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Printed from https://writing.com/main/newsletters/action/archives/id/12195
Fantasy: September 27, 2023 Issue [#12195]




 This week: Harvest Festivals
  Edited by: Prosperous Snow celebrating Author IconMail Icon
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Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter

Harvest festivals
celebrate and give thanks for
a bountiful crop.

For me, the autumnal equinox always brings to mind harvest time and the festivals it generates. How can you use harvest festivals in your fantasy stories?


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Letter from the editor

Harvest festivals have been celebrated across the world for millennia. They are still celebrated across the planet. They are celebrated to give thanks for the blessings of Mother Earth for the first fruits of the field, a bountiful crop, and to guarantee this will occur again next year. In this modern age, some of the festivals focus on a wider celebration for the general public and not just the farmers involved in the harvest.

Today, almost every country has some sort of thanksgiving celebration that occurs in the fall. Fall is the traditional time of harvest. The spring planting season and the summer growing season have past. In the fall, most of the crops are matured and produced their fruit, whether that fruit be berries or grains. It is time to gather those crops and prepare for winter.

How can you use harvest festivals in your fantasy stories? You can make a harvest festival part of the plot when your adventures go into a place where crops are being harvested. A festival may bring back pleasant or unpleasant memories for one of your characters. There could be a war or a magic user interfering with harvesting the crops. Use your imagination and you can find numerous ways to use a harvest festival to further your plot.

Have any of my readers written a fantasy or science fiction story or poem about harvest or a harvest festival? Can you think of a way you could use one of these festivals to reveal a character or further a plot?


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Word from Writing.Com

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Ask & Answer

Quick-Quill Author Icon writes: Why do other authors, put this huge rock on writer's necks before they start? I don't stop reading a book if there isn't a hook in the first two paragraphs of a book. Most of us pick up a book because of the cover and title. We read the back cover and if THAT hooks us, we may read the first page or so to see if the author can hook us with their style.
I never tell a new writer to worry about those first two paragraphs. Get the story on the page. Then, when you have the story written, go back to that first page and see where you can write something that will draw the reader to turn that page and keep turning.

I have no idea why a hook in the first or second sentence is important. I attempt to put a hook at the beginning if the story. Sometime I might succeed and sometimes fail. I believe that what may hook one reader will not hook every reader. I know what hooks me when I read a story, but I do not know what would hook another reader. Prosperous Snow celebrating Author Icon


Balimaino Author Icon writes: Today I have learnt about the use of hooks in writing, I was never mindful of that before.

Beholden Author Icon writes: I dislike this idea of "hooking" the reader. It smacks of preparing traps to ennare the unwary and is the wrong approach, in my opinion. Our aim, surely, is to entertain, to present what we want to say in a way that the greatest number of readers will enjoy and benefit from. And that means we have to be entertaining and interesting from the first sentence, right through to the last. "Hooking" implies that we want to grab the reader initially and then drag them through the rest of the story or book regardless of how poorly-written or dreary it is. Let's befriend the readers, rather than ensnare them with (possibly false) impressions.


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