips to the sea when even a small fragment of a sand dollar or a conch seemed as rare and as valuable as silver and gold.
Going vertical mean, quite literally, to be perpendicular to the surface. The vertical line goes up and down verses side to side. When you go vertical, there is the opportunity to expand your writing to add dimension and perspective.
NOW YOU TRY THIS:
PROMPT. Go outside and sit still for a bit. Look around. Look up, down, right, left and so on. Feel the wind, the cool, the sun. Listen to the birds, the traffic and the dog that barks across the street. Be for a while.
Now write, 20 minutes at the most and try to infuse your writing with both details and your own consciousness. Submit here, in the comment section and I'll make some suggestions and give feedback! Good luck.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Listen In: 10/27 Teleseminar
This call about downloading, which is the essential and too often passed over first step to memoir writing. Listen in on the call and take notes. This was a helpful conversation that will help you become a better memoir writer!
Learn more about how to download: Click Here
Friday, October 28, 2011
Announcing: Adoption Awareness Month
Did you know that every November a Presidential Proclamation launches activities and celebrations nationwide to increase awareness around adoption?
It's true.
Adoption is a huge deal in the U.S. with 125,000 children adopted annually according to the Evan B. Donaldson Institute.
As a two time adoptee, I join this national conversation to offer a unique forum of conversation--the live teleseminar--to discuss HEALING & THE ADOPTEE. Adoptees are too often shoved into a corner, most often a place we put ourselves. We are the silent sufferers and we are the adaptors.
Can we speak up?
Can we share our stories?
Can we transcend our adoptions?
Each conversation this month will take on these questions and more!
Schedule
Wed, Nov. 2 & 9 @ 1:15 p.m. PST to 2:45 p.m. PST
Featuring: Jeanette Yoffe, Trish Lay & Brian Stanton
Jeanette Yoffe, M.A., M.F.T., earned her Masters in Clinical Psychology, specializing in children, from Antioch University in June of 2002. She treats children with serious psychological problems secondary to histories of abuse, neglect, and /or multiple placements. She has specialized for the past 10 years in the treatment of children who manifest serious deficits in their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development.
Trish Lay coaches & motivates people to make positive life change. As an adoptee, she has asked herself: "Who am I?" As she got older it turned to "What is life’s purpose for me?" Trish asks these questions of herself and poses them to others. She has been a force of motivation and inspiration for twenty years. 
Brian Stanton wrote about his reunion and issues around identity in his original solo play BLANK, performed in L.A., NY, Kansas City, Dallas, and Orlando. BLANK has also been seen at national adoption conferences for the Concerned United Birth-parents & The American Adoption Congress. In March of 2012, Brian will bring BLANK to the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture 4th International Conference in Claremont, CA.
Watch an except from BLANK:
Sunday, Nov. 13 @ 11:00 a.m PST
Featuring: Nancy Verrier, Speaker, Author & Therapist 
As a licensed MFT (marriage and family therapist) Nancy Verrier has been practicing psychotherapy and counseling in Lafayette, California, for over 20 years. Her specialty is working with people affected by relinquishment and adoption. Her books include the groundbreaking Primal Wound & Coming Home to Self.
Sunday, Nov. 20 @ 11 a.m. PST
Featuring: John Sobraske, MA Adoption Attachment Counseling
DETAILS TO COME
Do not miss these incredible conversations which will also be recorded and provided to those who sign up! CLICK ON THIS LINK, scroll down to the registration form, sign up and I will send a confirmation of your registration for these events and details on how to join in the calls.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Book Talk: Firebird by Mark Doty
Posted by Anne Gudger: writer, mother, teacher & all around STH (super terrific human).
Poet, memoirist, deep thinker, amazing observer: Mark Doty is all this and more. Firebird—a gay coming-of-age story--is an incredible testament to his remarkable talent. Here we meet young Doty: a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland’s “Get Happy” by his shocked mother who declares, “Son, you’re a boy!”
Doty’s memoir is lyrical and heartbreaking. Doty navigates his twisted family—where alcoholism, sorrow and repression rein and continues to seek beauty even as his life is swamped in ugly. In the first chapter Doty rifles through his sister’s drawer of precious trinkets:
it’s like a pirate chest opened in a movie, little glimmers brilliant on the faceted surfaces of the treasures, little musical chimes sounding as if these were audible jewels. . chiffon. . . tulle. . . Glittery ribbons, carnations made from Kleenex clipped with a bobby pin and fringed, just so, then unfolded into a burst of imitation blossom, one drop of cologne at the center. Scents, powders, delicious nail colors. . .
