Writers in the Storm

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.

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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?

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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

by Ellen Buikema

Self-doubt can stifle the creative process and block the ability to express oneself. This can cause real problems when writing a story.

When you ponder your writerly identity, what comes to mind?

• Your strength? Great confidence. “I can do this!”
• Or weakness?  Fear of failure. “What was I thinking?”

Self-doubt is an equal opportunity issue. Pessimists aren’t the only ones who deal with it. Optimists are not immune to the self-doubt train.

Steps to overcome writerly self-doubt

Questions may pop up in your mind, “What makes me think that I can actually write a book? Is it any good? Will anyone buy it?”

Do you use positive thoughts and build yourself up or negative self-talk, comparing yourself to others?

If it’s negative self-talk, recognize it for what it is to curb self-doubt from damaging your ability to write and cause feelings of unworthiness. Tell yourself that you are good enough and worthy of being heard. Recognizing the problem is the first big step to overcome it.

Where does self-doubt come from? 

At its core, self-doubt stems from many things.

Childhood experiences

• Highly critical adult authority figures
• Unrecognized talents
• Lack of encouragement
• Social awkwardness

When confidence has been stripped away at a young age, it is hard to get it back. A good dose of stubbornness helps.

Perfectionism

• Standards set too high
• Fear of failure
• Comparing self to others
• Seeing things only in black and white with no possibility for compromise or shades of gray

The Inner Critic

• Constantly questions our decisions and abilities
• Chips away confidence

Silencing that inner beast is tough. But when you discover the root causes of self-doubt, focus on your strengths and accomplishments so you can ignore the inner critic.

Writers on self-doubt

In the publishing world, writers are confronted with a plethora of competition, and criticism. Then there is the rejection. Know that writers, even the accomplished ones, deal with this.  All of it—food for self-doubt.

Writing is an artform. Many artists are prone to self-doubt, so it isn’t surprising that writers face the same struggle. There’s much self-doubt to go around. Consider the following greats who did battle with that fear.

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” –- Sylvia Plath

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.” ― William Shakespeare

“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” ― Stephen King

“I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.” ― Robert Sheckley

“Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.’”
― Maya Angelou

Overcoming self-doubt

To quiet the negative voice, you not only need to hear that you are worthy to be heard—you need to believe it.

• Set aside your worries as you are able
• Step away from the writing world for a time
• Focus on overcoming the blocks that are walling you off from the success you want, then return to writing

Begin your journey to face self-doubt today. Bring that confidence to your writing and see how that effects your life.

Kick your inner critic to the curb

There is no “I’m not good enough.” Don’t allow negative self-talk to sabotage your creativity.

Sometimes it helps to lavish encouragement on others. Tell them how proud you are of them, how wonderful they are, that it’s okay to make mistakes, as errors help us learn to be better writers. Sometimes those errors lead us to new and interesting stories.

In helping others, we may encourage ourselves. And your encouraging words will be passed along to others along the way.

When you recognize that your inner critic is creeping in, have a go-to phrase you can say out loud to lessen the impact of that negative inner voice. 

Here are some suggestions:

1. “Stop!”
2. “Nope. I’ve got this!”
3. “I can do this.” 
4. “I’m talented.”
5. “I’m better than this!”

“What if I fall? Oh, my darling, what if you fly?”— Erin Hanson

If you focus on (failing) falling, you’re letting doubt take over. Instead, focus on flying free from limitations, doubt, and fear. Dive into new experiences and possibilities.

Your thoughts create life, keep them positive.

Build yourself up when experiencing self-doubt

Give yourself some grace. No one is perfect. Recognize your humanity.

Listen to music. This is something I do to help myself. Songs can be inspirational and truly are mood-changing.

Sing and dance until negativity leaves you. Your motivation will return.

There will always be critics. Work on developing a thicker skin, and be open for constructive criticism.

Build up your love of self and confidence level to better face doubts.

Celebrate your wins

Many people talk about writing a book. The fact that you are working on one is a big win.

Celebrate when you recognize moments of self-doubt and confront them—building a shield made of confidence and positivity.

Do you struggle with self-doubt or imposter syndrome as an artist? What do you do to handle self-doubt?

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About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay