#no what i mean is like. i want them to interact directly juniper is not dead noone buys it but GOD | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starchaser3587 · 5 years

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Hey, reblog or like this if you’re interested in reading my novel!!

It’s currently still a work in progress, so you’d be reading the 1 1/2 to 2nd draft. I started editing it about a year ago but took a break because of school and work, but now I want to try to pick it back up.

About the novel:

Series Title: The Nightcore Saga Book Title: Dollhouse Genre: Science Fiction/ Fantasy Word Count: Just short of 51,000 (50,988 to be exact) but will be getting longer Summary: Rune is a quiet prince with shadow powers. He also lives in a kingdom where having magic powers is outlawed. Rogue has fire powers that match his short temper. He's also at the top of the crime ring in a military like kingdom. Sinder is an intelligent thief, laying “as low as possible”. She also has a drug addiction and a knack for getting in trouble. Juniper is an observant princess, loved by her entire kingdom. She also lives in a materialistic kingdom where feelings and being yourself are 'overrated'. When unlikely circumstances pushes them together, will the four be able to survive and rely on each other? Or will their differences and mistrust doom any chance of survival? Excerpt under the cut Age Range: 15+. Has some cursing and violence, but no mature scenes.

What I’m looking for in readers:

Provide Feedback It doesn’t have to be professional feedback, just your opinion from a reader’s perspective. What you like, what you don’t, where you think something could work better or when conversation feels forced, etc. The comments can be focused on grammar, plot, or your personal opinions. I plan on doing this on a google document, so you’ll be able to leave comments for me directly in the text and interact with other readers. Be Honest I want to try to get better! Don’t read this just to say a bunch of positive comments. At the same time, I’m asking for respectful honesty. I don't need the Gordon Ramsey of writing lol Be Kind This is in terms of talking to other readers. I encourage talking between each other, but I don’t want you guys to attack each other Ask Questions This kind of falls under feedback, but I want to stress that I love it when you ask questions! It engages me with my readers and it can help me find places where I need to elaborate more. Something may make perfect sense in my head, but it doesn’t always translate to text Interested If this story isn’t for you, don’t feel obligated to read it!!

Other Things:

There are LGBTQ characters! In fact, all of the main characters are LGBTQ.

This is a four book series and while I have ideas for the other three books, only book one is written so far. This means that while YES there are LGBTQ characters, ships will not be canon within the first book!

I do have a playlist (that is also still in the works) for the series. If you want to listen to it, I can put a link to it at the top of the document

If you have personal questions, feel free to message me! I want to respond to any concerns or questions you may have.

Since I’m sharing this through a google doc, I would prefer to share it individually to each person (message me your email!) but if you don’t want to share your email, I’m happy to share a link instead :)

Excerpt (Tumblr screwed up the format of the text a bit- sorry!) She pointed down the alley in the opposite direction of the footsteps. Juniper set off moving quietly. Sinder followed but picked up speed when the footsteps got close enough that they'd be able to see the two of them soon. She took a sharp right, pulling the princess behind her. They crouched behind a trash bin. The heavy, military, boots she'd heard faded past them. Juniper frowned as she listened closer. When she was certain they were clear, Sinder gave a soft exhale. "Those weren't Goldenshire guards," Juniper whispered. She shrugged. "Guards are guards. We're close to the Mirarras border, so it's probably them." "But why would Mirarras guards come so far into the Goldenshire kingdom?" Sinder rolled her eyes. Why did I decide to help her again? She gave a deep sigh to try to think of what to do next but froze when she smelled the faint scent of smoke. The Mirarras guards wouldn't come this far unless- Lightning fast, she flicked one of her throwing knives out around the edge of the trash bin. A male voice swore as she rolled out to face her target. A boy with white hair and fiery highlights glared at her with red eyes. Recognition flashed a moment later. "You have got to be kidding me." Sinder crossed her arms. "You're a ways from your territory Rogue." "You're pushing your limits too." Her knife- which had embedded itself into his shoulder- began to melt away. Sinder watched what was left fall to the ground. "That was one of my good knives." "Don't throw them at me then," Rogue's eyes shifted to focus behind her. Turning partly, she saw that Juniper had stood up. "Didn't know you were playing bodyguard now Sin." A spray of bullets hit the walls above them. Goldenshire guards stood in the alley across the street. Sinder swore and tossed a few knives before bolting down the alley. The others followed her as three guards dropped to the ground behind them. "It's a little more like kidnapping." A high-pitched whistle cut through the darkness. The root of the sound came from a nearby roof. Juniper winced at the sound. "We're also running from some gangs." Rogue snorted. "Looks like you're in a spot of trouble." Sinder ducked a knife. "In case you didn't notice, you're the one running with us stupid! Not to mention, all this noise is going to attract those Mirarras guards to come back and look closer!" Realization flashed on his face. "Damnit!" Turning to run backward, he sent an arc of flames towards the snipers on the roofs. Seeing that the guards had turned the corner of the alley, Sinder shouted, "Rogue! Their torches!" "Yeah, yeah, just let me do my thing!" The flames on the guard's torches turned into long fingers, clawing at the faces of the guards. "Since I'm back here doing all the work, do you have any idea on where we're going?" "I have an idea," Sinder said. "We just have to hope it works." "Hope it works? Is that the best you can do?" "Do you have anything better?" "If I did, it'd be better than yours!" "I have an idea," Juniper tossed in. "How about we focus on not dying?" Rogue turned back around and glared at the princess. "Really? I thought that we were trying to get killed. The next time that you kidnap someone, can you try and get someone useful?" The last part was directed to Sinder, who was currently doing her best to ignore both of them. It wasn't going well. "I will leave both of you behind if you don't shut up!" Sinder snarled. "Now follow me, and don't make me regret helping you guys."