Doty uses these objects to dive into his story, into his memory. The objects are a way in, an opening for rumination. I love the richness of Doty’s world. The scenes he creates from his childhood show the poet he is in their depth and breadth. Equally I love how he steps back and looks at memory: how it functions, how we use it as writers
Memoir is memory. It’s a rendering of experiences, the feel of the experiences more than verifiable facts. In an interview in “The Atlantic Online” (November 10, 1999) Doty says: “I like the formal elasticity of memoirs very much. They alternately behave like novels, like essays, like travel writing, like poems—and that sort of synthesis lends itself to making discoveries. I’m especially drawn to those memoirs that place the act of remembering in the foreground—those that take memory itself as part of their subject and examine the action of making a story out of what is remembered.”
Doty does this beautifully in Firebird. I return again and again to a passage that’s near the end of the book when I need a reminder, inspiration to infuse my writing:
“What we remember,” wrote the poet who was my first teacher of the art, “can be changed. What we forget we are always.” Dick was right: We live the stories we tell; the stories we don’t tell live us. What you don’t allow yourself to know controls and determines; whatever’s held to the light “can be changed”—not the facts, of course, but how we understand them, how we live with them. Everyone will be filled by grief, distorted by sorrow; that’s the nature of being a daughter or a son, as our parents are also. What matters is what we learn to make of what happens to us.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Listen In: 10/20 Teleseminar
Michelle O'Neil, author of The Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar , graced us with her presence and her perspective about self publishing in today's market.
You will be surprised and delighted by the opportunities available to writers today. There are lots of options for you and your art.
Listen and please, leave your comment. Tell me your publishing story below and share this recording.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Writing Tip #9: To Self Publish or Not?
Michelle O'Neil and I have known each other for at least eight years. She was my first student, in my first workshop, high in the mountains of Colorado. My first writing workshop was eclectic and terrifying. Michelle and I became fast friends and I've followed her writing path ever since. She has gone on to create a wonderful weblog and to form writing collectives in her world (all while raising to kids and sustaining her marriage to Hot-Toddy). Michelle is a dynamo and I am so happy to feature her this week in my teleseminar series. Michelle will tell us about her decision to go the route of independent publishing. I hope you enjoy her insights and are inspired to think about your own project in a new light.
Do not miss this free teleseminar, Thurs, Oct. 20th at 11:30 a.m. Send your questions to me at Jennifer@jenniferlauck.com.
Register Here Now! 
I decided to publish Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar independently because I value my work and wanted to make it available for people to read. The traditional publishing industry is quite unhealthy right now, and it seemed like a good idea to take another mode of transportation, rather than beg for admission on a sinking ship.
Literary agents kept telling me, "The writing is beautiful, but I don't think I can sell your book." I am not a celebrity. I've no big platform to stand on. With less money to throw around these days, it's my belief that most traditional publishers want ready made superstars and are not as interested in finding talented new authors to cultivate. While I felt I'd eventually land an agent, I also worried my sweet little book would get lost in that world. I believe some books need time.
Indie publishing allows me to publish and build a readership through word of mouth. I don't have to worry about earning out an advance. I don't have to worry about being dropped (yet locked into a contract) if my book doesn't sell like gangbusters right out of the gate. I can keep fanning the flame, and I am learning so much through this process about book publishing and about myself.
Many traditionally published authors give up a lot of money and creative control in exchange for someone else who handles the details. While I'd rather be writing than learning all about royalties, formatting and cover making, I accept that all this effort and research will serve me down the road, especially with the rising emergence of e-books. We all love a book in hand but the ease of e-readers is changing everything. Savvy authors are reluctant to give publishing houses huge cuts for the electronic versions of their books, since it costs practically nothing to distribute them. Below are some tips for those interested in indie publishing:
1) Hire professional editors! Shop around. SheWrites has an "Experts for Hire" section with many resources.
2) Hire professional formatters to fit your MS into the different e-reader device formats. While you can do this yourself, there is a learning curve and it is cheap to hire out. Smashwords has their own list of people willing to do this for about $35.00, and their format fits most e-reader devices. I also had success with a company called Kindle Conversion getting my book formatted for Amazon's Kindle Store, for $75.00.
