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[melodytaylorauthor]

If you want to write believable characters, go to therapy.

In order to write good characters, you need to understand people and how they think and what they do. Understanding yourself is the very best way to start.

[melodytaylorauthor]

My struggle with plot structure

And struggle I have.

I feel like it’s not an unusual struggle.

When a person first starts writing, there’s a ton of information out there on how to make your sentences work, how to create characters that aren’t wooden, grammar, spelling, the art of fiction, putting your soul into it and not boring your reader, how to create a habit of sitting down and putting words on the page. All of that. Everywhere, for the choosing.

And then, once you’re no longer a beginner, all the information pretty much dries up.

You hear words bandied about like “3-act structure” and “theme” and “arc,” but what those things are and if you need them (you do!) never seems to come up. Or if they do come up, they’re very nebulous and it’s hard to get a great feel for them.

Last year, I realized I didn’t actually understand or know jack about plot, beyond the nebulous “arc is what your character goes through,” etc., so I figured I’d better get on that. “Trying to be professional” and all that jazz. It only took me four books to figure that out!

So first off, a Google search led me to a lot of articles about how many acts a plot should have. Apparently, there are a lot of choices. Every article I came across essentially said the same thing: “Shakespeare used 5-act structure, The Hero's Journey uses 7 acts, and Hollywood uses 3-act structure. Do whatever you want!”

Great. Not helpful. What IS an act? What goes into it? How does one know when one has a complete act? What’s the DIFFERENCE between the different numbers of acts in a story? If I can use anywhere from three to seven acts, why should I choose one over another?? I think the number six is pretty, should I use six acts?

So I tried Googling “what is 3-act plot structure.” I found a LOT of articles that stated “Three act structure is simple! The first act is your story’s opening. The last act is the story’s climax and end. And the middle act is everything else!”

Say what? Easy?? How is that easy? Why does so much advice on story telling have to be so damn vague? Is it because so many authors actually have no idea what they’re doing? It is, isn’t it. Ah, damn.

Interestingly, there were a LOT of articles that discussed authors complaining about the “soggy middle” of their story. Well, yeah, if they know how the story starts, they know how they want it to end, but the middle is “everything else,” what the hell is a person supposed to WRITE?? “Everything else” is not a direction! Are the characters supposed to sit around and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and discuss the meaning of human existence? Hibernate? Run around screaming? What, what, what??

Well, silly, they’re supposed to arc. You know, what happens to your character through the course of the book.

Oh, yes, okay. Got it, got it.

(For the curious, a character arc is the world view/state of being a character starts out with, and how that shifts to something different for better or for worse through the course of the story. Usually better, but dark stories will sometimes have the main character lose all hope or something like that.)

I did manage to stumble across a couple actual books about plot. I bought them. One of them was very helpful. One of them was most certainly not. And I found one — count it — ONE article that broke plot structure down into FOUR acts AND explained WHY the authors of the article liked four acts and WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN in each act. HOLY SHIT!! That article has since been removed from the website where I found it. Good thing I copied and pasted it to my own computer before it vanished!

(For the curious: Act 1, we meet the MC, they are invited to adventure, they almost certainly refuse, and then they are forced into it somehow. Act 2, they strike out in a new world, making friends and enemies as they go, learning about how things work in this new place and gaining confidence until it’s shattered by something crazy happening. Act 3, they have to maneuver in a new way, figure out what they were doing wrong before and deal with the crazy thing that happened at the end of act 2, they will come face-to-face with the main baddie and they will lose. Act 4, everything has come to a head, the MC is trapped, on the run, pushed to the brink, with the baddie right on their heels, and when it finally looks like all is lost, the main thing they need to face or learn about suddenly becomes crazy clear, and they are able to defeat the baddie/situation using their new knowledge/skill/emotion.)

My favorite book on plot I found was “The Story Grid, what good editors know.” It’s not a book on act structure as much as what scenes need to do and how a book needs to flow. But man, is it helpful and insightful! It breaks writing a book down into concrete steps that you can check and follow, rather than all this woo-woo business with “the middle is everything else” and “arc is what happens to your characters.”

Armed with this new knowledge, I set about dissecting some of my favorite books and movies.