#writeblr #writing #book #reading #beta reader #novel #wip #looking for readers #my novel #my book

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brin-guivera · 3 years

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Curse the Fae by Natalia Jaster - Review

This book. Wow. I’m really not sure how I can convey just how much I loved Curse the Fae – I was expecting to enjoy it because I’ve loved all of Natalia Jaster’s books but this one just blew me away. I am speechless (which doesn’t happen often!)

This one is for sure my favourite in this series so far (and I adored both Kiss the Fae and Hunt the Fae). I actually wasn’t expecting Cove and Elixir to eclipse my favourite-until-now pairing Juniper and Puck – but what can I say? I’m a fickle beast (just like one of those tricksy fae! Only slightly kidding; but it really is a testament to Natalia’s writing that she has such lovable characters that steal your heart). Before I dive (heh) into my review, first I want to make clear that although I received the book to review directly from the author (I’m on her ARC Team) all views are my own.

***** Curse the Fae is the third book (but thankfully not final – there is another to come!) in the Vicious Faeries series and the perspective shifts to the eldest (and sweetest) sister Cove. Like her two siblings, Cove has been summoned to the Faerie after accidently encroaching on their lands when trying to escape poachers (this all happened in the first book). All three of them have to undergo a game – where losing means forfeiting their lives. If just one of them fails their tasks they all pay the price. Lark was called to the mountains and Juniper to the dense forest lands. Cove must brave the deep, subterranean waters of the river fae and their poisonous viper of a leader – Elixir. Known as the most vicious of all the Fae rulers, Cove despairs of ever being able to thwart him. However, Cove is determined to win her game and she finds inside herself an inner fortitude to challenge this dangerous opponent at every turn. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for her family and she knows the stakes are so very high but she cannot fail as to lose would mean more than just her life. From the very first, Cove and Elixir clash and there is a battles of wills between these two very different characters. Their interactions are fascinating. Cove practically kills Elixir with kindness and Elixir clearly doesn’t know how to respond to this having never experience much of this in his life. I think what I love most about this pairing is their inherent vulnerability. Both of them have suffered great loss; Cove her first family, Elixir his parents and his vision (yes, this fae lord is blind but this doesn’t hold him back one jot). It increases the stakes exponentially because as you get to know them you cannot help but feel for both of them and want both of them to come out on top – even if you are not sure exactly how that could possibly work. The push and pull of their interactions throughout the book are delightful, and when they finally let their guards down their connection is exquisite – dare I say it, but I actually found them to be the most sensual of all the pairings (the steam is quite something else). I’m not always a fan of the smutty stuff but it worked for these characters and made sense as part of their story. I’m also a sucker for relationships where one of the pair is sunshine personified whilst the other is the grumpiest grump to ever grump and that was Cove and Elixir to a tee! The two of them are the antithesis of the other but it makes their developing bond that much more earned. Cove brings out the lightness hidden at Elixir’s core and Elixir gives voice to Cove’s inner darkness (which is definitely a part of her despite her inherent sweetness). I am such a huge fan of this series and this book was just sheer perfection. I am so fond of both Cove and Elixir and so happy to have been able to share in their story. It was also amazing to get to see the other couples again; feisty Lark and elegant Cerulean, clever Juniper and bawdy Puck! I just love them all so much! I was super happy to discover the trilogy has been extended to a quadrilogy (or, ergh… however you want to put it!) There is absolutely no way the story could have been wrapped up in this third entry, not without cutting off a great junk of Cove and Elixir’s story, which would have been a great disservice to them. They deserved their chance to shine and shine they certainly did! Like I said at the start, any of my words are just totally insufficient to describe this beautiful and lyrical story so I’m just going to recommend you check it out for yourself – you will not be disappointed! 5/5 stars.

