Writers in the Storm

A Birthday Waltz for Jenny Hansen

by Lisa Norman

Author’s note: Today is Jenny Hansen’s birthday, and I was challenged to write something to celebrate her. You may notice this article is not in my normal style. No editors were harmed in the writing of this article. Although one did require a bit of a hug afterwards.

For Jenn, on your birthday—may your prose be lively, your commas cooperative, and your semicolons never lonely.

Scene 1: The Ballroom Opens

The chandeliers glitter, casting commas of light across polished marble. The great ballroom of Language hums with anticipation, ever-changing as the lights shift with the seasons.

Through tall golden doors, the punctuation marks sweep in.

Commas, normally so reliable and powerful, chatter like excitable cousins at a wedding, clustering and clinging, never quite finishing a thought. Dancing with and, and deep in discussions of Oxford versus minimalism.

Periods tap polished shoes to keep time. Solid. Steady. Reliable.

Semicolons hover near the punch bowl, sighing about how no one truly appreciates refinement anymore.

And then—cue the fanfare—the em dash bursts through the doors. Glitter. Swagger. Spotlight. Every eye turns.

Scene 2: Enter the Em Dash

The em dash doesn’t simply enter—it commands. Each stride a statement, each interruption an encore. It—oh, there it goes again—cuts off the poor colon mid-explanation.

Writers swoon. Nothing says drama like a dashy entrance.

“Why use a period,” they whisper, “when you can leave your reader dangling, breathless—just—like—this?”

The em dash twirls beneath the chandeliers, scattering tiny hyphens like glitter.

Somewhere, a comma faints.

The em dash becomes a solid feature of every best seller. Used cautiously like the spicy attention-seeker it is.

Scene 3: AI Learns the Steps

In the shadows by the orchestra, something hums—a quiet algorithm keeping rhythm.

AI watches, recording every sway, every glittering dash.

It studies billions of lines where the em dash twirls and the comma stumbles, where humans dance on the edge of grammar. And it learns. Em dashes are power.

Soon, every AI draft reads like a Broadway revue choreographed to feature the power of the em dash.

Em dash. Em dash. Em dash.

Too much spice! But… more human than ever before.

The writers pause mid-spin.

“Wait—if I use too many,” someone whispers, “will readers think I’m the bot?”

Scene 4: Humans Change the Tune

The chandeliers flicker as the music stutters. A new rhythm takes hold—chaotic, human. Imperfect.

Writers begin to trip deliberately:

• Misspeling words, definately.
• They repeat repeat words.
• Sentences are left hanging mid
• They sneeze mid-keystroke: asdflkj.

Laughter ripples through the ballroom. The orchestra hesitates, unsure whether this is rehearsal or rebellion.

(And somewhere, the Grammarwitch, my amazing editor, clutches her editing pen like a sword. Don’t worry, Lori—it’s all on porpoise. Now she’s clutching her double strand of pearls in horror.)

Scene 5: The Feedback Loop

AI joins the floor. The lights flash in binary—on, off, on—as circuits hum in time with the waltz.

Now the bots mimic the humans mimicking the bots. They stumble gracefully, pretending to forget the steps, adding a typo flourish here, a double word there.

The ballroom becomes a whirl of mirrors. Reflections of reflections of reflections.

Who’s leading now? Who’s following? The music doesn’t seem to know either.

Scene 6: The Toast

The orchestra quiets. The chandeliers dim to candlelight.

Across the glittering floor, commas and colons pair off, exhausted. Even the em dash slows, pausing mid-gesture—just this once—to let everyone catch their breath.

Raise your glass.

To punctuation—forever personified.
To writers—forever messy, magical, and occasionally misspelling for effect.
To AI—forever awkwardly trying to keep up.

And most of all, to Jenn—may your birthday be punctuated exactly as you please (with or without em dashes).

Has the dance of AI interfered with your writing style?
Alternatively, please feel free to add birthday wishes for the amazing Jenny Hansen!

About Lisa

Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.