Man, four act structure and the mechanics of making a scene work is totally IT! Every book I re-read, every movie I re-watched, the acts lined up and made sense, the scenes turned and kept the plot moving, it all flowed. It all WORKED!

I feel so satisfied when someone who knows what they’re talking about can point out how things work. I hate when people offer squishy advice that doesn’t actually make any sense or that you just have to “feel.” Either it’s real and you can damn well put it into words, or it’s fake and you’re making it up. JEEZ.

I used my new knowledge to edit “The Winding Road Between,” and am very satisfied with how it shook out. I’m working on a new book called “Night Falls,” and it is coming together just slick. I’m super happy with the 4-act structure and even more happy with the leeway and wiggle room I’ve found inside of it. It’s far less rigid than it first appears, while offering a scaffolding to hang the scenes of my story on so it all makes sense. As long as it goes 1-2-3-4, and each act is roughly the same length-ish, it all comes out in the end.

I love it when a plot comes together!

[melodytaylorauthor]

I have a list of topics to blog about on a notepad on my phone.

One of them is "religion in stories, why I don't."

I realized recently that I should.

[melodytaylorauthor]

I've been seeing a lot of posts about not wanting to write, or struggling to, or how each word is a painful process that must be birthed forth.

I remember when I felt that way.

I don't feel like that anymore. I love to write. I want to write. I look forward to writing. Sometimes I have to wrestle the words out a little, but it's always satisfying to see them arrive. Mostly, they come.

I don't want to go back to the other way. I like this way.

I will try to stay.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Mothman vs. Invisible Vampire Cat

I am running a patron drive in the month of September! The subjects of this story were submitted to me by people on my Patreon account, patreon.com/melodytaylor. 2 dollahs makes you hollah! I will be writing a new short story every Monday in September, using things my patrons want to see me write about. Funny, weird, dark, inspiring — I’m here for all of it, maybe in one story!

Thanks so much to the people contributing at Patreon already, and thanks to my new members, JP Mackey and Jay M Honesy! I appreciate the love so much, ya’ll!

JP Mackey suggested more smut, LittleNeko suggested cryptid smut/sci-fi, Terry Angell suggested a cat, or a vampire, or a cat vampire who turns people into cat people, or a vampire who turns invisible but can’t control it, or maybe the cat turns invisible too.

Please enjoy this story, Mothman vs. Invisible Vampire Cat:

“Mothman, we meet at last!”

Invisible Vampire Cat spoke in Mothman’s mind, their voice a soft timber with a small rumble of menace in his thoughts. Of course the damn cat would be psychic; cat’s mouths were not made for speech, after all.

Mothman spread his wings high over his head, blocking the full moon from view. He had been tracking Invisible Vampire Cat’s spaceship for weeks, maybe months, as it flickered in and out of visibility across his swamp. No one would set foot in his territory, where he alone could confound and mystify the local humans! Not even an invisible vampire cat!

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment, Cat!” he called back, in the language of his own invention that no human had ever been able to decipher or understand. See if Invisible Vampire Cat could follow that!

“We’ll see who’s been waiting for what, Mothman!”

Ah, so the cat did understand. Interesting. A cunning adversary, indeed. Still, the time had come to put an end to the cat’s intrusion on his swamp.

“You will never defeat me, Cat!” Mothman cried. “I see the past, the present, the future, and all possible timelines as clearly as you see me now!”

“Ah, but I surprised you just now, didn’t I?” Invisible Vampire Cat said, somehow purring in Mothman’s mind as they spoke.

The sensation was disconcertingly pleasant, vibrating in places Mothman hadn’t even known he could feel. He shook it off.

“I am a vortex of time and space! I see all, I know all!”

Invisible Vampire Cat suddenly appeared before him, closer than he’d expected. Close enough that Mothman could have reached out the smallest distance with his appendage and stroked their soft fur.

“Dammit,” Invisible Vampire Cat muttered in his mind. “I don’t actually control the invisibility. It comes and goes.”

“Oh, that’s inconvenient,” Mothman said.

“It is, it really is.” Invisible Vampire Cat flicked their ears back in annoyance, then shook their body from the tip of their sweet little nose to the end of their long, flowing tail. “Anyhow, I’m totally unpredictable, even by a being so in tune with the very fabric of the universe, Mothman. After all, I am a cat!”