Link to blog here

#curse the fae #hunt the fae #kiss the fae #vicious faeries #natalia jaster #fantasy #book review #book reviews #BOOKISH #favourite books #books #my reviews #brin reviews

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wickedbananas · 6 years

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The Bot Plan: Your Guide to Making Conversations Convert

Posted by purna_v

Let’s start off with a quick “True or False?” game:

“By 2020, the average person will have more conversations with their bot than with their spouse.”

True, or false? You may be surprised to learn that speaking more with bots than our spouse is precisely what Gartner is predicting.

And when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says “messaging is one of the few things that people do more than social networking,” it requires no leap of faith to see that chatbots are an integral part of marketing’s future.

But you don’t need to stock up on canned peaches and head for the hills because “the robots are coming.” The truth is, the robots aren’t coming because they’re already here, and they love us from the bottom of their little AI-powered hearts.

Bots aren’t a new thing for many parts of the world such as China or India. As reported by Business Insider, sixty-seven percent of consumers worldwide have used a chatbot for customer support in the last year.

Within the United States, an impressive 60% of millennials have used chatbots with 70% of those reporting positive experiences, according to Forbes.

There’s no putting bots back in the box.

And it’s not just that brands have to jump on board to keep up with those pesky new generations, either. Bots are great for them, too.

Bots offer companies:

A revolutionary way to reach consumers. For the first time in history, brands of any size can reach consumers on a personal level. Note my emphasis on “of any size.” You can be a company of one and your bot army can give your customers a highly personal experience. Bots are democratizing business!

Snackable data. This “one-to-one” communication gives you personal insights and specificity, plus a whole feast of snackable data that is actionable.

Non-robot-like interaction. An intelligent bot can keep up with back-and-forth customer messages in a natural, contextual, human way.

Savings. According to Juniper Research, the average time saving per chatbot inquiry compared to traditional call centers is over four minutes, which has the potential to make a truly extraordinary impact on a company’s bottom line (not to mention the immeasurable impact it has on customers’ feelings about the company).

Always on. It doesn’t matter what time zone your customer is in. Bots don’t need to sleep, or take breaks. Your company can always be accessible via your friendly bot.

Here in the West, we are still in the equivalent of the Jurassic Period for bots. What they can be used for is truly limited only by our imagination.

One of my most recent favorites is an innovation from the BBC News Labs and Visual Journalism teams, who have launched a bot-builder app designed to, per Nieman Lab, “make it as easy as possible for reporters to build chatbots and insert them in their stories.”

So, in a story about President Trump from earlier this year, you see this:

Source: BBC.com

It’s one of my favorites not just because it’s innovative and impressive, but because it neatly illustrates how bots can add to and improve our lives… not steal our jobs.

Don’t be a dinosaur

A staggering eighty percent of brands will use chatbots for customer interactions by 2020, according to research. That means that if you don’t want to get left behind, you need to join the bot arms race right now.

“But where do I start?” you wonder.

I’m happy you asked that. Building a bot may seem like an endeavor that requires lots of tech savvy, but it’s surprisingly low-risk to get started.

Many websites allow you to build bots for free, and then there’s QNAMaker.ai (created by Microsoft, my employer), which does a lot of the work for you.

You simply input your company’s FAQ section, and it builds the foundation for an easy chatbot that can be taken live via almost any platform, using natural language processing to parse your FAQ and develop a list of questions your customers are likely to ask.

This is just the beginning — the potential for bots is wow-tastic.

That’s what I’m going to show you today — how you can harness bot-power to build strong, lasting relationships with your customers.

Your 3-step plan to make conversations convert

Step 1: Find the right place to start

The first step isn’t to build a bot straightaway. After all, you can build the world’s most elaborate bot and it is worth exactly nothing to you or your customer if it does not address their needs.

That’s why the first step is figuring out the ways bots can be most helpful to your customers. You need to find their pain points.

You can do this by pretending you’re one of your customers, and navigating through your purchase funnel. Or better again, find data within your CRM system and analytics tools that can help you answer key questions about how your audience interacts with your business.

