Meet Betsy
Welcome to my virtual studio. As both a writer and designer, I’m driven by a curiosity about the world. In my studio, I take that curiosity and use it to create new worlds. I write for kids and adults as well as a good deal of freelance non-fiction. Explore to find out more about me, my books, and my thoughts on writing as well as the thoughts of friends who stop by the studio. If you’ve got something you’d like to share reach out to me through the contact form. I’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to read what’s been happening in the studio.
Structuring A Great Story
If we think of it as architecture, plot is your unique stained glass window made up of all the tiny bits of beauty that are your unique story. Structure is the stone walls that hold it, less dazzling but equally important. Without a good structure, everything else falls apart.
Review: A Wreath for Emmett Till
The story it tells and the moving way it tells it is well worth a review, but what I want to talk about is the structure. Emmett Till’s story is told in a heroic crown of sonnets. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. A crown of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen interlinked sonnets in which the last line of each is the first line of the next and the final sonnet is made up of the first lines of each of the preceding fourteen poems.