Ah, damn. That much was true. Cats . . . cats did not move through space and time like they should. Mothman had assumed an Invisible Vampire Cat might be different. He’d been a fool.

“It’s really not your fault,” Invisible Vampire Cat purred in his mind again. “Cats are like that.” Then they reached their front paws forward and bowed in a deep stretch.

Mothman felt his fingers flex. He wanted to pet that soft, sleek fur. And in that bowed stretch, ears flat against their head, Invisible Vampire Cat was so . . . cute.

“Hey, ever been bitten by a vampire?” Invisble Vampire Cat asked, as they stood from their stretch. “It’s incredibly pleasurable.”

Mothman took a step back. “What? No, of course not. It’s what — why would you ask?”

Invisible Vampire Cat closed the step between them, large yellow green eyes unblinking. “Why do you think I’m asking?”

“I — I tracked you down here for a fight to the death,” Mothman stammered, though now he couldn’t help picturing those long, white canines glinting in the moonlight, sinking into his own fuzzed skin. Incredibly pleasurable? So he’d heard . . .

Invisible Vampire Cat smiled. Cat’s mouths weren’t shaped correctly for talking, but they could certainly smile. They winked one big yellow eye. “We certainly don’t have to, if you’d rather fight.”

Mothman stammered, he didn’t even know what. Invisible Vampire Cat strolled closer, arched their back, and smeared themselves from head to toe along Mothman’s body. Their fur was incredible soft, almost like a new hatched duckling. Mothman shivered.

He had not envisioned this.

“What if I just, you know, just a little nibble, on the arm, perhaps, just so you know? Just so you get to experience it, one time?” Invisible Vampire Cat added a vocal “mrr.” The soft, inquisitive sound tugged at Mothman’s heart.

“I mean, maybe.” Mothman hesitated, lowering his huge wings just a few inches.

Invisible Vampire Cat arched their back and rubbed their full length against Mothman again. “You’ll like it,” they rumbled in his mind.

Invisible Vampire Cat reached out for Mothman’s arm and nipped, gently, almost playfully; then sank their long vampire cat fangs into the meat of his arm.

It was, as Invisible Vampire Cat had promised, remarkably pleasurable; almost too much, too quickly. Mothman gasped and clutched at Invisible Vampire Cat’s fur. It was just as soft as he had imgined in his fingers. He groaned as the cat bit him harder.

“Oh, Cat,” he groaned. “Oh, that is . . . something.”

“Oh, I know,” Invisible Vampire Cat purred in his mind, sending vibrating ripples deeper through his body. “It gets better.”

Invisible Vampire Cat removed their sharp fangs from Mothman’s arm and slunk up the length of Mothman’s body, soft fur tickling his belly. In a moment, the cat had snuggled in close to Mothman’s neck, and before he knew what might happen next, Invisible Vampire Cat sank their long fangs into the soft part of Motthman’s shoulder. The sensation was exquisite; coursing through Mothman’s body.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, Invisible Vampire Cat, I never knew!”

“That’s why I had to show you,” Invisible Vampire Cat purred in his mind. They purred more, louder, vibrating through Motman’s entire being, vibrating through every past, every future, through every possibility in time until that sound, pulsing through him, was all Mothman could see or know. Here, and now, with an impossible interdimensional cat that he had never expected.

The multitude of sensations coursing through him, from wingtip to appendage tip, all overwhelmed him at once, and his body wracked with intense, delightful shudders.

“I’m not done with you,” Invisible Vampire Cat purred. The purred somehow louder, vibrating Mothman’s entire being, not just across every possibility, but filling them, until every possibility was Mothman’s rapturous being succumbing to yet another overwhelm of his every sense.

But as each possibility crystalized in this moment of pure, blazing feeling, one by one, each possibility began to collapse. At first, Mothman didn’t even notice the first few thousand, as the intensity of what he felt gave way little by little to a wash of warmth and bliss. But as each possibility released him, they began to fall away, first by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands.

Warmth and bliss began to turn to chill.

“What . . . what are you doing? What’s happening?”

“Ah, I told you, Mothman,” Invisible Vampire Cat said. “I am a cat. And cats — well, we can’t be predicted.”