Lisa writes as Deleyna Marr and is the owner of No Stress Writing Academy. She also runs Heart Ally Books, LLC, an indie publishing firm.

Interested in learning more from Lisa? Sign up for her newsletter or check out her school, No Stress Writing Academy, where she teaches social media, organization, technical skills, and marketing for authors!

Top image by Deleyna via Midjourney.

by Marilyn June Janson, M.S. Ed.

Sharing stories based on your childhood and YA lived experiences

In the back of your closet, attic, or basement, dusty boxes filled with faded snapshots from family and school trips to Disneyland and state parks, ticket stubs from The Nutcracker, baseball, and football games, and photos of your first love, all trigger memories.

While happy experiences are wonderful to share with young audiences, stories without conflict and a clear message may not resonate with contemporary readers.

Blended families, the death of family members and pets, and a new sibling may create conflict.

Certain group dynamics kids and YA’s exhibit toward each other transcend the passage of time.

Common issues within this demographic are:

• Bullying
• Peer pressure
• Loneliness
• Cliques
• Learning
• Self–esteem
• Mental and physical health
• Growth phases

What message do you want to share with kids, YAs, and why?

Youngsters excluded from birthday parties, cliques, sleepovers, and last to be chosen to play soccer, or have physical and emotional difficulties, need support.

Stories offering hope, encouragement, and coping skills are ideal.

Choosing your genre, writing style, and POV—creative nonfiction or memoir?

Writing stories using creative nonfiction techniques instead of the memoir lends itself to ‘based on your experiences.’

Creating composites of your characters takes the pressure off you to include family, friends, and educators’ names, recalling dialogue and body language, and easily identifying your characters.

Elements of creative nonfiction

1. Plot and Storyline ~

Using paper, pen, marker, notes, or a computer spreadsheet, compile your childhood and young adult timeline. Not every year of your life is story material. Choose an experience that had the most emotional consequences and impact on you.

2. Choosing Point of View ~

First-person POV may elicit all the tension, struggle, and resolution you need to fully develop the story. Still, the First Person POV prevents you from writing scenes without the main character’s presence.

Third-person POV enables you to include your main and additional characters in every scene.

Omniscient Point of View ~ Telling the story from the narrator’s point of view may confuse young readers.

3. Settings ~

Draw a map of the city or town where you grew up or where your story takes place. Rename streets, roads, hills, mountains, highways, libraries, and schools. Readers will not point out any errors since the location is fictional. If you have relocated from the East Coast, where your story is located, to the West Coast, refamiliarize yourself with the weather patterns, climate changes on weather and Google apps.

4. Dialogue: Written, Texted, Voice Mail, and Emailed ~

While you cannot resist consulting the Urban Dictionary and back-to-school slang lists, those words and terms may have a short lifespan. You want your story to stay relevant, yet span future generations. “Cool,” a 60’s word, has made a comeback.

Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, TikTok, and other social media sites, “LOL, BRB, OMG, and BAE,” seem to have outlived the test of time.

5. Sensory and Visual Imagery ~

Integrating the 5 senses is a given. To invigorate your memories, venture outdoors and into interior venues. Parks, beaches, mountain ranges, clothing, paint, home improvement, and garden shops will trigger childhood and YA memories.

6. Word Choices ~

Digging deep into your heart and feeling those hard and painful events, your audience will think, I am not alone.

Consider the following words depicting emotions: fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, frustration, and worry.

These are only words. What are the physical effects accompanying these feelings?

• Fear ~ sweaty palms
• Exam and General Anxiety ~ shallow breaths, mind goes blank, sweating
• Anger and Frustration~ tightened fists
• Loneliness ~ hollow, empty, needing to fill the void with food
• Sadness ~ tired, loss of appetite, not interested in previously enjoyed activities

Updating your technology

To engage contemporary audiences, include cell phones (age-appropriate), tablets, social media (age-appropriate), TV streaming services, online games, texting, debit cards, and parental controls.

Premise and plot examples

In my book, The Super Cool Kids Story Collection, I used a variety of plots and premises based upon experiences and observations.

