The Writing Mafia

Bluebird             “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus,” I sang at the top of my lungs.             “Right down Santa Claus Lane!” Preston joined in.             It was the night of Christmas Eve and I was driving with Preston to his parents’ house. We were going to spend the night and exchange gifts in the morning. As we drove through the snow, Preston and I belted out our favorite Christmas carols.             I inhaled deeply, grinning as my favorite smells entered my nose. I could practically taste his mom’s gingerbread and apple pie. The other air freshener filled the car with the sharp scent of pine trees. Christmas was my favorite time of year.             “Here comes Santa Claus,” Preston started again. Then I saw her in the dark night.             The little girl wore a tattered blue coat. She waddled onto the train tracks and started playing with the white fluff on the ground. Her chubby hands dug into the ground, though she wasn’t wearing an

-Hannah- So. Unicorns. Do we need to go over the basics? They're white horses with one twisted horn in the center of their forehead. Other details of their appearance and their powers vary with the time period. History The ancient Greeks were the first to record unicorns, not as mythical creatures, but as actual natural things found in India, at that time a distant and mystical realm in relation to Greece. The first-ever description of them, found in a book called Indika (On India), describes them as fleet-footed wild asses with a horn two and a quarter feet long. However several seals from the Indus Valley have what look like unicorns on them (above) dated about 2000 years before the Ancient Greeks began to flourish. It is debatable whether they are unicorns or cows with two horns but printed with bad perspective.  Moving on to the Middle Ages. A mistranslation in the King James Version of the Bible meant that Unicorns were incorrectly substituted for rhinos,

- Germaine - So you want to write songs in stories, but have no idea where to start? Unfortunately for you, I have no idea how to write songs, too. But before you begin to despair, here are a few tips I've learned from reading a few books. 1. Songs DO NOT need to rhyme I see this a lot. It's a little annoying when it's overused in the same book, especially when the author seems to run out of rhymes. I'm not saying, "don't rhyme your songs at all." Some songs that rhyme are actually quite good. I'm saying, "think about it." If the song you're writing fits well with your story, go for it. But if it seems out of place, you might want to consider rewriting it. The worst case scenario would be to delete it entirely and erase all traces of it from your story. 2. Write songs like you're writing poetry Songs are poems, after all. So wouldn't it be fun to just throw out some deep, meaningful figurative language? Of c