Vivid imagery and descriptions in a story will remain in your mind long after reading. While dialogues make a statement to ignite your understanding, descriptive language makes a story come alive to leave a lasting impression. A story should feature dialogues complementing great narratives to make it an immersive read. How does a story capture the interest of a reader? The first few lines in a story are important elements to attract a reader to pick up your book. Readers are interested in reading a story until the end when the descriptions are clear, concise, and engaging enough to pull them into the story. While poets often leave the interpretation of a poem to the reader, narratives must be imparted effectively for understanding. When I delve into a book, I am drawn by the vivid imagery and descriptions in the narratives. If an author has painted a captivating, relatable picture of what the book represents, it would interest me to read the whole story. Here's an example: 'Witnessing their love for each other, were the blue corals and pebbles that lined the seabeds, while the rays from the sun glistened like pearls on the shimmering waters.' Dialogues are important structure-building elements of a story. Dialogues add depth, and realism, and are a vital component to effective storytelling. However, stories can be told without them if the imagery and descriptions ignite an interest in a reader's five senses. ‘The Road' by Cormac McCarthy is a fine example of a successful fiction novel without dialogue that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. McCarthy concentrates on rich descriptions to attract the reader's senses, adding depth and rhythm to the story. He was so good that his book exemplified the power of descriptive language to pique a reader's interest and win the coveted title. A dialogue-free novel conveys a character's thoughts and reflections through internal monologues that will provide motivating insights into the story. Descriptions expressed profoundly empower a story. To engage your readers use aesthetic language and metaphors. ‘The lush, breathtakingly beautiful green landscape starkly contrasted the blue of the turquoise waters.' When describing an emotion, make sure the reader feels the story as it unfolds. In a reader's mind, he should be able to see, hear, taste and smell. This way you will engage a reader's senses to respond to your descriptions as you want them to. It is in the hands of the author to align a reader's thoughts with his. For instance, if you are talking about the sea, describe how deeply connected you are to the beauty and vast expanse of the ocean. How do the lapping waves affect you? Or the tides as they rush ashore? Use metaphors to describe nature's phenomenal wonder. ‘The translucent waters covered her feet in lyrical movements.' Write different descriptions of the scenes so you make the story intricately variable. They work wonders to create a lasting impression in the reader's mind. ‘The vivid imagery and descriptions in her writing capture the beauty and magic of the sea, likening the eyes to the breathtaking turquoise waters and exploring the wonders of the underwater world, including the delicate anemones.' In the above description, by referring to the anemones as delicate, the sea creatures' strength, vulnerability, beauty, and resilience are explained as they survive a rough underwater habitat. Through creative figures of speech, the readers will imagine and discover the magic of enchantment and intrigue in the words. ‘With eyes as breathtaking as the turquoise waters of the sea, she discovers the true magic of the island.' Textures, colours, sounds and smells are sensory details to focus on to build a rich setting for a story. Create an awesome emotional experience and add authenticity to your stories so readers will never forget how your book made them feel. Some of the stories I have read have impacted me emotionally to a great extent, and the words and imagery still evoke the same feelings as when I first read them. Authentic writing involves properly researched and truthful narratives incorporated into the story to create a deeper connection with the characters and themes. Storytelling is the ability to emotionally engage the reader and leave them feeling contented with your book at the end. Not only do vivid imagery and descriptions emphasise enrichment and broaden perspectives, but they also inspire personal growth. As an author, your goal is to impress a reader so that he will return to read more of your stories. Isn't that the dream of an author? To have his book recognised as a compelling read so that he attains credibility and is renowned as a writer. Storytelling is the art of weaving narratives and dialogues masterfully to enliven a reader's mind with a well-crafted story. Cheers to the great storytellers of all time.

