by Mary Marvella

Joy glared at the box of discarded words. She hoped she wouldn’t need any of them to ward off the evil horde of vampires. Didn’t they know they were to stay out of the sunlight?  She’d report them to the rules police! Into her box, she had tossed every single was and being verb. Clapping her hands, she headed for the saids and anything resembling one: replied, responded, answered, shouted, and more!

Giddy with power, Alice yelled, “Grab the adjectives and adverbs! If we use the best nouns and verbs, we don’t need adjectives and adverbs. They might offend the rule makers.”

Edward snapped, “You said best. That’s an adjective. Who are these rule makers of whom you speak?”

Alice crowed, “You said these and of whom. That’s a prepositional phrase!”

“Hush,” Joy ordered. Alice could be such a pest for a book character. She had jumped off the pages of a book and tried to take over. Joy didn’t want to use a form of said, an attribution, but she couldn’t think of an action to replace it. With a blink, she sent Alice hurdling through time to a time long past where the monsters would eat her.

Edward laughed and flew around the room. “Let’s start on point of view and clean out all the no-nos!” He tended to get carried away with each new thing he learned from a class or workshop.

A ghost hovered above the writers and watched them remove words that made their writing interesting and gave their stories personality. Soon the stories were bland, and the writers stared at their blank pages, claiming “writer’s block”. Each writer feared his writing wouldn’t be good, so he wrote nothing.

A vampire raised his glass of synthetic blood and looked at the ghost, and they both laughed and danced into the sunlight.

There are rules writers should follow to help them communicate their stories and reach readers’ emotions and keep those pages turning. The rest of the “so-called” rules might need be used with caution and care.

As silly as this story was, some writers are frozen with fear of breaking “rules”. Others write their stories and then proceed to try to suck the life from their work. Are you one of either group? Mary Marvella knows the grammar and punctuation rules and loves to play with words AFTER she writes her stories.

BLURB

Haunting Refrain
When Sarah Overby found ghosts in her attic she hesitated to tell her best friend, William McKeown. She didn’t think he’d understand. Telling him he lived a previous life as her husband would make him think she was crazy.

William has adored Sarah forever, he just doesn’t realize this isn’t the first time he loved her. His feelings for his best friend are changing, but he doesn’t believe in ghosts, reincarnation or lasting romantic relationships.

More About the Author

Mary Marvella is the author of 6 published novels, 2 novellas, and short stories in 7 anthologies. Mary taught language arts as a classroom teacher for 15 years. Now she tutors, teaches and coaches writers, and edits freelance. She lives north of Atlanta, Georgia and writes Women’s Fiction, Romantic Suspense, and Paranormal Romance.  Mary is Southern through and through. She writes the stories her characters make her write. She doesn’t have a muse. She has pushy characters. Connect with her here:

• MaryMarvella.com
• PinkFuzzySlipperWriters.blogspot.com
• https://twitter.com/mmarvellab
• https://www.facebook.com/mmbarfield
  

  

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