LaurelLit.com
Writer, Reader, English Teacher
Yesterday's post was about storytelling and poetic devices in Taylor Swift's "Ronan." Last night I showed it to Pauline, my eleven-year-old daughter, thinking I could use the lesson for my middle school students and the enrichment class I'm currently teaching. Pauline liked the lesson, but she remarked that other Swift songs told more complete stories. She was thinking of "All Too Well," but there's no way I'm subjecting twelve-year-olds to a ten-minute song, not with their attention spans. …
Perhaps Taylor Swift isn't for everyone, but personally, I am in awe of her poetic ability to write song lyrics that also tell a story. The details she uses are so vivid and specific. I don't write a lot of poetry, but I have been writing flash fiction recently, and many of her songs are like flash pieces. She centers on a moment or two, and conveys an emotional narrative by doing so. How does she do it? A lot of it is skill, talent, and creativity, but there are also some tools she uses, …
One thing any Shakespeare fan will tell you is that his plays have a timeless universality. Take Othello. Issues of racism are still extremely relevant. However, if I wrote a revisionist piece based off of the play, I would explore the extreme sexism and the misogynistic views that nearly everyone in the play holds, with the exception of Emelia. She astutely realizes that in regards to men and women, “They are all but stomachs, and we all but food. They eat us hungrily and when they are …
About a year ago, I took part in a virtual seminar in thriller writing that was led by Hank Phillippi Ryan. Even though I was experiencing side-effects from my second Covid shot, I got a huge amount out of the workshop and was very impressed with Phillippi Ryan's expertise and ability. I immediately looked up her novels. (I confess, I hadn't been familiar with her work before that point.) I chose to read Trust Me, which apparently was her first stand-alone novel. She's released …