As dominoes set up and then nudged, all the possibilities that Mothman had ever known fell, each thousand taking another thousand with them, closing off his sense of the multitudes of universes. Each of them collapsed around him, until only one remained, and then, at last, even that one faded to absolute nothing.

Invisible Vampire Cat continued to smile as Mothman fell beneath their slight weight. The purr from a small throat filled the humid swamp air. In a moment, the thrum of a spacecraft’s engine joined it, humming in harmony.

After several minutes, the rough shape of a pile of swamp muck rose, smaller than before. The new, second cat gave a little “Mrr?” of inquiry. Invisible Vampire Cat answered with a louder purr of their own.

Together, the two shapes of little animals with soft, soft fur and sharp, sharp teeth began to fade from view, leaving behind only the sounds of singing frogs and crickets and an occasional alligator grunting in the darkness.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Today I released Mothman vs. Invisible Vampire Cat, a short story written based on suggestions by my patrons!

Last year, in the midst of trying to edit my latest novel and feeling terrible about writing and my ability to do it, I spontaneously had the thought, "What if I don't want to do this anymore?"

I texted two of my writing buddies in a panic, and they talked me down. (Thanks, Terry and James!) I realized I did still want to write, but not under so much pressure. I started working on giving myself some grace, and also started messing around with the Good Omens fandom.

I gained so much confidence from that, and was able to eventually stop pressuring myself, and now this week I find myself spontaneously thinking "I'm such a good writer. I love what I do."

Folks, retraining your brain is hard and time consuming, but possible and so damn worth it.

I took today off from writing for some house chores and down time. I'm so excited to get back at it tomorrow, though! I love what I do!

[melodytaylorauthor]

As someone supportive of disabled access, I was extremely puzzled by their statement that across the board condemnation of AI writing was inherently classist and ableist -- people need ways to put their ideas out, not ways to have ideas. Accessible keyboards, voice-to-text, affordable programs -- yes, yes, yes.

AI?? I can't figure out why anyone needs that.

We know many of you have seen NaNoWriMo's recent statements on generative AI...

Well, we have too—and that's why we've made the decision to retract our sponsorship of NaNo.

Your support and belief in human creativity, transparency and collaboration mean everything to us, and we're committed to staying true to that. Thank you all! 💙

You can read our full statement here.

The Ellipsus team xo

[melodytaylorauthor]

The shower drain of languages. Do as you please. Yes.

Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), "Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant."

[melodytaylorauthor]

The trouble with writing is that so many books are not very good. Or at least, not to my taste. The challenge is finding a way to be better than that, and to let readers know I am better than that so they will trust me to take them on the journey I want to take them on.

[melodytaylorauthor]

LOL

One day I was writing out a scene, and trying to figure out how a character would react to what was happening. I started acting the scene out at my desk, responding with different lines until I found one that sounded like the character would say it, then moving on to the next. I had just about wrapped the scene up when my husband came downstairs and said, "What the fuck are you doing?"

WRITING, HONEY.

"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.

[melodytaylorauthor]

For such a long time as a baby writer, I thought I didn't want to put any messages or lessons or morals into my stories.

It has taken me decades to realize that I was wrong.

[melodytaylorauthor]

On today's episode of Mel writes books:

I am in the process of re-editing my first novel. I wrote it when I was 18 years old, and I've learned a bunch since then. (I should hope. Eesh.)

It's coming along nicely, thank you. The bones of a good story were in there, I just didn't yet know how to dig them out. Now I do.

As part of a new edit, I'm also getting a new book cover with a new author photo and a new description (often erroneously called a blurb).

Descriptions are HARD. It took me a few years, but I think I finally have a handle on the damn things. Here it is:

"Ian is a young woman with an unusual name – and a brand-new pair of fangs.

After life as a struggling artist, becoming a vampire is the most fun Ian’s ever had. Alongside her vampire mentor, she’s been playing the debutante artiste all night and sleeping all day. Until the night her mentor is brutally murdered.

Now Ian is next on the killer’s list. With no mentor and no idea how to catch a murderer, Ian fears she’ll be dead before sunrise. When an old and dangerous vampire who calls himself Sebastian Cain offers his help, Ian knows that despite his frightening demeanor, she has to accept.

