Life in the Realm of Fantasy

February 23, 2026 · 6:00 am

Exploring Depth #writing

We often talk about the story arc and its component parts and features. But to explain depth, we must put all the parts and pieces back together and examine the story as a whole.

So, what is depth, exactly? It is the component of the narrative that supports and informs the story’s arc. It is also comprised of layers.

When you look at a pond, you see the surface. It could be calm, or if a storm is brewing, it will be ruffled and moving. But it is deep and conceals many things beneath that calm surface. A narrative also comprises several layers.

Layer One is the surface layer. It is the Literal Layer; the what-you-see-is-what-you-get layer. The components of the story’s surface are:

the setting
the action
the visual/physical experience of the characters as they go about their lives.

When the reader sees something, they recognize it. Trees are trees, a bus is a bus, and we all recognize those aspects of worldbuilding. The surface layer also shows the characters’ actions in real time, so readers immediately feel they know what is going on.

The reader sees it when a figure steps from behind a tree. A gun was drawn and fired. What happened was clear and easy to understand.

Some authors play with the surface layer, choosing realism, surrealism, or a blend of the two.

Realism is serious, a depiction of what undisputedly is.
Surrealism takes what is real and warps it to convey a subtler meaning.

Layer Two: The layer below the surface is an area of unknown quantity. It is the Inferential Layer. This is the layer where inference and implication come into play, hints and allegations.

We show why the gun is drawn. Clues and hints imply reasons for the characters’ actions. The author offers ideas to explain how the shooter arrives at the point in the story where they squeeze the trigger, and the reader makes assumptions.

Authors drop clues and hints but allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.

In a murder mystery, the path to the moment the trigger was pulled is complicated. Perhaps no one knows exactly what led to it, but the author’s task is to include enough clues, hints, and allegations without an info dump.

Authors insert clues that imply something to the reader, hints that may be red herrings. One meaning is displayed on the surface, but by using hints and clues, we enclose the secrets within the narrative. The message (inference) in the story is conveyed to the reader, but only if they pick up on the clues.

The author has to do their job well because we want the reader to feel as if they have earned the information they are gaining. They must be able to deduce what you imply. A reader can only extrapolate knowledge from the information the author offers them.

Serious readers want this layer to mean something on a level that isn’t obvious. They want to experience that feeling of triumph for having caught the meaning. That surge of endorphins keeps them involved and makes them want more of your work.

This middle layer is, in my opinion, the toughest layer for an author to get a grip on.

Below and sort of intertwined with the middle layer is Layer Three, the Interpretive Layer. This layer will be shallower in Romance novels because the point of the book isn’t a deeper meaning. It’s interpersonal relationships on a surface level. However, there will still be some areas of mystery that aren’t spelled out completely because the interpersonal intrigues are the story.

Books for younger readers might also be less deep on this level because they don’t yet have the real-world experience to understand what is implied.

Layer three is comprised of:

Themes
Commentary
Message
Symbolism
Archetypes

This layer is sometimes the easiest for me to discuss because we are dealing with finite concepts. Theme is one of my favorite subjects to write about, as is symbolism. It is an aspect of the narrative I haven’t talked about lately, nor have I really discussed conveying messages. Archetype is another facet I haven’t discussed recently, and yet it is a fundamental underpinning of character building.

For the purposes of this post, commentary is the word that describes the expression of opinions or explanations about an event or situation. Perhaps you are writing a narrative that explores current real-world morals and hypocrisies. If so, this is an important aspect of your work.

I am looking forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the subtler, more abstract aspects of writing as I explore narrative depth. As always, when I come across a book or website with good information, I will share it with you.

In the meantime, a good core textbook is “Story” by Robert McKee. If you haven’t already gotten it, you might want to. It can be found second-hand at Amazon.

Another excellent and more affordable textbook for this is “Damn Fine Story” by Chuck Wendig. Chuck delivers his wisdom in pithy, witty, concise packets. If you fear potty-mouth, don’t buy it. However, if you have the courage to be challenged, this is the book for you.

#FineArtFriday: A second look at “Gathering Wood for Winter” by George Henry Durrie 1855

Title: Gathering Wood for Winter

Artist: George Henry Durrie (1820–1863)

Date: 1855

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 26 in (66 cm); width: 36 in (91.4 cm)

Collection: Private collection

Why I love this painting:

I love the comforting hominess of George Heny Durrie’s works. in fact, I love everything the snobbier critics hate most about his work – it is meant for ordinary people (like me) to enjoy.

I thought about this painting because winter has lingered this year. Long ago when I was holding down two jobs and living through Reaganomics, I lived in a house that was heated with a woodstove. Every year it was a struggle to buy or cut enough wood to last through the winter.

In this painting, Durrie shows us a day in late autumn. His characteristic use of reds and browns juxtaposed against lighter shades of white portrays the stark beauty of late autumn in New England.

The first snow has fallen, and the season is turning to winter. It’s more important than ever to gather as much wood as possible. Fortunately for our wood gatherers, a giant has fallen victim to a storm, snapping off halfway up.

This is not necessarily the end of the tree. Leaves still cling to the branches below the wound and will continue to provide shade and habitat for as long as it can. Someday, it may be cut down, as the fact it broke in half shows that it is nearing the end of its life and may present a hazard to those who walk beneath it.

Regardless of the tree’s future, the farmer and his son are taking advantage of the bounty so close to their home. They will stack it in the woodshed in “cords” and allow it to dry out or “season” before they must burn it, hopefully not before the end of spring.