3) Make your book available in as many formats as possible. Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar is available in paperback on Amazon, in e-book form on Smashwords, (where it can be downloaded for reading on your computer screen or virtually any e-reader, and Amazon's Kindle Store. I am also looking into making an audio version, for Podiobooks, which would be available on a good faith donation basis. It is important to provide readers ease of access to your to your work.
With e-books and print-on-demand options, it costs very little to self-publish these days. Would you consider taking this route to get your writing out there? Why or why not?
Some links of interest for those considering self-publishing:
Several goodies from JA Konrath here, here, and here.
Women on Writing
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Write a Vivid Scene in Seven Steps
Phase II: Craft Your Memoir
Write a Vivid Scene in Seven Easy Steps
MP3 Download & PDF Handouts
$125.00 value for just $7.50
You will learn:
1. how to place your narrator in the moment.
2. how make your writing alive and vivid.
3. how to notice nature and bring into your writing.
4. the definition of a scene.
5. why scene matters and what are the key elements.
Download and Go
Monday, October 10, 2011
Take Yourself on the Hero's Journey
This suggestion came from a student who studied Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell.
INSTRUCTION: The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.
PROMPT QUESTIONS:
1) Where am I?
2) Where am I going?
3) What’s my threshold?
4) Who are my teachers?
5) What tokens, images, mantras am I carrying to keep me on the path?
6) What am I giving up?
7) What am I finding?
8) Darkness and danger along the way? That’s where the gold is.
9) How am I going to return to normal life?
EXAMPLE ESSAY: I am at the edge, where grass meets concrete. The dried canes of wild blackberry bushes arc and tangle together. They send shadows against a gray wood fence that looks like bad cursive writing. It’s hot out. Summer hot. I’m wearing a tank top and a light skirt, July clothes at the end of September. Every year, Indian summer catches me by surprise. It’s like one last roar of a lion before the autumn show begins.
I have an inflated plastic bag that holds two hundred medium sized crickets. I didn’t count them but the guy who bagged them did. 
They are not quite brown, they are more like beige with long filament tentacles and slippery legs. They cluster in the bottom of the bag and in the wells of a section of cardboard egg crate.
The crickets are intended to be lizard food. They live their lives, until they are sold, in these glass tanks at the pet store. I can get one hundred for five bucks. Two hundred cost ten.
~
My son forgot his exercise pants and P.E. is sixth period. If he doesn’t suit up, he gets a lower grade and this is upsetting. He wants to do well. He’s shooting for straight A’s.
I discovered the pants as I sorted the darks from the whites. As soon as I saw them under a t-shirt and did the math about his day, I tossed back my own plans to get into the office early.
I washed the pants, threw them in the dryer and while I waited, that’s when I decided to get some minutia from the store, pick up the gold name sliders that have been waiting a week now and will be affixed to my man’s office door and since the sliders were next to the pet store and I had ten extra dollars in cash, that’s when I ordered up the crickets.
~
I have been alive for forty-six years, almost forty seven and nearly every day I have eaten some kind of animal—chicken, oyster, cow, tuna, cod, salmon, pig. I never really thought about it until one day I did. I thought: my body is made up animals who once were alive and now they are not.
And then there are the spiders I’ve killed—willfully. I just sucked one up in the vacuum cleaner yesterday and I squished five others the day before. They were just babies, spilling in a panic, over the hardwood floor. I couldn’t have all those spiders going everywhere. We were having a birthday party that night.
And the mosquitoes I’ve slapped and the bugs I’ve stepped on while not paying attention.
I figure I need to free at least twenty two thousand crickets before I undo the bad karma of all the life I’ve taken while living my own life. I’ve freed about a three thousand.
~
My man got a letter from his ex. It arrived on his birthday. Certified mail. She sent it to his work.
He opened it. He read it. Over and over again. She wrote how their son—the one who doesn’t talk to him anymore—is doing just great. She was making a point about how the boy doesn’t need his father in his life. It’s a sword she jabs over and over again and has been jabbing since the boy was old enough to walk.
She’s pissed that her own father left when she was a little girl only she forgot that part of her own story and keeps taking her rage out on this gentle, quiet man who won’t defend himself. She’s not very sporting that way.
~
When my man gets upset, he becomes like a turtle in hibernation. His head sinks lower on his neck or maybe his neck contracts toward his spine. I’m not quite sure what happens but six foot four becomes six foot two and then he’s like a tired old man who has no neck at all. He slumps and hangs his head. His eyes are rimmed red and he weeps. He goes so deep into himself, diving into his personal ocean of regret that I can’t reach him. He seems to forget my name and where we live and what we are doing together. He slips away.