But Sebastian is hiding secrets. With justice for her mentor and her own survival hanging in the balance, Ian must unravel Sebastian’s dark past and true intentions, gain control of her new vampiric powers, and uncover why a killer wants her dead – before she finds a dagger through her heart."

Allow me to dissect for you, if you like.

A story needs to consist of an everyday world, an inciting incident, characters' goals, complications, crisis, climax, resolution. A description is similar, but you don't want to include the final climax or resolution, and it's not identical.

A description needs a splashy hook. This should be one sentence, not too long. Then three paragraphs. First paragraph: a sum up of the everyday world, characters' goals, and the inciting incident. Keep that as tight as you can. Three to four sentences is ideal. Second paragraph: a summary of the complications. Stick to the main two or three complications, don't get lost in the weeds. Three to four sentences again is ideal. Third and final paragraph: a sum up of the crisis but not the climax or the resolution. The crisis is literally just the decision a character is forced to make in the course of the story and what will happen if they choose poorly; the climax is what they choose, the resolution is how that plays out. Keep that last paragraph short, too. Three sentences or so.

Tips from authors I admire: Don't ask your reader, "What would you do if -- ?" That's not what the story is about. Also, if the reader doesn't care or wouldn't do anything or wouldn't do what your character does, you've lost them right there. Don't ask questions like, "Can Ian unravel Sebastian's dark past and figure out why the killer wants her dead?" If she didn't the story would have an unsatisfying ending. Of course she will. Duh. Get more into the flavor of how that will go than if it will. Our newbie vamp who is described as a debutante artiste is going to unravel the dark past of someone much older and scarier than her, and figure out why her mentor's killer did it and wants her dead next? How the fuck will she do that? Well, read the book and find out!

Start with an elevator pitch. Figure out how to sum up the main character and the main conflict in about three sentences. This is what you will say to people who ask what your book is about. The more you ramble, the more you lose people, so keep it tight. Main character, main conflict. Build your description from there. When people ask what my book is about, I say, "It's about a young woman who's only been a vampire for a few years. She's having a great time when the man who turned her is horribly murdered. So now she has to not only figure out how to not get killed herself, but also why anyone would do this to her mentor and just how to survive as a brand-new vampire."

A breakdown of my description:

First, a splashy hook. This can be something about the theme, a statement about the major conflict, or a statement about the main character. Whatever seems interesting and gives a feel for something important going on in the story.

"Ian is a young woman with an unusual name – and a brand-new pair of fangs.

Every time I would workshop this description, if I left out that Ian was a woman, the biggest comment that I got was "Ian = female?!?" This was way too confusing for people, even people who should have been cool with fluid gender. When I opened the description with Ian being a woman, no one was confused about her gender, but everyone said it wasn't a great opener. Listen, people, I'm painted into a corner here. It's not a great opener, but you're not leaving me much choice. Ian is a very new vampire, and a lot of the complications in the story stem from her being so young and not having a handle on the world she now inhabits. So I added the "brand-new pair of fangs" as a tone-setter. Is it as grabby as it could be? No. Is it kind of what I had to work with? Kind of. It's doing its job well enough. My readers have responded well to it, so I'm content. Readers and writers look for very different things in a story. Remembering that is important to learning how to take critique.

Now we reach our first paragraph: everyday world and inciting incident. Our character was doing X thing UNTIL . . .

"After life as a struggling artist, becoming a vampire is the most fun Ian’s ever had. Alongside her vampire mentor, she’s been playing the debutante artiste all night and sleeping all day. Until the night her mentor is brutally murdered."

This paragraph has to do so much work. It has to give the reader a feel for the character, give the reader an idea what the character wants, and then say what happens to screw that all up. You have to take your walking, talking, breathing character that you've spent maybe YEARS detailing and getting to know and turning into a REAL PERSON, and distill them down to a couple of sentences. Who are they, what do they do/want? KEEP IT SHORT.