The more wood they gather now, the warmer they will be when winter’s grip tightens.

And one cord of wood won’t do it. When I was heating my house, it took five to seven cords to make it through a mild winter. And we were not cooking with it, only heating a small house.

A “cord” of wood is a standard measurement of split and stacked logs that measures 4 feet high × 4 feet wide × 8 feet long. How Big is a Cord of Wood? Exact Measurements & Visual Guide

About the author, via Wikipedia:

George Henry Durrie (June 6, 1820 – October 15, 1863) was an American landscape artist noted especially for his rural winter snow scenes, which became very popular after they were reproduced as lithographic prints by Currier and Ives.

For many years, Durrie made a living primarily as a portrait painter, executing hundreds of commissions. After marriage, he made frequent trips, traveling to New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia, fulfilling commissions and looking for new ones. His diary reveals that he was an enthusiastic railroad traveler, in the early days of the railroads. Durrie also painted what he called “fancy pieces”, whimsical studies of still lives or stage actors, as well as painting scenes on window-shades and fireplace covers. But portrait painting commissions became scarcer when photography came on the scene, offering a cheaper alternative to painted portraits, and, as his account-book shows, Durrie rarely painted a portrait after 1851.

Durrie’s interest shifted to landscape painting, and while on the road, or at home, made frequent sketches of landscape elements that caught his eye. Around 1844 Durrie began painting water and snow scenes, and took a second place medal at the 1845 New Haven State Fair for two winter landscapes. Although he had some training in portrait work, Durrie was self-taught as a landscape artist. He was undoubtedly influenced both by the American Hudson River School, and also by European artists, by studying exhibitions of their work at the New Haven Statehouse, the Trumbull Gallery, and at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, as well as in New York City. Durrie himself exhibited regularly, both locally, and in New York City at the National Academy of Design and the American Artists’ Union, and his reputation grew. Durrie was especially known for his snow pieces, and would often make copies or near-copies of his most popular pieces, with modifications to order. The landscapes painted by Durrie offered a more intimate view than the panoramic landscapes painted by the Hudson River School, which was the leading school of American landscape painting. Colin Simkin notes that Durrie’s paintings took in a wide angle, but still “close enough to be within hailing distance” of the people who are always included in his scenes.

Currier and Ives

Durrie’s early landscapes were often of local landmarks, such as East Rock and West Rock, and other local scenes, which were popular with his New Haven clients, and he painted numerous variations of popular subjects. As his portrait commissions declined, Durie concentrated on landscapes. He wanted a wider audience, and he seemed to have a good sense of what would sell. Durrie realized that his paintings would have a wider appeal if he made them as generic New England scenes rather than as identifiable local scenes, retaining, as Sackett said, “a sense of place without specifying where that place was.” The New York City lithographic firm of Currier & Ives knew their audience; the American public wanted nostalgic scenes of rural life, images of the good old days, and Durrie’s New England scenes fit the bill perfectly. Lithographic prints were a very democratic form of art, cheap enough that the humblest home could afford some art to hang on the wall. Durrie had been marketing his paintings in New York City, and Currier and Ives, who had popularized such prints, purchased some of Durrie’s paintings in the late 1850s or early 1860s, and eventually published ten of Durrie’s pictures beginning in 1861. Four prints were published between 1861 and the artist’s death in New Haven in 1863; six additional prints were issued posthumously.

The popularity of Durrie’s snow scenes received an additional boost in the 1930s, when the Traveler’s Insurance Company began issuing calendars featuring Currier and Ives prints. Starting in 1946, the January calendar always featured a Durrie snow scene. Historian Bernard Mergen notes that “84 of the 125 paintings attributed to him are snowscapes, more than enough to make him the most prolific snow scene painter of his time.”

In Durrie’s time, winter landscapes were not popular with most curators and critics, but nevertheless, by the time of his death, Durrie had acquired a national reputation as a snowscape painter. Durrie died in 1863, at age 43, probably from typhoid fever, not long after Currier and Ives began reproducing his paintings as prints.

Durrie was dismissed by critics as a popular artist, an illustrator rather than a fine artist. Although Durrie’s Currier and Ives prints were popular, his name was still relatively unknown. But a revival of interest in Durrie began in the 1920s with the publication in 1929 of Currier and Ives, Printmakers to the American People, by collector Harry T. Peters, Sr., who called Durrie’s prints “among the most valued In the entire gallery [of Currier and Ives prints]”, and says that Durrie was known as the “snowman” of the group. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Gathering Wood for Winter by George Henry Durrie 1855. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:George Henry Durrie – Gathering Wood for Winter.JPG,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:George_Henry_Durrie_-_Gathering_Wood_for_Winter.JPG&oldid=853995324 (accessed May 1, 2025).

[1]Wikipedia contributors, “George Henry Durrie,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Henry_Durrie&oldid=1282714933 (accessed May 1, 2025).

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Tagged as 19th century American landscape art, Fine Art Friday, Gathering Wood for Winter by George Henry Durrie, George Henry Durrie, Winterscapes

February 16, 2026 · 6:00 am

Building strength as a writer #writing

This last week, I edited a paper that my grandson had to submit to his literature class at his college. That experience sparked the realization that many people make it all the way through school without learning even a few of the more common rules for punctuating written English.

Yet many of these people have stories they are bursting to write. But they are embarrassed to share them. Or perhaps they shared their first attempt with someone who either brushed them off or was harshly critical.