Here’s a handy checklist of questions you should get answers to during this research phase:

How do customers get information or seek help from your company? ☑

How do they make a purchase? ☑

Do pain points differ across channels and devices? ☑

How can we reduce the number of steps in each interaction? ☑

Next, you’ll want to build your hypothesis. And here’s a template to help you do just that:

I believe [type of person] needs to solve [problem] which happens while [situation], which will allow them to [get value].

For example, you’re the manager of a small spa, whose biggest time-suck is people calling to ask simple questions, meaning other customers are on hold for a long time. If those customers can ask a bot these simple questions, you get three important results:

The hold time for customers overall will diminish

The customer-facing staff in your spa will be able to pay more attention to clients who are physically in front of them

Customers with lengthier questions will be helped sooner

Everybody wins.

Finally, now that you’ve identified and prioritized the situations where conversation can help, you’ll be ready to build a bot as well as a skill.

Wait a minute — what’s a skill in this context, and how do they relate to bots? Here’s a great explanation from Chris Messina:

A bot is an autonomous program on a network

A chatbot is a bot that uses human language to communicate

An AI assistant is a chatbot that performs tasks or services for an individual

A skill is a capability that an AI assistant can learn

Each of them can help look things up, place orders, solve problems, and make things happen easier, better, and faster.

A few handy resources to build a bot are:

Microsoft's Azure Bot Service

Bot Service Documentation

Mobile Monkey Facebook Messenger marketing platform

Bot users on Slack

So You Want to Build a Chat Bot – Here's How (Complete with Code!)

Step 2: Add conversation across the entire customer journey

There are three distinct areas of the customer decision journey where bots and skills can make a big difference.

Bot as introducer

Bots can help your company by being present at the very first event in a purchase path.

Adidas did this wonderfully when they designed a chatbot for their female-focused community Studio LDN, to help create an interactive booking process for the free fitness sessions offered. To drive engagement further, as soon as a booking was made the user would receive reminders and messages from influencer fitness instructors.

The chatbot was the only way for people to book these sessions and it worked spectacularly well.

In the first two weeks, 2,000 people signed up to participate, with repeat use at 80%. Retention after week one was 60%, which the brand claims is far better compared to an app.

Adidas did something really clever. They advertised the bot across many of their other channels to help promote the bot and help with its discoverability.

You can do the same.

There are countless examples where bots can put their best suit on and act as the first introduction to your company:

Email marketing: According to MailChimp research, the average email open rates are between 15% to 26% with click rates being just a fraction of that at approximately 2%–5%. That’s pretty low when you compare that to Messenger messages, which can have an open rate of well over 90%. Why not make your call-to-action within your email be an incentive for people to engage with your chatbot? For example, something like “message us for 10% off” could be a compelling reason for people to engage with your chatbot.

Social media: How about instead of running Facebook ads which direct people to websites, you run an ad connecting people to bots instead? For example, in the ad, advise people to “chat to see the latest styles” or “chat now to get 20% off” and then have your bot start a conversation. Instant engagement! Plus, it’s a more gentle call-to-action as opposed to a hard sell such as “buy now.”

Video: How about creating instructional YouTube videos on how to use your bot? Especially helpful since one of the barriers to using this new technology is a lack of awareness about how to use it. A short, quick video that demonstrates what your skill can do could be very impactful. Check out this great example from FitBit and Cortana:

youtube

Search: As you’ve likely seen by now, Bing has been integrating chatbots within the SERPs itself. You can do a search for bots across different platforms and you’ll be able to add relevant bots directly to your preferred platform right from the search results themselves:

You can engage with local businesses such as restaurants via the Bing Business bot that shows up as part of the local listings:

Bing Ads is even piloting a chatbot extension as part of PPC ads, to drive more engagement through real-time engagement.

The key lesson here is that when your bot is acting as an introducer, give your audience plenty of ways and reasons to chat. Use conversation to tell people about new stuff, and get them to kick off that conversation.

Bot as influencer

To see a bot acting as an effective influencer, let’s turn to Chinese giant Alibaba. They developed a customizable chatbot store concierge that they offer free to brands and markets.

Cutely named dian xiao mi, or “little shop bee,” the concierge is designed to be the most helpful store assistant you could wish for.

For example, if a customer interacting with a clothing brand uploads a photograph of a t-shirt, the bot buzzes in with suggestions of pants to match. Or, if a customer provides his height and weight, the bot can offer suggested sizing. Anyone who has ever shopped online for clothing knows exactly how much pain the latter offering could eliminate.

This helpful style is essentially changing the conversation from “BUY NOW!” to “What do you need right now?”