Ian is an artist. She's always wanted to pursue that muse, but it's hard out here for creatives. She bumped into a vampire (without knowing it) at a poetry reading and made friends with him, and he decided he liked her and changed her, so now she gets to play all night, painting and partying and having a good time, and it's been great for her so far. The man who turned her is a decent guy who's a real friend and believes in her. Yay, she gets to follow her muse. What she doesn't know is that he has a dark past that's been looking for him, a jilted lover with murder in his heart and the resources to track this guy down and make him suffer. Ian's mentor doesn't know his ex is about to catch up to him either, until the night he gets his heart ripped out of his chest. Ian is funny, intelligent, loves cats, enjoys a little light drug use at parties, doesn't take the world or herself too seriously, has her own sad love life history, is the oldest of two girls and has somewhat exhaustingly normal parents, etc. NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Not to a potential reader, not yet. Hopefully they will come to love Ian, but first, they have to have an idea who she is and if they want to know her any better. Three sentences: who she is, what she does/wants, what happens to fuck that all up.

On to the second paragraph: complications. Okay, so the big thing has gone wrong; then what happened that made fixing it or getting back to normal life even harder? Because if something went wrong, and then got fixed, boooooring. The character has to struggle to fix their shit, or the reader won't care.

"Now Ian is next on the killer’s list. With no mentor and no idea how to catch a murderer, Ian fears she’ll be dead before sunrise. When an old and dangerous vampire who calls himself Sebastian Cain offers his help, Ian knows that despite his frightening demeanor, she has to accept."

Another paragraph that has to do a lot of work. Sebastian is another fully-formed, interesting character who has a redemption arc through the story. There's also Ian's relationship to her mentor to explore, her human and vampire relations start crawling out of the woodwork to get in the way, she falls in love, Sebastian gets lusty for the first time in five hundred years, the two of them argue a bunch, there are secrets to uncover. Again, none of this matters in the description. The primary complications are that Ian will be killed next, her youth and inexperience make her vulnerable, a scary old vamp has offered help, she can't really say no and expect to live.

I'm giving you a little insight into the characters and story to let you know how MUCH I had to trim out to make this description work. It really boils down to what the main story is about -- having a good elevator pitch helps with this process A LOT. For the description I branched out and added Sebastian in, because his arc is important to the story, but I never bring him up in my elevator pitch. Short and sweet. And notice how you don't even know her mentor's name? Yeah. Short and sweet.

And on to our third and final paragraph: sum up the crisis, but leave out the climax and resolution.

"But Sebastian is hiding secrets. With justice for her mentor and her own survival hanging in the balance, Ian must unravel Sebastian’s dark past and true intentions, gain control of her new vampiric powers, and uncover why a killer wants her dead – before she finds a dagger through her heart."

Ian has a LOT of various decisions to make throughout the story. The big ones have to do with Sebastian and his redemption arc, saving herself and seeking justice for her mentor, and figuring her newbie vampire shit out. There's SO MUCH MORE, but this is where the primary plot goes. This is the question my elevator pitch proposes. I added in Sebastian, because the description can be a tad longer, but the elevator pitch is where it all starts.

If you got to the end of this, thanks for reading, I hope it was insightful and helpful! I know it was long; a lot goes into this.

Good luck out there.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Penguins are awesome

No lie.

So when I was about thirteen, I went to visit my father in California. He asked if I wanted to do anything special in California while I was there, and I hesitantly asked about Disneyland.

“Well, it’s pretty expensive,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Seaworld?” I tried.

“That we can do,” he said, and so we went.

I was an awkward new teen, self-conscious and full of anxiety and hopes and dreams. I desperately wanted to have a Mystical Dolphin Experience, and California/Seaworld seemed a likely place to have something like that happen. I was actually more excited about going there than to Disneyland.

Off to Seaworld we went, my father, my stepmom, my grandmother, and me. We saw sealions and seals and killer whales and sharks and fish. Partway through our tour, we came upon an open dolphin tank with about four or five dolphins swimming around. A stand nearby listed prices for handfuls of fish.

My heart leapt. A dolphin feeding tank! My Mystical Dolphin Experience could very well be at hand!

My father went over to the stand to buy some fish. I didn’t even have to ask. My thirteen-year-old face must have lit up like a lamp when I saw the tank.

In just a moment, he came back shaking his head. Around the front of the stand was a big sign that read “CLOSED.” There were three times listed that the stand would be open. The last time had just passed maybe fifteen minutes earlier, and the next time wasn’t until well after supper. We planned to be long gone by then, and even I knew we weren’t going to hang around that late just to feed a couple dolphins some fish. My heart crashed.