Many authors just out of school know they lack knowledge of punctuation mechanics but feel unworthy and a little traumatized. They don’t know where to get the information they need. If that is your situation, I have compiled a list of 7 easy-to-remember rules of punctuation, which was posted on May 26, 2025.

Feel free to bookmark that post and refer back to it as needed.

I have learned a great deal by reading the Chicago Manual of Style. It’s a behemoth of a book. Just the thought of reading, much less understanding this doorstop, is daunting to a new writer, and the price for the latest hardcover version is steep.

However, if you learn the seven basic rules discussed in my May 26th post, your work will be acceptable to most people. I will add links to several other good, affordable books on craft at the end of this post.

First of all, good writing conveys the most information with no unnecessary words. Bad writing is not a sin, if we understand that many problems can be resolved in the second draft, the stage known as revisions.

Passive phrasing, skipped punctuation, and garbled cut-and-paste issues are all codes for the author. The overuse of modifiers and descriptors are first-draft signals that tell us what we need to rephrase or show more clearly.

For example:

The tree was actually covered in red leaves.

This is a simple, passively phrased sentence, but it is properly punctuated. The sentence begins with a capital letter, as it should, and ends with a period (full stop). However, it is an example of bad writing, the kind of thing we lay down in the first draft when we are just trying to get the whole story down.

It is passive rather than active, and the word “actually” isn’t necessary.

Red leaves covered the tree.

The revision expresses the same idea, using many of the same words. It is active, and by rephrasing it, we conveyed the same idea with fewer words. The author moved the noun and its descriptor (red leaves) to the front of the sentence, followed by the verb (covered) and the subject of the sentence (the tree). The author also removed the words “was” and “in” because they aren’t needed and would have fluffed up the word count.

Using too many words to convey an idea leads to run-on sentences. It confuses the reader and makes what could be good scenes uninteresting.

The order in which you place your words changes the tone of the narrative. When I begin revisions, I do a global search for “ly” words. I look at each instance and see how they fit into that context.

I also look for passive phrasing and the various forms of “to be,” such as was, were, and had been. They are needed in some places, but overuse of them weakens the prose.

If a word or phrase weakens the narrative, I change it to a simpler form or remove it and rewrite the sentence.

I DON’T recommend going through and getting rid of every adjective or adverb, although some gurus will say just that. They forget that words like bare are adjectives, and so is barely. Many descriptors and modifiers are power words.

If you take out the power words, you gut your prose.
Also, words like every and very are part of larger words, such as everything. Cutting those words via a global search will ruin your manuscript.

Context is everything. Take the time to look at each example of the offending words and change them individually. You have already spent months writing that novel. Why not take a few days to do the job well?

Sentence structure matters. Where you place an adjective relative to the noun they are describing affects a reader’s perception. Adjectives work best when showing us what the point-of-view characters see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. The following sentence is an example I have used before:

Sunlight glared over the ice, a cold fire in the sky that cast no warmth but burned the eyes.

In the above sentence, the essential parts are structured this way: noun – verb (sunlight glared), adjective – noun (cold fire), verb – adjective – noun (cast no warmth), and finally, verb-article-noun (burned the eyes). Lead with the action or noun, follow with a strong modifier, and the sentence conveys what is intended but isn’t weakened by the modifiers.

The above scene could be shown in many ways, but a paragraph’s worth of world-building is pared down to 19 words, three of which are action words.

William Shakespeare understood the beauty and strength that powerful words written with minimal fluff can add to ordinary prose. Consider this line from his play, As You Like It, written in 1599:

It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. — As You Like It, Wm. Shakespeare, 1599.

What brilliant imagery Shakespeare employed in that sentence. He used strong words with powerful meaning: strikes, dead, great, reckoning, and little. Those words have visual impact. They convey emotion, which is what we all hope to do with our work.

As your reward for reading this post, here is the list of my current favorite books on the craft of writing. I suggest getting these in hardback, as it is much easier to find what you need. They can also be found used on Amazon, an option for cash-strapped authors.

To learn the basics:

The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation ($11.99 US for Kindle, $22.11 hardcover). Great reference material at much lower cost than the Chicago Manual of Style, which runs around $55.00 or more.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms: ($5.99 Kindle, $19.99 hardcover). Find the alternatives to crutch words and learn to use them to the best effect.

To learn ways to fine-tune your manuscript:

Activate: a thesaurus of actions & tactics for dynamic genre fiction ($7.99 Kindle, $23.99 paperback). Written by Damon Suede, this is a great primer to help you write lean, descriptive prose.

Damn Fine Story ($15.99 Kindle, $18.99 paperback). Written by Chuck Wendig, this book is filled with information about how stories are constructed to help you write a cohesive narrative.

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Tagged as adverbs and adjectives, books on writing craft, descriptors and modifiers, writing

February 13, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: A Merry Company in an Arbor by Adriaen van de Venne 1615

Artist: Adriaen van de Venne (circa 1589–1662)

Title: A Merry Company in an Arbor

Date 1615

Medium: oil on panel

Dimensions: height: 164 mm (6.45 in); width: 230 mm (9.05 in)

Collection: Getty Center

What I love about this painting:

Good heavens, where should I start? This is now my second favorite Dutch Renaissance painting ever. (Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow is my favorite). Adriaen van de Venne is now in the top five of my favorite artists simply because of his unrepentantly Dutch sense of humor. I want to be Dutch when I grow up!