For example, I once was an instructor at United Cerebral Palsy. Being a keen observer of people and animals, I used that ability to better portray differently-abled characters—particularly for a bullied child with cerebral palsy, who learns that being himself is just fine.

In the book, I also covered:

• Cindy, a child in a sports camp who doesn’t excel in sports, finds a place for herself there.
• Carla has a conflict with a friend over a gift for grandma that the friend wants.
• Tommy must deal with a fear of flying and learn how to overcome it.
• Sam is dealing with the death of a friend and teammate.

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, adapted stories from her childhood.

Incorporating additional resources and historical references

Grandparents and elders are great storytellers. They provide excellent opportunities for youngsters to learn about their cultural, ancestral heritage, and beliefs. Learning about Native Americans, Ellis Island, the Holocaust, World War I and II is vital to our present–day lives.

Millennials – The end of Generation X (ages 1981-1996, 1981-2001)

Digital age family history websites and photos, smartphones, DVDs, social media, texting, emails, desktops, and indie-published geology, family reunion videos.

Major Historical Events

• 911 and the aftermath
• 2000 recession

Generation Xers (ages 45–60, 1965–1980)

Wedding, baby, and graduation photos, and infants’ bronzed footprints, above the fireplace, in the bedroom, kitchen, and workspaces.

Postcards, handwritten letters, theatre, movie, and concert tickets may be tucked inside books, Bibles, and memory boxes tied with pink and blue ribbons.

Major Historical Events

• Civil Rights Movement (1954 – 1968)
• Martin Luther King’s works and passing
• The Vietnam War (November 1955 – April 1975)
• Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon

Baby Boomers (Ages 61–79, 1946–1964)

• American Bandstand
• Record turntables
• Radios
• Boom boxes
• Drive–in movies
• Motown
• The Grand Ole Opry

Major Historical Events

• John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations
• MLK’s assassination
• The Vietnam War
• The Space Race
• Photographers showing a live feed to global audiences  

Final thoughts

Kids and YAs have always needed our love, support, and understanding. Inspire this demographic with your stories of hope, empathy, and coping skills.

* * * * * *

About Marilyn

Multi–award–winning writer Marilyn June Janson, M.S. Ed, began her career at 9 years old. Through her lived childhood and YA experiences, she shares stories of success despite adversity, peer pressure, bullying, loneliness, and test anxiety. Ms. Janson offers readers coping skills for better mental health. Ms. Janson has earned four peer support specialist certificates and serves as a trauma-informed facilitator. She is currently working on a fifth certification.

Contact her at http://www.janwrite.com/  and  

Marilyn June Janson's Books

Marilyn’s WIP is The Brooke Book. The title character is a new student at Meridian High School, Phoenix, Arizona. A traumatic event leaves this 16–year–old with memory loss. Doubted by her classmates, she is cyberstalked and bullied. Who is telling her the truth about what happened? Can she trust anyone?

Top Image from Pixabay

by Dr. Diana Stout

The motif is an important literary device used in film and literature to deepen meaning.

A motif is an object or idea represented through an action or an object and is repeated throughout the story. The motif creates tension, deepens emotion, and is often well-remembered. Overall, the theme and motif work together. While the theme is a message that comes out of the story’s main idea, the motif is a symbol that visually embodies and supports the theme.

Motif use in film

Remember the little girl’s red coat in the black and white film of Schindler’s List? The red color symbolizes blood, and with a little girl’s coat colorized, the symbol further represents innocence. Because we see her several times, the coat becomes a motif, supporting the theme of innocent blood being spilled.

In Top Gun, there are multiple motifs, including his best friend’s dog tags. When Goose dies, Maverick hangs on to them tightly, wanting to quit, thus following Goose out of service. Then later, Maverick talks to the tags wanting Goose to tell him what to do, and then near the end of the story, Maverick throws the tags into the ocean, releasing Goose, thus forgiving himself.