We should no longer ask: "How should we sell to customers?" The gazillion-dollar question instead is: How can we connect with them?

An interesting thing about this change is that, when you think about it for a second, it seems like common sense. How much more trust would you have for a brand that was only trying to help you? If you bought a red dress, how much more helpful would it be if the brand showed you a pic of complementary heels and asked if you want to “complete the look”?

For the chatbot to be truly helpful as an influencer, it needs to learn from each conversation. It needs to remember what you shared from the last conversation, and use it to shape future conversations.

So, say a chatbot from my favorite shoe store knew all about my shoe addiction (is there a cure? Would I event want to be cured of it?), then it could be more helpful via its remarketing efforts.

Imagine how much more effective it would be if we could have an interaction like this:

Shoestore Chatbot: Hi Purna! We’re launching a new collection of boots. Would you like a sneak peek? Me: YES please!!! Shoestore Chatbot: Great! I’ll email pics to you. You can also save 15% off your next order with code “MozBlog”. Hurry, code expires in 24 hours. Me: *buys all the shoes, obvs*

This is Bot-topia. Your brand is being helpful, not pushy. Your bot is cultivating relationships with your customers, not throwing ads at them.

The key lesson here? For your bot to be a successful influencer, you must always consider how they can be helpful and how they can add value.

Bot as closer

Bot: “A, B, C. Always be closing.”

Imagine you want to buy flowers for Mother’s Day, but you have very little interest in flowers, and when you scroll through the endless options on the website, and then a long checkout form, you just feel overwhelmed.

1-800-Flowers found your pain point, and acted on it by creating a bot for Facebook Messenger.

It asks you whether you want to select a bunch from one of their curated collections, instantly eliminating the choice paralysis that could see consumers leave the website without purchasing anything.

And once you’ve chosen, you can easily complete the checkout process using your phone’s payment system (e.g. Apple Pay) to make checkout a cinch. So easy, and so friction-free.

The result? According to Digiday, within two months of launch the company saw 70% of the orders through the bot came from brand-new customers. By building a bot, 1-800 Flowers slam-dunked their way into the hearts of a whole new, young demographic.

Can you think of a better, more inexpensive way to unlock a big demographic? I can’t.

To quote Mr. Zuckerberg again: “It’s pretty ironic. To order from 1-800-Flowers, you never have to call 1-800-Flowers again.”

Think back to that handy checklist of questions from Step 1, especially this one: “How can we reduce the number of steps in each interaction?”

Your goal is to make every step easy and empathetic.

Think of what people would want/need to know to as they complete their tasks. For example, if you’re looking to transfer money from your bank account, the banking chatbot could save you from overdraft fees if it warns you that your account could be overdrawn before you make the transfer.

The key lesson here: Leverage your bots to remove any friction and make the experience super relevant and empathetic.

Step 3: Measure the conversation with the right metrics

One of my favorite quotes around how we view metrics versus how we should view metrics comes from Automat CEO Andy Mauro, who says:

“Rather than tracking users with pixels and cookies, why not actually engage them, learn about them, and provide value that actually meets their needs?”

Again, this is common sense once you’ve read it. Of course it makes sense to engage our users and provide value that meets their needs!

We can do this because the bots and skills give us information in our customers’ own words.

Here’s a short list of KPIs that you should look at (let’s call it "bot-alytics"):

Delivery and open rates: If the bot starts a conversation, did your customer open it?

Click rates: If your bot delivered a link in a chat, did your customer click on it?

Retention: How often do they come back and chat with you?

Top messages: What messages are resonating with your customers more than others?

Conversion rates: Do they buy?

Sentiment analysis: Do your customers express happiness and enthusiasm in their conversation with the bot, or frustration and anger?

Using bot-alytics, you can easily build up a clear picture of what is working for you, and more importantly, what is working for your customer.

And don’t forget to ask: What can you learn from bot-alytics that can help other channels?

The future's bright, the future's bots

What were once dumb machines are now smart enough that we can engage with them in a very human way. It presents the opportunity of a generation for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Our customers are beginning to trust bots and digital personal assistants for recommendations, needs, and more. They are the friendly neighborhood machines that the utopian vision of a robotic future presents. They should be available to people anywhere: from any device, in any way.

And if that hasn’t made you pencil in a “we need to talk about bots” meeting with your company, here’s a startling prediction from Accenture. They believe that in five years, more than half of your customers will select your services based on your AI instead of your traditional brand.

In three steps, you can start your journey toward bot-topia and having your conversations convert. What are you waiting for?