So, let’s have a look at the story Adriaen is telling us. The action is happening in the left foreground. Everyone loves a good kegger … I mean … picnic in the woods, especially after being cooped up all winter. We get dressed in some nice summer finery and everyone brings food, and the hosts provide the drinks.

Of course, the uncles all get a bit deep into the free beer and suddenly a tree climbing contest is on. Unfortunately, Cousin Dirck loses the battle with gravity, as does Uncle Hans. Aunt Irma barely dodges her plummeting spouse, and Cousin Aart yells at Dirck to get up and stop acting like a fool. Cousin Berthe, Dirk’s new bride, is mortified, as she has only just met her spouse’s extended family and had hoped to make a better impression.

Everyone else pretends nothing happened, business as usual. It’s the way family gatherings are, with noisy well-fed people having a good time.

Other groups picnicking in the forest and meadow pretend not to hear the ruckus, but a few nosy neighbors gawk. The gossip will hit the streets before sundown, but other than that, it’s a fine day for a frolic in the forest, one that the Brueghels would have enjoyed.

Humor aside, this is a wonderful, well-executed painting. Adriaen van de Venne has captured one of the most hilarious family get-togethers ever.

About the artist, vis Wikipedia:

Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1589 – 12 November 1662), was a versatile Dutch Golden Age painter of allegories, genre subjects, and portraits, as well as a miniaturist, book illustrator, designer of political satires, and versifier.

Van de Venne was born in Delft. According to Houbraken he learned Latin in Leiden. He learned to paint from the master goldsmith and painter Simon de Valk, and afterwards learned engraving from Jeronimus van Diest, a good painter of grisailles. He then moved to Middelburg in 1614 where he was influenced by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Elder. [1]

To read more about this artist, go to Adriaen van de Venne – Wikipedia.

Credits and Attributions

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Adriaen van de Venne (Dutch – A Merry Company in an Arbor – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Adriaen_van_de_Venne_(Dutch_-_A_Merry_Company_in_an_Arbor_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=1034439061 (accessed February 12, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Adriaen van de Venne,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adriaen_van_de_Venne&oldid=1330070271 (accessed February 12, 2026).

Revisions part 2 – Allegory, Symbolism, and Foreshadowing #writing

Allegory and symbolism are important tools in a writer’s toolbox. They are similar to each other but different and often misunderstood. The difference between them is in how they are presented.

An allegory is a narrative, a moral lesson in the form of a story, heavy with symbolism.
Symbolism is a literary device that uses one thing (an item, a theme, a visual reference, etc.) throughout the narrative to represent something else or to create an atmosphere and mood.

Using these tools in worldbuilding offers us a way to avoid clumsy info dumps to imply a particular atmosphere, underscoring a theme. We can increase the reader’s awareness of possible danger if that is our desire. It involves placing symbolism into the story’s visual environment.

Symbolism helps create mood and atmosphere with fewer words. When certain objects are part of the world, what the characters see, hear, and smell is subliminal to the reader. But these clues evoke an emotional response in the reader, encouraging them to stay with the story.

Take the classic Gothic novel Wuthering Heights. Interest in Emily Brontë’s work has never been greater, with a new movie based on the novel’s characters and setting.

The movie strays widely from the novel. The novel is a tragedy delving into deeply disturbed personalities more than it is a romance.

It’s not an allegory because it doesn’t explore a moral or symbolic meaning beyond its obvious story. Brontë’s symbolism in her world-building supports and underscores the themes of love, revenge, and social class.

The way Emily Brontë employed atmosphere in Wuthering Heights is stellar. I would love to achieve that level of world-building.

We can find allegories in nearly any written narrative because humans love making connections and often imagine them where none exist. While Wuthering Heights is not considered an allegory in the literary sense, it is heavily symbolic.

Spark Notes says:

The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. (This possibility is mentioned several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two play on the moors during childhood), the moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.

The two large estates within the book create a pocket world of sorts, where little, if anything, lies beyond their existence. Thus, windows both literal and figurative serve to showcase what exists on the other side while still keeping the characters trapped. [1] Wuthering Heights: Symbols | SparkNotes

Symbolism on its own is a powerful tool. We can show more with fewer words. But while a tale may be heavily layered with symbolism, it might not be an allegory.

So, what is an allegory?

The storytelling in The Matrix series of movies is a brilliant example of an allegory. The Matrix was written by The Wachowskis. The narrative is an allegory for Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a depiction of reality and illusion. The movies in the series employ heavy symbolism in both the setting and conversations to drive home the multilayered themes of humankind, machine, fate, and free will.

In The Matrix, reality and illusion are portrayed with layers of symbolism:

The names of the characters
The words used in conversations
The androgynous clothes they wear

Everything on the set or mentioned in conversations underscores those themes, including the lighting. Inside The Matrix, the world is bathed in a green light, as if through a green-tinted lens. In the real world, the lighting is harsher, unfiltered.

Everything that appears or is said onscreen in the movie is symbolic and supports one of the underlying concepts. When Morpheus later asks Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill, he essentially offers the choice between fate and free will.

We incorporate symbolism and allegory into the environment during worldbuilding to create mood and atmosphere.

These subliminal impressions affect our (the reader’s) mood and emotions, drawing us deeper into that world. These are separate but entwined forces, and they can create an emotion in the reader, such as a sense of foreboding, which is a subtler form of foreshadowing.

In real life, emotion is the experience of contrast, of transitioning from negative to positive emotional energy, and back again.