All my life, it’s been hard to trust people. I’m always on the lookout for their flaw. No matter how hard I will myself to change, my brain has been formed by losses in my own life. I want to be here, remembering that everything is okay but then this becomes a turtle in hibernation and snap. I’m gone.
I curse and accuse and blame, talking a mile a minute—pure trash—and while I talk, actually yell and rage, I rearrange furniture and vacuum corners and kill spiders. I don’t think about what I’m eating and yes, I end up having a tuna sandwich or some other form of meat.
~
There is only enough oxygen for the crickets to live for about thirty minutes.
I step into the ragged remains of the blackberry bushes and over to a corner were there are layers of dead and rotting leaves. As I go, I loosen the rubber band around the top of the bag and the crickets wriggle as if they know something is going to happen.
In the distance is my son’s school and it’s only third period. I’ve got plenty of time. I can hear a teacher lead a tap dance class in one of the outer buildings. She counts beats for the students and in response comes the sound metal shoes on the wood floor. It’s a crazy, busy, powerful sound of youthful energy being focused and released.
In one quick move, I turn the bag over and the bugs pour out. They land on the leaves in a cluster and are quick to flee in a small circle that gets wider and wider. I am creeped out by their pure ugliness and am fascinated by their lack of hesitation. They know what to do with this opportunity.
I step back and back and finally get back to the sidewalk. In my wake, the bugs scatter in an even wider circle. They run, they scurry and then they are gone.
I love them for wanting to be free. I am happy to know they aren’t going to be lizard food. And I want freedom as badly as they do. I wish I could just get it right.
I've heard spiritual teachers say liberation is easy but it doesn’t seem easy. Sometimes I feel as trapped as bug, just waiting for my own funeral.
When all the bug are gone, I go up the sidewalk to my son’s school, past leggy rose bushes of red and pink and yellow flowers in their final bloom. I think of my man, at work where he teaches the healing arts and helps other people feel better. I hope he’s happier today.
In the school office, I pass the clean pants to a lady who sits at a chuncky dark wood desk and has a nice smile.
“I’ll get these to him, right away,” she says and I imagine my son, called out of class and how happy he'll be to know that his mother showed up for him. She's paying attention. She's a hero--at least to him.
EXAMPLE ANSWERS TO INITIAL PROMPT:
1) I am standing at the edge of the sidewalk. I am facing a bramble of spiky bushes.
2) I'm going to step off the concrete and into the wild land.
3) The threshold is, practically speaking, the sidewalk (domesticity) and the wild land. And it is the spontaneous flow of a day verses my previous plans to be in the office.
4) Freeing living creatures, doomed to peril of human (or other animal consumption) is a traditional Tibetan practice of monks who traditionally freed live fish from open markets (after purchasing them of course). This practice is considered a way to increase a practitioners merit.
5) Images to stay on path are the images from my own childhood trauma, that of the ex-wife and the turtle going into shell.
6) Money, time, my plan for the day.
7) My owe desire to be liberated.
8) I am scared of bugs! And of being a bad mother like my mother was to me. And of being abandoned again.
9) I return by seeing myself as a hero--to my son but also, better yet, to myself.
DID YOU ENJOY THIS PROMPT?
HUNGRY FOR MORE INSTRUCTION, INSIGHT, ADVICE? 
Phase II: Craft Your Memoir
The Hero's Journey: On Reflection
MP3 Download & PDF Handouts
$125.00 value for just $7.50
You will learn:
1. what the hero's journey is and how to put this into your memoir work.
2. how to answer a series of questions that will lead to an essay.
3. what it takes to dive more deeply into your own story.
Download & Go
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Writing Tip #8: Your Journey Into Memoir Land
This is a guest post by Linda Joy Myers who is the founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers out of Berkeley. Linda is a therapist and a writing teacher, so she brings a very holistic view of the process. Enjoy her post and share your comments below. I want to hear what you think.
When we write a memoir, we embark upon a journey—to the land of memory, to the heart of who we are and were, to the past, to discovery. We honor those we loved, we name things that were never named. The memoir also becomes like an archeological dig. We discover new aspects of ourselves we didn't know. We discover memories, insights, and knowledge—or they seem to discover us!
Writing a memoir is so much more about an exploratory adventure toward self-knowledge than most people imagine it will. At first, we start off excited about our writing, our book, but somewhere along the way—in the middle is where it happens for most people—we find ourselves doubting our memories and our writing, and we find ourselves sinking into a morass of questions and doubts.