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blogwritetheworld · 7 years

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December Spotlight: To Show and to Tell

by Lisa Hiton

My birthday is July 4th. A celebratory day in the USA, filled with fireworks, parades, and family BBQs. And since my birth, every year on July 3rd, my mom sits with me and tells the story of how I chose my own birthday as we look through a photo album from that time. It was clear to the doctors that my mom would likely need a C-section, as I would weigh in at 10lbs 4oz, but being my mom’s firstborn, she didn’t want to choose my birthday. Nearly ten days past her due date, it might surprise you that she swiftly attributed a “stomach ache” to a pie she’d eaten at a July 3rd party...

Thirty years later, she still tells me the story of how I chose my birthday—how she missed the fireworks that year, and how firework displays now hold so much symbolism for both of us. And she shows me the photos—my lithe mom carrying a huge baby. Though it’s not written on paper, the story feels written—I know the order of events, the timing of the jokes, and how the fireworks have literal and symbolic meanings throughout the telling.

We often think of our first encounters with stories in books. And yet, our lives are writing themselves all along. And if we are lucky, we have great storytellers around us who not only remember the plots and scenes of a life, but can tell them with panache. As writers, we must do that on the page. Especially when we want to make something permanent and beautiful from our own experiences. Personal essays take these parts of our lives and weave them into something artful and literary—helping us make sense of our experiences here on earth.

TO SHOW AND TO TELL

A common phrase used to critique or edit a writer’s work is “show, don’t tell”. For example, if you’re writing about a character who is sad she received a rejection letter from her first-choice college, you might be tempted to write:

“Juniper was devastated to be rejected from NYU.”

Now, at face-value, the sentence isn’t terrible. It’s grammatically correct, well punctuated, and likely true. However, I might suggest to a writer that they “show, don’t tell” the reader about the scene. Instead of telling the reader that Juniper is “devastated”, the writer might instead give the whole anecdote:

“Juniper raced to the mailbox after school. As she grabbed the pile of envelopes, the one letter she wanted sat right on top: a small envelope from NYU. She stared at the school’s crest in the corner, which turned to a blur, as she ripped it open, knowing full-well what it said inside.”

Sure, it’s longer. But this depiction shows the moment of devastation without ever having to state how Juniper feels. When writing personal essays, it’s important to do both of these things. Though you might not want to state outwardly how Juniper feels, you might follow up a scene like this one with some connective tissue that help the reader weave this real-life situation into something a bit more artful. In this sense, to show is to paint the scene, to tell is to confess something to your reader—to draw for the reader connections they might not be able to make outside of the experience of your own life.

AN EARL [OF ESSAYS] AMONG US

Nonfiction is often remarked as the “stepchild of serious literature” by critics and literary snobs alike. Personal essays seem like the antithesis of serious reading and writing: they show and tell, they don’t follow formal rules of structure or narrative arc, and they can sound as colloquial as my mom telling my birth story. But it’s precisely these traits that make writing personal essays so very difficult to write. In order for a reader to feel as though they are sitting with my mom, listening to her tell a funny, heartfelt story about her firstborn child, a lot of work must be done.

Phillip Lopate, director of Columbia University’s creative writing program and one of the most celebrated, living personal essayists of our time has explored this phenomenon deftly in his anthology on personal essays, The Art of The Essay, and his follow-up book on crafting personal essays, To Show and to Tell. In To Show and to Tell, Lopate grapples with the rules and boundaries of essays. As an example, an entire chapter is called “The Essay: Exploration or Argument?”. Especially as we look at different essays, this question can help frame our understanding of the genre. Sometimes, essays make a case for a particular idea or belief. But other times, telling a story can lead the writer astray, to something unplanned. Think about it: even within the world of nonfiction, there are different subsets—biography, autobiography, memoir, personal essay to name a few. And each of these has its own set of goals, rules, and structures. In The Art of the Essay, Lopate paints the core values of the genre for the reader:

The hallmark of the personal essay is intimacy.. The writer seems to be speaking directly in your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom. Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue—a friendship, if you will, based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship.

At the core of the personal essay is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience. As Michel de Montaigne, the great innovator and patron saint of personal essayists, put it, “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.” This meant that when he was telling about himself, he was talking, to some degree, about all of us. The personal essay has an implicitly democratic bent, in the value it places on experience rather than status distinctions.