In a powerful story, symbolism, allegory, or both exist on the surface and in the subtext. Without the feelings and emotions the writer injects into the story, our characters do a zombie-like shuffle to the end, leaving the reader feeling robbed.

Setting is only a place. It is not atmosphere. Mood, atmosphere, and emotion are part of the inferential layer of a story.

How a setting is shown contributes to the atmosphere. Atmosphere is created as much by odors, scents, ambient sounds, and visuals as by the characters’ moods and emotions. Emily Brontë‘s moors and windows are subliminal background elements, but they are also foreshadowing. They convey information to the reader on a subconscious level, supporting the actions and conversations of her characters.

In my own work, I want to convey mood and atmosphere without resorting to an info dump. But what symbols can I place in the environment of my current work-in-progress to help build suspense? I need to create a list and add it to my outline as I go.

Side note: Just because I use a plan doesn’t mean you have to. It’s just how I work.

For me, themes are important, and a powerful theme inspires me to tell a story. A strong theme can offer suggestions and symbols when we imagine the world we are creating. I note these ideas in the outline, so I don’t lose track of them.

Another side note: Don’t be surprised if a casual reader doesn’t notice the symbolism you worked so hard on. They won’t see symbolism on a conscious level. However, it will reinforce the mood and atmosphere, keeping them reading.

Dedicated readers love work that holds up on closer examination, enjoying work with layers of depth, work they can read again and again and always find something new in it.

On the surface, the story and the characters who live it out are what make a book great. Deeper down, the allegories and symbolisms embedded in the narrative sink into the reader’s subconscious, stirring thoughts and raising ideas they might not otherwise have considered.

Previous in this series: Revisions, part 1: Shakespeare and the Art of Foreshadowing #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Credits and Attributions:

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Tagged as Allegory, allegory in The Matrix, mood and atmosphere in Wuthering Heights, symbolism, writing

February 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: a second look at “Under flowering trees” by Adolf Kaufmann

Artist: Adolf Kaufmann (1848–1916)

Title: Under flowering trees

Date: before 1916

Medium: oil on canvas

Inscription: signed A. Kaufmann

What I love about this painting:

I first featured this painting in 2023. Adolph Kaufmann was brilliant at depicting the kind of misty rain we often get in spring. Here, he gives us a beautiful spring day with dew clinging to the grass, along with apple and cherry trees in full bloom. The weather is cool and damp with mist rising the way spring mornings often are here in the Pacific Northwest.

Chickens roam the orchard, and two women are digging, breaking the ground for a spring garden.

To the left is a weathered building. Is it a barn? Is it their home? It’s hidden behind the shrubbery so it’s difficult to tell, but it has no window, so I think it may be a barn.

Nothing is romanticized—we see it the way the artist did on that spring day over a century ago.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Adolf Kaufmann (15 May 1848, in Troppau – 25 November 1916, in Vienna) was an Austrian landscape and marine artist.

He was initially self-taught, but completed his studies with the animal painter, Émile van Marcke, in Paris and undertook several study trips, throughout Europe and the Middle East. His residence alternated between Paris, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Munich.

In 1890, he decided to settle in Vienna and opened a studio in the Wieden district. In 1900, together with Carl von Merode [de] and Heinrich Lefler, he opened an “Art School for Ladies”. He continued to visit Paris frequently and, when he painted there, signed his works with the pseudonym “A. Guyot”. Other names he signed with include “A. Papouschek”, “G. Salvi”, “A. Jarptmann”, “R. Neiber”, “J. Rollin” and “M. Bandouch”. Why he did this is unclear, although his choice of signature often reflects stylistic differences.

His landscapes were influenced by the Barbizon school and the style known as “paysage intime,” both of which he was exposed to in France during the 1870s. (The paysage intimate, French for “familiar landscape,” was a style of painting that dealt with simple, simple landscapes and emerged in the mid-19th century. It was the predecessor of the Impressionist style.) [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Adolf Kaufmann Unter blühenden Bäumen.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Adolf_Kaufmann_Unter_bl%C3%BChenden_B%C3%A4umen.jpg&oldid=623159308 (accessed February 5, 2026.)

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Adolf Kaufmann,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adolf_Kaufmann&oldid=1094252143 (accessed February 5, 2026).

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Tagged as 19th century landscape paintings, 20th century landscape paintings, Fine Art Friday, landscape painting of spring, Under flowering trees by Adolf Kaufmann

February 2, 2026 · 6:30 am

Revisions, part 1: Shakespeare and the Art of Foreshadowing #writing

Good foreshadowing is crucial. If, like me, you work from an outline (a planner), you might plan to embed clues in the first quarter of the story, hints that are little warning signs of future events.For those who wing it (pantsers), this happens on a subconscious level, but it does happen.

Whether we are planners or pantsers, clumsy foreshadowing or neglecting to foreshadow are things we do when laying down our story’s first draft.

They are clues we leave in our first drafts, hints that tell us what we need to expand on or cut. For new writers, recognizing and correcting those signals can be a challenge. Experience helps us understand what we are looking at when it comes to seeing our own work with an unbiased eye.

We gain experience by

Writing as often as we can, daily if possible.
Attending writing seminars.
Reading books on the craft.
Participating in local writing groups.
Looking back at our earlier work with a critical eye.

Foreshadowing can be an opportunity for an info dump. This is why we seek out writing groups or hire freelance editors. We want our work to be the best we can make it. And trust me, first drafts are rife with what doesn’t work as it is currently written.