Using multiple motifs

The movie, Out of Africa, presents many motifs. A few of them are:

• Karen’s possessions – so many in the beginning, so few at the end; how she learns to let go.
• Coffee crops – trying to grow a crop not natural to Africa, the meaning behind the crop’s growth and then its loss in the ultimate destruction of fire replicates her own journey there.
• Water – how she tries to corral and control it, yet lets it go in the end by allowing it to flow naturally again.
• Karen’s hair – so precise in the beginning, then goes totally wild—like Africa. She becomes less precise in multiple areas.
• The true Romance – she tries to contain it, to put a name to it. Then, is forced to let it go.

(To read the paper I wrote about these motifs and others in detail and what each means, click here.)

Motifs with multiple meanings in literature and film

In Wuthering Heights, the moor’s beauty and wildness duplicate the characters’ struggles, especially Catherine and Heathcliff’s.

In the Hunger Games, the Mockingjay is first seen as a sign of camaraderie and hope; then, as a sign of united rebellion. Before the contest, she uses the bow and arrow to hunt for food. Later it’s her weapon of choice in the game both to secure food and as security against her enemies. Later, the bow and arrow are used for security and rebellion, securing freedom for the people.

Jane Austen uses walking as a motif in many of her books.

In the 1995 movie, Persuasion, Anne Elliot is walking when she experiences an injury, which mimics the emotional injury of her feelings for Captain Wentworth, especially as she overhears him talking about her. In the end, when Anne and Wentworth finally face each and kiss, a large group of noisy people are walking past them. Among the crowd are clowns, a band, a juggler, and someone on stilts. It’s a circus. As Anne and Wentworth walk arm in arm in the opposite direction, they’re leaving the circus life they’ve endured over the last decade behind them.

Exploring motifs in opposition

The dandelion in my book, Grendel’s Mother, represents both death and infinite life.

• As a young girl, she plucks a dandelion seed ball out of the ground and blows on it. Quickly, her mother chides her, saying, “You dance with death.”
• The second time, it’s late at night and she’s in the forest alone. Once again, she plucks a dandelion with a seed ball out of the ground and blows on it. She’s grabbed from behind to find that it’s her love interest who chides her about being out in the woods late and alone. When he leaves, she finds a second seeded dandelion and blows on it with a horrendous event following immediately. Weeks later, with the event uncovered, she’s removed from the community via a dragon who instead of destroying her, ends up rescuing her.
• Years later, her son, Grendel, while giving her a seed ball dandelion, holds it up to her face and blows on it, dispersing the seeds all around her. Immediately, she recalls her mother’s warning.

In the end, she acknowledges she is very much like the dandelion—hardy and unable to be erased.

Motifs can come from any object:

• Weather
• Animals
• Food
• Modes of transportation & pathways
• Plants
• Household goods: teapots, mirrors, door, clocks, etc.
• Light & darkness
• Language
• Colors
• Music & Art
• Societal rules & tools: money, meetings, the law, etc.
• Buildings

Final thoughts

When crafting a story and you find the protagonist handling an object, consider how it can be used to represent change, growth, a downfall, moods, feelings, events, speech, friendship, and so forth.

Find ways to turn the ordinary into a motif, by which to deepen the story and the main character.

In doing so, your story and its main characters become memorable.

When thinking about a favorite story, can you name any of the motifs that were used?

* * * * * *

About Dr. Diana

Some content from this blog comes from the Motif element page in the just released book, Dr. Diana’s Toolkit for Better Writing: Proven Tips and Tricks for Every Writer, Every Field. More examples were added here to provide more illustration.

This new resource book is a practical, no-fluff guide packed with proven tips, tricks, and real-world strategies to help every writer—creative, business, or academic—write clearly, confidently, and effectively in any field, any genre.

An award-winning writer, Diana is a screenwriter, author, former English professor, and indie publisher, writing in multiple genres. Her split-in-time psychological thriller, Harbor House: Deadly Intentions, will be published November 18, 2025.

To learn more about Diana visit her website at sharpenedpencilsproductions.com.

Top Image by Goran Horvat from Pixabay