(Lopate, xxiii)

Lopate’s books help writers decipher the work before them and approach each story with both anecdotes and a sense of artful organization. Unlike other genres, personal essays allow us to show and tell—meaning we can give an anecdote and reflect on what has happened. That sense of reflection can allow us to think of our lives and the people in them as we might with a work of fiction. We can, in a personal essay, show what has happened and offer forgiveness, love, compassion, and the like as the narrator is also the writer.

To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction by Phillip Lopate: To Show and to Tell weaves Lopate’s trade secrets with anecdotes about teaching writing and life. From turning yourself into a character, to understanding what kind of personal essay you might be writing, this craft book is useful to writers at every level.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present ed by Phillip Lopate: Covering over 400 years of personal essays, Lopate’s anthology brings readers into the lives of Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Adrienne Rich, Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, Samuel Johnson, Plutarch, Ou-Yang Hsiu, Michel De Montaigne, and more. With arrangements by theme and form, readers and writers can begin to see the breadth and depth of this genre across time and nations.

PERSONAL FAVORITES

As far as personal essays go, there are so many I love that it is hard to select just a few. From different writers, to different subjects, there are just so many thoughts and feelings about how we interact with the world around us that I’ve decided to honor a handful of essays available to you online. Here is a mini-anthology of essays to read, with prompts to pair. As you write your own personal essays, think about how these essays mirror their main subjects and characters—how the writer chooses to honor and champion their subject and why.

And so, dear writers, as you go into your own Decembers, remember that every detail, no matter how mundane or extraordinary, is part of our common human experience. And we look forward to reading all about it in the pages to come.

About Lisa

Lisa Hiton is an editorial associate at Write the World. She writes two series on our blog: The Write Place where she comments on life as a writer, and Reading like a Writer where she recommends books about writing in different genres. She’s also the interviews editor of Cosmonauts Avenue and the poetry editor of the Adroit Journal.

#write the world #lisa hiton #wtwspotlight #amwriting #writingtips #essay

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kashal1221 · 6 years

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Session ? (18, probably): Automatons (15/7/2018, Games@PI)

Dear Dad,

You may have surmised, even from your limited interactions with them, that my companions find little difficulty in landing themselves in hot water. It has been little more than a week since we departed from Opal City, and already much has happened. As you'll recall, having been there at the time, our ship was badly damaged. I was able to use magic to mend it to some extent, but between my being the only proper sailor on the ship, and the one mending any leaks that sprung up, I was rather in need of a couple of helping hands. Einar claimed to have a contact who could help us aquire metal sailors, needing neither food nor rest, from a facility hidden in the Sietemus's Teeth. Already I was suspicious- the area is well known to be riddled with pirates. Stranger still, his contact turned out to be a skeleton. But unlike the undead I have fought in the past, who were as lacking in mental faculties as they were in flesh and blood, this skeleton was as intelligent as any living man. His name was Juniper, and he promised to lead us to this facility.

We received no trouble sailing to the island Juniper directed us to. It was when we landed that trouble began. The entrance to the facility was a large hole in the ground, leading down into fathomless depths. My companions, using methods of calculation I can hardly begin to understand, deemed the drop to be more than a thousand feet, with unknown depths of water beneath. Fortunately, long drops are of little consequence to my companions and myself, though this was a much longer fall than any I have previously undertaken. Jamborin, my half-elven wizard friend, myself, and three of our companions jumped in, and we fell freely for ten seconds or more before Jamborin cast her spell to slow our descent, allowing us to land safely in the water. Two more of our number flew down on our broom of flying, while the skeleton simply jumped, with no spell or magic item to aid him, save whatever enchantments keep his bones upright without flesh to hold them in place.

To reach the facility, there was a further swim down through an underwater passage. Jamborin and I, each through our own methods having the ability to breathe underwater, led the way, though the trip was short enough that even those of us less magically inclined were able to surface on the other side unharmed.

We met a strange woman then, sitting at the front desk. Though our tests deemed her a living human, she behaved more like an automaton, with no animation in her voice or face. All along I had my doubts about this trip. The strangeness of this woman only further worried me. My companions of course still behaved as though this were all a lark. Having been warned that a corridor was filled with traps, three of our number immediately ran directly down that self-same corridor, and as a result were brought almost to the point of death. Still we soldiered on, making our way deeper into the facility. We were left to wait for a good hour, during which my companions nursed their well-deserved wounds. Eventually a man, Winter, came to show us in. As we passed through, we saw more of those strange people, mindlessly working on the constructs, neither speaking nor looking away from their task. It was then that Winter revealed to us the price of the constructs we sought- not any amount of gold, but a living person. As this news sank in, Barris, always quick to draw his gun, opened fire upon Winter. Winter ran to sound the alarm as two suits of armour sprang to life to defend him. It did not take us long to kill Winter. The suits of armour, animated with the spirits of water and fire elementals respectively, proved harder to defeat, though defeat them we did, in the end.