The dolphins seemed to be happily interacting with a couple of people, even without fish, so we went to the edge of the tank to see if they would maybe come say hi. I stuck my hands in the water and splashed gently, hoping to attract their attention.

It quickly became clear what was going on. One man, who had a lot of dolphin attention, had a big ZZ Top beard that he was draping into the water, and the dolphins were taking turns rubbing against it and chattering at him. Another man, who was also amusing the dolphins, had an automatic camera (it was 1989, they were very cool), and every time he took a picture and the camera wound the film, the dolphins got all excited and mimicked the sound.

None of them even glanced at the skinny girl at the side of the tank, gently splashing the water and maybe crying a little inside.

After several minutes, my father shook his head. “They’re too busy over there,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

I knew he was right. So with a heavy heart, and pretty sure I’d never see dolphins so close again, I followed my family away from the tank.

My father and stepmother were scuba divers, and they enjoyed diving the reefs. There was a reef fish display they wanted to see, and I was far more interested in sea mammals than fish, so they told me to go on ahead to the penguin exhibit and they would meet me there after they looked at the reef fish. So I went on by myself.

The penguin exhibit was a big building, air conditioned to keep the penguins happy. A big moat surrounded the outside of the building, ringed by a low wall, and several penguins who didn’t mind the California weather were hanging out on islands in the moat. There was no one else hanging around but me.

I walked over to the wall to look at the penguins.

They instantly looked back at me. All ten of them, their little beaks like compass needles pointing at me.

I laid down on the wall and cautiously reached my fingers down to the moat. I had never heard that penguins were especially friendly, so I had no idea what would happen. I wasn’t expecting much.

The instant my fingers touched the water, all ten penguins jumped off the island. They swam right for me. Have you ever seen penguins swim? The fly in the water. They are fast and graceful, and they swim nose-to-tail in formation.

Again, I wasn’t sure what might happen, but figured if the penguins were aggressive or bitey, they wouldn’t be so easy for people to reach. I also thought that they might be expecting food, and I didn’t have any, so they might leave as soon as they figured that out. I left my fingers in the water and waited to see what they would do.

They swam over and surfaced just enough to rub against my fingers, one after the other. Then they swam to the other end of the moat, where they U-turned and came back. Emboldened, I stuck my hand further in the water and spread my fingers. The penguins wriggled under my fingers, nuzzling me with their heads as they went by, rolling so I would rub their tummies, lifting wings so I could rub their armpits — wingpits? Then they U-turned at the other end of the moat and came back again.

Penguins are soft. They feel like those stuffed animals that are super light and fluffy. They were extremely pleasant to pet.

They U-turned and came back, U-turned and came back, U-turned and came back. I stuck both hands in the water to pet them better. Not once did any of them even make a motion to nip at me. They rolled under my fingers, lining up so all of them could have a turn, then swung back for more.

I think I stayed there petting the penguins for twenty minutes. Half an hour. Something like that. Then my family came up behind me, done with the reef fish and ready to see the penguin house.

“Look!” I said.

They looked. They pet the penguins too. The penguins seemed to enjoy every second of the attention.

When I got up off the wall, the penguins all hopped out of the water and watched me leave. I waved at them. They were penguins, so they just watched me go.

But my little thirteen-year-old heart was full.

And that is where I learned that just because someone is loud and acts like a big deal doesn’t mean they’re actually cool. Sometimes it’s the folks who aren’t making a fuss who are the best. And that if you let an experience just be what it is with no expectations, it will probably wind up being even better than you thought.

[melodytaylorauthor]

This exact technique has helped me so many times.

If you’re experiencing writers block, make a playlist with songs that remind you of your WIP and go on a 30 min walk.

Trust me.

[melodytaylorauthor]

Argh oh yes.

yall ever refuse to consume a piece of media you Know youd like solely bc you think itd make you feel more emotions than you want to

[melodytaylorauthor]

Reasons I think I could be your new favorite author:

I'm pretty cute.

I have like, four cats.

I once heard the constellations sing in a language that is utterly beautiful and untranslatable and can only share with you the joy of hearing it and understanding it and the pain of hearing it no more yet knowing they still sing it is I who can no longer hear their song.

I do, in fact, write books.

[melodytaylorauthor]

I mean

Unreliable narrator? More like unreliable author