Even editors have editors because when it comes to our own work, we see what we intended to write, not what is there.

Running it through ChatGPT isn’t having it edited
Nor is running it through Grammarly or ProWriting Aid, or any other editing software.

Absolute perfection is flat and mechanical, devoid of life. The eye of an experienced editor is needed to ensure the human element, the voice of the author, is protected and developed in a manuscript.

The second draft is when we finetune our foreshadowing. When a possibility is briefly, almost offhandedly mentioned, but almost immediately overlooked or ignored by the protagonists, that is foreshadowing.

It is perfectly acceptable to use the occasional “I told you so” moment in fiction. These happen in real life, but fiction isn’t quite real. ALL fiction is a way of dealing with reality but dressed up in a bit of fantasy.

We subtly insert small hints, little offhand references to future events. If the narrative is well-written, readers will stick with it as they will want to see how it plays out.

Readers aren’t perfect. Some will miss the suggested possibility just as the unsuspecting characters do. Other readers will catch the clues and begin to worry.

The most crucial aspect of foreshadowing is the surprise when all the pieces fall into place. This is the moment when the reader says, “I should have seen that coming.”

We have many reasons to pursue good foreshadowing skills. In my opinion, the most important is that it helps avoid using the clumsy Deus Ex Machina (pronounced: Day-us ex Mah-kee-nah) (God from the Machine) as a way to miraculously resolve an issue.

A Deus Ex Machina occurs when, toward the end of the narrative, an author inserts a new event, character, ability, or otherwise resolves a seemingly insoluble problem in a sudden, unexpected way.

Foreshadowing also helps us avoid the opposite and equally awkward device, the Diabolus Ex Machina (Demon from the machine). This is the bad guy’s counterpart to the Deus Ex Machina.

It’s a problem that occurs when the author suddenly realizes the evil his character faces doesn’t warrant a novel. Yet, they don’t want to waste what they have already written. At that point, they introduce an unexplained new event, character, ability, or object designed to ensure things suddenly get much worse for the protagonists.

As a reader, I hate it when a character suddenly develops a new skill or knowledge without explanation. This is when the narrative becomes unbelievable and is known as a Chekhov’s Skill. Some authors explain it away after the fact, but this kind of fault makes it impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. To avoid this, we need to mention previous examples of the characters using or training that skill. Without briefly foreshadowing that ability, the reader will assume the character doesn’t have it.

Literature and the expectations of the reader are like everything else. They evolve and change over the centuries.

In genre fiction today, a prologue may or may not be a place for foreshadowing. This is because modern readers don’t have the patience to wade through large chunks of exposition dumped in the first pages of a novel.

William Shakespeare used both exposition and foreshadowing. Larger events may be foreshadowed through the smaller events that precede them.

Let’s look at a scene from The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, one I have talked about before. Modern readers know it as simply Romeo and Juliet, but Shakespeare originally called it what it is: a tragedy. This is the scene where Benvolio is trying to talk Romeo out of his infatuation for Rosaline.

“Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.”

In other words, “Dude, the minute you see a new girl, you’ll forget this one.”

Benvolio knows his friend well. Just as he predicts, as soon as Romeo lays eyes on Juliet, he forgets his obsession with Rosaline, and a new obsession begins.

Shakespeare employs foreshadowing again in a later scene. When Benvolio brings the news that Mercutio is dead, Romeo says,

“This day’s black fate on more days doth depend;

This but begins the woe, others must end.”

Romeo is predicting that Mercutio’s death is a disaster for everyone and feels as if he is racing toward an unknown future.

In that moment, we see that Romeo is deeply aware that he has reached a point of no return.

He must fight Tybalt to avenge Mercutio because his society requires it. Therefore, he must duel to the death despite knowing that killing Tybalt won’t resolve anything. Instead, the murder will only perpetuate the problem.

Romeo has seen the foreshadowing and knows he is no longer in control of his fate.

This is one of the many reasons why (four-hundred years later) we still read and love the works of William Shakespeare. This is why movies about him are still being made, such as 2025’s masterpiece, Hamnet.

It takes both restraint and skill to insert tiny hints of what is to come into your narrative, but foreshadowing gives the protagonists (and the writer) an indication of where to go next.

These clues tantalize a reader. The desire to see if what we think has been foreshadowed keeps us turning the page.

Part 2 of this little series on revisions will explore worldbuilding and how the clues we leave in the environment can be a form of foreshadowing. And later, we will talk about easy fixes for those of us whose schooldays didn’t include a dive into practical grammar.

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Tagged as Chekhov’s Skill, Deus Ex Machina, Diabolus Ex Machina, foreshadowing

January 30, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Flock of Sheep with Shepherdess on a Rainy Day by Adloph Kaufmann

Artist: Adolf Kaufmann (1848–1916)

Title: Flock of Sheep with Shepherdess on a Rainy Day

Date: by 1916

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: 102 × 113 cm (40.1 × 44.4 in)

What I love about this painting:

Oh those poor miserable sheep. Sure, they’re wearing wool coats, but it’s autumn, and the rain is cold. The shepherdess isn’t really enjoying the day either, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, and this girl’s job is shepherding the sheep.

Seriously, this is a wonderful painting. Kaufmann shows us an exceedingly realistic rainy day in a wooded meadow, with water pooling in muddy places and bedraggled sheep getting their feet wet. Somehow he has managed to convey the sullen mood of the flock, which I can relate to. Fortunately for them, the shepherdess is most likely taking them to higher ground where they can graze without standing in water.

