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Back to Basics: Alliteration

7/14/2020

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Alliteration is one of the less obvious forms of figurative language. It is much more about impact rather than the image produced, so it can be easy to overlook.

What exactly is alliteration? Alliterative text uses the repetition of initial consonant sounds for effect, which is to say, the author uses words that start with the same letter, or same consonant sound, in a row to make a phrase stand out.

Tongue twisters are almost always alliterative.

Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

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5 Proactive Steps to Develop Your Talent

7/7/2020

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Being both a homeschool family and a bunch of creatives, it’s no wonder summer is a busy time for the lot of us when it comes to our personal projects. During the break the kids and I all take advantage of the extra time to pour a few more hours each day into the creative pursuits we work on throughout the year. So it also tends to be a time of skill growth as well.

This is always a good thing, though both girls have found it to also be a tad frustrating. You see, they have a talent for more visual arts than me, and both have been progressing quickly. This is developmentally normal given their ages and the leaps in fine motor control and abilities to understand and think through complex sequences. However, this becomes a bit of a problem when working on large scope projects such as the comic series one is writing and the animation and game design the other is pursuing. By the time they finish a leg of the project, the art they are producing no longer looks like what they did at the beginning.

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Blast from the Past: 30 Facts about Me

6/30/2020

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It's the fifth Tuesday of the month, so it's time for a Blast from the Past post. The one I picked this time was part of a 30 day blogging challenge I did back in 2012. I've learned a lot about myself since then, and some things have changed. So I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it and point out where I was way off base with a few things and whatnot.

New comments will be written in green. Everything else is from the original post from January 7, 2012.

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Back to Basics: Imagery

6/23/2020

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Imagery is one of the more common and overarching forms of figurative language found in literature. It is utilized in virtually all forms of prose and poetry, and it is at the core of one of the most often given bits of writing advice: show, don’t tell.

What exactly is imagery? You may guess it is language meant to create a picture, and it is. However, it goes beyond that. Imagery is language that evokes the senses in order to better describe a scene or a character’s experience. Most often, this is talking about the “big five” senses: sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound. 

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Learning the Craft Takes Time

6/16/2020

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People look at writing as a solitary pastime, and in many ways it is. However, the best parts of the writing community are anything but solitary, especially so nowadays with the internet connecting us with ease. 

When I was coming up and just starting to seriously look into publishing back in the mid to late 90s, being able to find an author’s address or email address was huge. Even back when the only internet access I had was the once a month trip to my high school’s computer lab, I managed to find Anne McCaffrey’s address on her website and write to her. Aside from our school librarian, she was the first person to ever encourage the writing dream. I found the boards on her website, and some other writer’s boards besides, in the following year or two, and through them, I found mentors.

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Art Drives Self-Discovery

5/19/2020

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You can tell a lot about a person through their preferred art across the spectrum. Whether we are the ones to create it or not, aspects of our personality and thought processes influence the music, images, stories, and more we find ourselves drawn to throughout our lives.

I think we lose a lot when we remove artistic education from our curricula and skimp in areas where our children could explore the arts. Of course, there are arguments insisting different art forms can boost and bolster academic performance, but even looking beyond that, art and art education has much to offer kids and adolescents.
Picture of artist pallet that reads: Art has the role in education of helping children become like themselves instead of more like everyone else.

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Back to Basics: Hyperbole and Understatement

5/12/2020

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Today’s lesson is on another common form of figurative language, the hyperbole, and a literary device that is its polar opposite, understatement. The use of either one can add humor, impact, and variety to a literary work. Authors who master the use of both develop powerful tools to add interest to their work.

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Frustrations of a Neurodivergent Mind

5/5/2020

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I don't intend to turn this into an autism or ADHD blog, I promise. However, considering how much of my life tracks back to this pairing, I can't exactly talk about my experience with writing without bringing them up from time to time.

Both "disorders" have the strengths and frustrations, and there is a fair bit of overlap between the two. Yet, when both are experienced by the same person, this combination creates some unique presentations that can complicate the diagnosis of both.

This is one contributing factor to the majority of us autistic ADHDers being found "late" on average. One in particular is behind the largest of my current frustrations and why I missed a couple of weeks last month.

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When Your Coping Skills Need Work

4/21/2020

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One of the more frustrating parts of "flying under the radar" long enough to reach adulthood before your difficulties become apparent enough for others to see them is the arsenal of maladaptive or faulty coping skills built throughout your youth. Quite often, you can sense they are not particularly helpful, or outright damaging in some cases, but after spending your life depending upon them, they are almost instinctive.

For those of us for whom everyday life can become overwhelming quickly on a bad day, we can fall into these poor coping skills before we even notice stress mounting. And let me tell you, that is an extremely frustrating place to be.
Picture of a book with caption,
Stories, mythology and fairy tales in particular, have been a consistent special interest of mine as long as I can remember. At first, I listened or watched, as many children do before learning to read. When I had the ability, I would watch a movie or show again and again until I could quote every line by every character.

My understanding of the world, emotions, and how people interacted and thought was informed through this. I understood family members and friends by relating them to characters, using the way those characters reacted to predict how the people around me would respond. I used those characters and interactions I'd watched ad nauseam to cobble together the scripts and the mask I used to navigate the world.

Once I mastered reading, chapter books and novels became constant companions. In them I found a way to escape the sensory nightmare that was the school bus outside of staring out the window and disassociating throughout the trip. I found hundreds of new characters to fuel my imagination and build understanding, and novels went further into their mindset and thought patterns than movies and shows ever could, bettering my understanding of emotion and social interaction.

Unfortunately, this newfound joy and source of information came at a price.


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Back to Basics: Personification

4/14/2020

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We will take a look at personification today as we continue our study of figurative language. What exactly is personification?

Personification is defined as the application of human characteristics upon something nonhuman. This can be showing an inanimate object, concept, event, or animal through the use of human qualities or characteristics.
Screenshot from Disney's Beauty and the Beast showing Mrs. Pots, Chip, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and an unnamed maid as examples of personification in media.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a prime example of personification.
Because of its prevalence in cartoons, fables, and other children’s media, personification and its subsets are often some of the easiest forms of figurative language for many to understand. After all, how many of us grew up watching Disney films where a clock and a candlestick held conversations and argued with a teapot or the main characters were talking animals?

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    Author A. B. England, science fiction author, fantasy author, novelist
    A. B. England is a novelist, all around geek, avid crafter, and the home-schooling mother of two.

    She is an autistic creator with a love of mythology, fantasy, and all flavors of science fiction.

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