They thanked us as they died. From what I understand, they too were bound unwillingly in service. If I were controlled, and used to enslave others as they were, I too would welcome death.

Our troubles were not yet over. The door through which we had come began to descend, trapping us in that room. Finch, our alchemist, as well as Jamborin's familiar, Bookwyrm, were the only ones fast enough to slip through before the door slammed closed. The rest of us, stuck inside the room, were able to work open a second door, which led to a loading bay, a handy means of escape. We communicated with Finch and Bookwyrm, and planned to each go out our separate ways, us through the loading bay and him back through the way we had come. But on the other side of the door, something strange began to happen to Finch. He became flat and mindless as the workers we had seen, and began to join them in their work. I teleported through the door and ran to him, shaking him, hoping to wake him from this enchanted stupor. For a moment he looked at me with a spark of recognition, but it was quickly suppressed, and he returned to work. Taking hold of him, I dragged him towards the door. But that was when something entered my mind, the same thing that had enslaved my friend. For a moment I faltered, my body leaving my mind's control, but with great mental effort I broke free, and teleported Finch and myself back through the door.

Reunited with our friends, Finch's consciousness soon returned to him. In the loading bay, we found various means to bring ourselves as well as some cargo up to the surface, more than a thousand feet above us. Finch and our light-fingered friend, Luisa, found themselves a barrel which turned out to be a machine meant for underwater travel, which was fashioned somewhat after the features of a crab. It fitted only two, but the three breathing members of the party who could not do so underwater found magical means there in the loading bay. And so we made our way through the water, hanging on to the crab-like machine as it rose through the depths.

We were accosted then by a terrifying sea creature. It had three large, bulbous eyes and a mouth filled with spiny teeth, and many waving tentacles fanned out behind. It spoke in our minds, furious that we had stolen from it.

As we fought the creature, I felt it probe into my mind, demanding that I submit to its will. I recognised the cold touch of its magic. This was the same creature that had attempted to enslave Finch and myself, the same creature that enslaved the poor workers inside that terrible facility. Angered by this realisation, and bolstered by the knowledge that I had bested its enslaving power once before, I once again threw off the enchantment and continued to fight it.

The creature soon realised we were not a party to be trifled with, and it sought to escape. We pursued it, the crab-like machine catching and refusing to release it as we sought to kill the foul creature once and for all. A spell from Juniper put the monstrous thing to sleep, and we all gathered round, each of us preparing our deadliest attacks, hoping to kill it before it woke. On Juniper's signal, we let loose with spells and weapons, all eight of us at once. The massive creature fairly dissolved into a pulp from the strength of our attack.

Monstrous creature dealt with, we continued on to the surface, though not unharmed. Two of our number were cursed by the creature's foul aura. Barris was quickly healed, but the other, our newest wizard Aquila, suffers still. She is bound to a tub that we have filled with seawater - emerging for too long causes her terrible pain.

Upon our return to the ship, I was naturally furious with Einar for leading us to such an evil place, and I played a rather terrible trick upon him. I told him that we had bought the constructs, and that as the payment was a living person, we had come to retrieve him, to use him as payment. He looked so terrified at the prospect that I could not keep up the pretence for long. Even so, the relief when I told him that we were not indeed selling him had him in tears. In truth, I am somewhat perturbed that he did not question my story in the slightest. He fully believed I was capable of such a thing. Perhaps I have after all been too hard on him. I do regret playing that trick on him, especially as Jamborin decided that the scare was not punishment enough, and sought to tie him to the mast. I brought him down, of course, and he collected himself enough to have us on our way to Oceanward, now aided by seven stolen constructs.

We are at Oceanward now, with our ship at dry-docks while we search for a healer for Aquila, though the city is far from a haven away from danger. As it turns out, two of our number are wanted criminals here. One, you can probably guess. There are few places where Luisa is not a wanted criminal. The other may surprise you. Our dear alchemist is wanted here for treason, and there is a not insignificant bounty on his head. I hardly know what it is that he has done, but I know him to be a good man of strong morals, and I hold little respect for heads of state as it is. We will do our best to keep him safe, but I somehow doubt we will make it in and out of this city without incident. I will update you in my next letter on how this all plays out. I dearly hope I will have nothing to report, but I sincerely doubt that to be the case.

Love, Hamish

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tainghekhongdaycomvn · 6 years