I feel their misery. The rains have returned in force here, and I am glad I no longer have sheep to shepherd, rain or shine. Still, I must leave my cozy apartment and drive to the grocery store, etc., grateful that I am in my warm, dry car and not walking the muddy path Kaufmann shows us in this painting.

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Adolf Kaufmann (15 May 1848, in Troppau – 25 November 1916, in Vienna) was a landscape and marine artist from Austria-Hungary.

He was initially self-taught, but completed his studies with the animal painter, Émile van Marcke, in Paris and undertook several study trips, throughout Europe and the Middle East. His residence alternated between Paris, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Munich.

In 1890, he decided to settle in Vienna and opened a studio in the Wieden district. In 1900, together with Carl von Merode [de] and Heinrich Lefler, he opened an “Art School for Ladies”. He continued to visit Paris frequently and, when he painted there, signed his works with the pseudonym “A. Guyot”. Other names he signed with include “A. Papouschek”, “G. Salvi”, “A. Jarptmann”, “R. Neiber”, “J. Rollin” and “M. Bandouch”. Why he did this is unclear, although his choice of signature often reflects stylistic differences. [1]

Credits and Attributions

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Adolf Kaufmann – Flock of Sheep with Shepherdess on a Rainy Day.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Adolf_Kaufmann_-_Flock_of_Sheep_with_Shepherdess_on_a_Rainy_Day.jpg&oldid=1114083148 (accessed January 29, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Adolf Kaufmann,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adolf_Kaufmann&oldid=1332903934 (accessed January 29, 2026).

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Tagged as 19th-century landscape paintings, Adolph Kaufmann, Fine Art Friday, Flock of Sheep with Shepherdess on a Rainy Day by Adloph Kaufmann

January 26, 2026 · 6:00 am

Bringing emotions to life #writing

To create characters with emotional depth, you must swim with the sharks of show-and-tell. Most authors who have been in writing groups for any length of time become adept at writing emotions on a surface level.

We work to show our characters’ facial expressions, whether happiness, anger, or spite, etc. We show their eyebrows raise or draw together. Their foreheads crease and eyes twinkle; shoulders slump and hands tremble; lips turn up and dimples pop; lips curve down and eyes spark … and so on and so on.

When done sparingly and combined with conversation, this can work. But no more than one facial change per interaction, please. Nothing is more off-putting than reading a story where each character’s facial expressions take center stage.

Writing emotions with depth is a balancing act. Expressions and body language can only hint at the internal thoughts and feelings of a character, as showing the outward physical indicators of a particular emotion is only half the story.

This is where we write from real life. When someone is happy, what do you see? Bright eyes, laughter, and smiles. When you are happy, how do you feel? Energized, confident.

How do we show it? Through the observations, both spoken and unspoken, of the main characters and those close to them.

In revisions, I look at each scene and try to combine the physical evidence of personal mood with the deeper aspect of the emotion. I combine spoken dialogue and internal dialogue with physical cues to offer hints as to why a character is feeling a certain way.

The hard part is to write it so I don’t tell the reader what to experience. I love it when an author makes the emotion feel as if it is the reader’s idea.

Here is a short list of simple, commonly used, easy to describe, surface emotions. These are easy to show through conversations and physical cues.

Anger
Anticipation
Awe
Confidence
Contempt
Defensiveness
Denial
Desire
Desperation
Determination
Disappointment
Disbelief
Disgust
Elation
Embarrassment
Fear
Friendship
Grief
Happiness
Hate
Interest
Love
Pride
Revulsion
Sadness
Shock
Surprise

Other emotions are tricky because they are more difficult to show physically unless some background information is included. They are complicated and deeply personal, but these are the gut-wrenching emotions that make our work speak to the reader.

So, here is an even shorter list of complex emotions:

Anguish
Anxiety
Defeat
Depression
Indecision
Jealousy
Ethical Quandary
Inadequacy
Lust
Powerlessness
Regret
Resistance
Temptation
Trust
Unease
Weakness

When I began writing seriously in the 1990s, I had no idea how to convey the basic emotions of my characters other than through dialogue, a form of telling. Other writers have the opposite problem, and their characters smile, and smile, and grin, and smile. It is showing … but not showing very much other than a lack of inspiration on the writer’s part.

I had good mentors and editors in those days, and through their kind suggestions, I have learned ways to combine the showing and telling. The key is to think of them as salt and garlic powder: a little of each makes the soup delicious but too much ruins it.

If you are just starting out, and don’t know how to include physical cues in a scene, a good handbook that offers a jumping off point is The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. This book is affordable and full of hints that you can use to give depth to your characters, which makes the story deeper as a whole.

Just don’t go overboard. They will offer nine or ten hints that are physical indications for each of a wide range of surface emotions. Do your readers a favor and only choose one physical indicator per emotion, per scene.

I say this because it is easy to make a mockery of your characters, turning them into melodramatic cartoons.

Subtle physical hints, along with some internal dialogue laced into the narrative show a rounded character, one who is not mentally unhinged.

Each of us experiences emotional highs and lows in our daily lives. We have deep-rooted, personal reasons for our emotions. Our characters must have credible reasons too, inspired by a flash of memory or a sensory prompt that a reader can empathize with.

Why does a blind alley or a vacant lot make a character nervous?

Perhaps they were attacked and robbed in such a place.