Should I be writing this—what will the family say? I didn't realize that I would write about abuse—I didn't plan that but now that’s what keeps coming out. I find so many layers of the story, I’m overwhelmed. I want to stop writing—why did I start this anyway, it’s harder than I expected. I find myself crying, I want to put aside the feelings that are coming up. After all, didn't I talk about this enough in therapy? I just want to write the happy stuff. Can’t I just do that? I decided to leave out the things that the family doesn’t want me to write. But if I do, there won’t be much left.
While writing is not therapy, nor is the writing group a therapy group, the truth is that writing a memoir is healing and can be therapeutic—the root of therapeutic means “healing.” Another word for it is transformation. Another word: change.
Writing a memoir will change you—for the better, but you have to go through the process, you have to write and keep writing deeper and deeper into the layers of your life to find the other side, to discover the gifts that writing a memoir will give you. Your story will teach you, it’s a path of knowledge, according to Dr. James Pennebaker, the psychologist who researched the power of writing to heal.
You need to take care of yourself, your soul, your heart, and your body as you continue to write, dig, learn, and return for more.
1. Accept that writing your memoir will take longer to complete than you want it to.
2. You need to stock up supplies for this project: Kleenex, writing pals, support, quiet time, and lots of permission. Oh, and tea. Lots of tea. It has chemicals that calm you down. The English have something there!
3. Allow the writing process to guide you toward the unwanted stories, images, and memories. They will be your teacher. Tune in and listen to them.
4. Be open to the stories that want to come through you. Listen to your body.
5. Alternate “dark” and “light” stories—take care of your emotional balance.
6. Invite your unconscious to help you write and remember. Write before bed, as soon as you wake up. Journal questions you want to dream about.
7. Treat your writing with respect. File it so you can find it. Back up your files. Print out your work and put it in a notebook. Act like a “real” writer!
8. Find a mentor who has been on the journey. After all, Cinderella had the fairy godmother and Frodo had Gandalf.
QUESTION: How is your memoir writing process unfolding?
Don't forget the Oct. 21st Telesummit hosted by Linda, it's going to be a fabulous conversation with a wide variety of memoir experts including myself. See you there. Listen in now on the
Oct. 6th Teleseminar
with Linda Joy Myers
and Jennifer Lauck
Monday, October 03, 2011
Book Talk: Peter Pan by T.S. Barrie
Sublime Character Development
I was reading this classic to the kids and found that I couldn’t put it down. Peter Pan, written by Sir James Mathew Barrie in the 1800’s is a solid model for character development.
Barrie was the son of a motherless daughter. His mother, Margaret, lost her own mother when she was eight years old. Margaret became fully responsible for her household at that time.
Barrie was born in Scotland and was the ninth child of ten. When he was six years old, his older brother died in an ice skating accident. The death was devastating to Margaret Barrie and to help compensate for her grief (and because he was the one home with her), Barrie would wear his dead brothers clothing. Eventually Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories from her childhood and the sharing of adventure books like Robinson Caruso. Barrie learned to be a vivid storyteller—as a way to offer consolation to his mother. His mother took comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever and this was the birth of the character of Peter Pan.
Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Barrie wrote drama reviews for a newspaper. Eventually he turned to the theater and wrote plays.
When Barrie wrote Peter Pan, it was a stage production and therein lays the “ah-ha” for me. The character development on the pages is so deep and complete, it boggles the mind but when I consider how much an actors character must be created in advance in order for actors to fully enter the role—I understand.
For me, Barrie’s brilliance is in the way he places each person on the page as a personality verses a physical being. Barrie goes beyond hair color and height and into persona. Barrie gives his characters spectrum.
Mrs. Darling is written about thus: “She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that comes from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, thought there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.”
Mr. Darling: “Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made women respect him.”
The two of them described: “Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbors; so of course, they had a nurse.”
Peter Pan: “It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter’s was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there was never a cockier boy.”
And one more. Hook! “In the midst of them, the blackest and largest jewel in that dark setting, reclined James Cook…In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance.”
I’m sorry to write so many examples but the character sketches are enthralling. Consider that the book is only 143 pages long and yet Barrie keeps describing his characters all the way to his ending—so the reader continues to have the depth of each person’s being-ness throughout.
Barrie pays attention to personality and even soul and to me, that is the basis of great story telling.