Why does a grandmother hoard food?

Perhaps her baby sister died of starvation.

Why does the sight of daisies make an old man smile?

He might be remembering the best day of his life, sixty years before.

Writing genuine emotions requires practice and thought. I’ve mentioned this before, but motivation is key. WHY does the character react with that emotion? Emotions that are undermotivated have no base for existence, no foundation.

The story feels shallow, a lot of noise about nothing. Hints of backstory offered through dialogue, either internal or spoken, can resolve this.

Another thing to consider is timing. The moment to mention the character’s memory is when the physical response to the emotion hits and the character is processing it. That way, there is a reason for their sudden nausea. With small hints, you avoid the dreaded info dump, and the reader begins to see the needed backstory. They want to keep reading to discover the whole truth.

Phrasing and word choices can convey emotional impact in your narrative. If you use powerful words, you won’t have to resort to a great deal of description.

I don’t worry about this in the first draft. The second draft is where I check for weak word choices.

Passive phrasings are first draft clues, places where I was just trying to get the story on paper. If they are left in the final draft, they separate the reader from the experience, negating the emotional impact of what could be a powerful scene.

The trick is to avoid writing maudlin caricatures of emotions, and over-the-top melodrama.

The books I love are written with bold, strong words and phrasing. The emotional lives of their characters are real and immediate to me. Those are the kind of characters that have depth and are memorable.

A good exercise for writing deep emotions is to create character sketches for characters you currently have no use for. I say this because just as in all the many other skills necessary to the craft of writing a balanced narrative, practice is required.

Practice really does make the imperfections in our writing less noticeable, and you may find a later use for these practice characters. They may be the seeds of a marketable short story.

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Tagged as showing emotions in writing, writing, writing craft, writing emotions

January 23, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Spring Landscape by Ellen Favorin ca 1900

Artist: Ellen Favorin (1853–1919)

Title: English: Spring Landscape (Suomi: Kevätmaisema)

Genre: landscape painting

Date: circa 1900

Dimensions: height: 20.7 cm (8.1 in)

Collection: HAM Helsinki Art Museum

What I love about this painting:

Ellen Favorin shows us a pleasant spring day beside a calm lake, with leaves on the birch trees just beginning to bud out. I especially like how she has portrayed the foliage and shrubbery along the lake shore, with the water high from the spring snowmelt, and the birch trees standing with their feet submerged.

Someone is enjoying a quiet day of fishing, and I would love to be them! What a perfect day.

I will find more paintings by this artist and feature them in the future.

About the artist, via Wikipedia:

Elsa “Ellen” Favorin (31 December 1853– 27 November 1919 was a Swedish-speaking Finnish painter.

Her parents were Anders Abraham Favorin and Lovisa Ingman. After attending the painting schools in Helsinki and Stockholm, she continued her studies in Munich, Düsseldorf and at the Académie Julian in Paris. She often painted landscapes and was one of the artists who joined Victor Westerholm in the artists’ colony at Önningeby on the island of Åland. She died together with her sister in a fire at their home in Lohja in 1919. [1]

As you can see, Wikipedia had little to say about her. However, you can find an excellent and comprehensive biography of Ellen Favorin at NiceArtGallery.com.

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Ellen Favorin – Spring Landscape.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ellen_Favorin_-_Spring_Landscape.jpg&oldid=864051225 (accessed January 22, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Ellen Favorin,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ellen_Favorin&oldid=1333359650 (accessed January 22, 2026).

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Tagged as Fine Art Friday, Women Artists, 20th century landscape art, Spring Landscape by Ellen Favorin

Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Exploring Depth #writing

#FineArtFriday: A second look at “Gathering Wood for Winter” by George Henry Durrie 1855

Credits and Attributions:

Building strength as a writer #writing

First of all, good writing conveys the most information with no unnecessary words. Bad writing is not a sin, if we understand that many problems can be resolved in the second draft, the stage known as revisions.

#FineArtFriday: A Merry Company in an Arbor by Adriaen van de Venne 1615

Credits and Attributions

Revisions part 2 – Allegory, Symbolism, and Foreshadowing #writing

So, what is an allegory?

Setting is only a place. It is not atmosphere. Mood, atmosphere, and emotion are part of the inferential layer of a story.

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#FineArtFriday: a second look at “Under flowering trees” by Adolf Kaufmann

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Revisions, part 1: Shakespeare and the Art of Foreshadowing #writing

These clues tantalize a reader. The desire to see if what we think has been foreshadowed keeps us turning the page.

#FineArtFriday: Flock of Sheep with Shepherdess on a Rainy Day by Adloph Kaufmann

Bringing emotions to life #writing

The hard part is to write it so I don’t tell the reader what to experience. I love it when an author makes the emotion feel as if it is the reader’s idea.

#FineArtFriday: Spring Landscape by Ellen Favorin ca 1900

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First of all, good writing conveys the most information with no unnecessary words. Bad writing is not a sin, if we understand that many problems can be resolved in the second draft, the stage known as revisions.

Share this:

Credits and Attributions

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So, what is an allegory?

Setting is only a place. It is not atmosphere. Mood, atmosphere, and emotion are part of the inferential layer of a story.

Credits and Attributions:

Share this:

Credits and Attributions:

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These clues tantalize a reader. The desire to see if what we think has been foreshadowed keeps us turning the page.

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The hard part is to write it so I don’t tell the reader what to experience. I love it when an author makes the emotion feel as if it is the reader’s idea.

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