When I came home from my graduate program for spring break, I knew I would be out of Syracuse for more than two weeks. The pandemic was ticking up on my timeline, the Ivy Leagues were moving full semesters online, and my school would likely follow. My younger sisters, both in college, were likewise sent home. I thought my older sister would stay away. Serving in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, it seemed unlikely she would be pulled. However, she was soon taken out of West Africa, routed through Europe and the American Midwest, and brought back to New York State and to us. 2020 was the year of four twentysomething sisters, diverted, living once again under the same roof. My older sister and I have had a tense and complicated relationship for most of our lives, and I was unexcited at the prospect of bunking together in the attic. I blame her for many of my faults, unfair as that may be. My defensiveness, my intense fear of being vulnerable, my possessiveness: these I trace to her. There are a few stories I tell about her when first explaining our relationship. One is her pushing me into the deep end of a pool before I knew how to swim. The second is her taking my (very thick) middle school cell phone and chucking it at the mini Zen Garden I had bought at Dollar Tree, chipping a sizable chuck from the corner (“she ruined my Zen,” I tell people). There's the time I performed in my first school musical, and she told me: “you weren't as bad as I thought you'd be” (her version of a compliment). None of these are very bad and, truthfully, she wasn't a Very Bad sister. Yet these instances characterize my relationship with her. She was violent, invaded my space and property, and any time I was proud of something she insulted it. I kneeled; she stood on me. Even now, sometimes, I'll tell her something she did, something that hurt me way back when. “Oh that was a good one,” she'll say. She cut my favorite necklace in half and threw it in the garden. She slammed my head against the wall for eating her Goldfish. “I should write these down,” she smiles. She sprit in my hair, screamed at me when she lost her phone, hit me in front of my friends. - Everything we see in each other is colored by expectation and the need to build a differentiated identity for ourselves. We project freely and our defensiveness is reflexive. We are fonts of unsolicited advice and unwelcome criticism. There's a judgement there: we assume we know each other best (or truest) even though each one of us withholds so much. Our presumption of knowledge is not so much about events but character. As though the two are not related. We believe we know each other best and believe that none of the others really knows us. But there are these moments we decide to suspend all reality and laugh at some novel bit or deprecating observation, times when we decide not to be self-conscious and let ourselves take the jab-- we enjoy it. There are times when the joke is good, or when we willingly do favors for one another, or when we all cohort as siblings for parental leverage. There are times when the low snickering and secrecy feel nostalgic of a happy childhood. - Tonight, Julia was giggle-screaming at Rachel about a centipede which had fallen from the ceiling of her room. She couldn't find the monster and absolutely COULD NOT sleep knowing it was waiting somewhere to crawl into her mouth while she slept. She came downstairs to beg for help, asking myself and Ashley to PLEASE come up to her room, find the centipede, and catch it. I lay horizontally across Julia's bed, the flashlight of my phone pointed at the corner of floor where the centipede had apparently landed. Hanging my head over the edge of the bed to look beneath, I found: three hair ties, a barrette, a Christmas chocolate, dust, a plastic toy (this to Ashley for her enjoyment), and a Spanish-language flyer which, when moved, revealed a centipede. Ashley goading me to touch the centipede felt like I was soon to be the butt of a joke, so I made her do it instead. She assumed the post with me holding the flashlight above her. Julia had provided an empty Tylenol bottle for capture. It was an awkward angle, and Ashley was having trouble. Julia tossed me a magazine to squish the bug, but she missed horribly, and the rogue copy of The Atlantic landed near Ashley's head in the corner, scaring the centipede. This led to Ashley attempting to resign the task and blaming Julia, Julia admitting fault but BEGGING us to stay, and the centipede once again being found on the floor, opposite the side of the bed where it had started. Ashley acquiesced attempted to nudge and scoop the centipede into the bottle. The window was open and waiting for the poor creature's defenestration. It wasn't working well. “Kill it,” I said again. “Just do it.” As the centipede ran, Ashley took the magazine, dropped it on top of the bug, and gave one large, socked step. “You can deal with this,” she said to Julia.

I have never been good at vocalizing myself, especially around crowds or new people, whether with relatives, school pupils or strangers. I would get excessively overwhelmed and swallowed up by my fear. Though I am not too accurate of the time when I transitioned into the reserved incommunicable girl, I had become, because I am told that as a toddler I used to be bubbly and boisterous. The life of the party as some might say. But what I do remember is someone who was intimidated by everything and everyone, even asking to go to the toilet or to ask for elaboration during a lesson at school. On the year after I finished 2nd grade, I changed schools to attend at a multi-racial school. I had no understanding of the English language and would look perplexed whenever I was engaging with other students or teachers. I think that's when my phobia of people ensued, I was embarrassed that I could not speak like the other kids and that I was the only one in class who could not converse in English. The shaky confidence I was trying to uphold collapsed exposing my vulnerability. A few months later, I grasped the language and gradually acquired more knowledge of it. I jumped that huddle but more were awaiting me in future. My lack of self-esteem weighed me downwards, right up until I was in high school, though I would start to garner confidence in the tenth grade when I was hailed as one of the best writers in the English class. I was still dead quiet and awkward. I didn't realise it, but I was a pen craft and that caught the attention of my grade ten form and English teacher. We had been given an assignment to write a speech on the topic of our desire, which we were supposed to present in front of the class. Through that speech I wrote, Mr Sommers (English teacher) started to have an understanding of the person I was and saw within me potential I never thought myself to have. He heightened my thirst to sharpen writing skills. Two years before I had started writing poetry but never thought that I was good enough to mention it to anyone so it was my pleasant little secret. I was called weird and peculiar due to my inward disposition. Cast aside because I was uncool and unbecoming. When it came to literature and writing in class though, a different tune would be sung. Writing lifted my spirit, gratified and reminded me of the fact that I was good at something and worthy of admiration and praise. This alleviated doubts I had concerning self-image, intellect and the overall perception of life. In words I found consolation, I realised the affect they had and that if aligned competently they can alter a persons' train of thought for their betterment. From grade ten to matric (grade 12), his class was the only one, besides the IsiZulu (mother tongue) class that I could expressively act. He allowed me, as well as the other girls to be the best versions of ourselves. After I matriculated (graduated from high school) I got a rude awakening that my lack of self-confidence was only a hindrance in the path of the progression of my life. I even wrote a poem about this titled 12 years of nothing because I only achieved two of the five distinctions I had wanted. Which left me pondering on words that a former class mate had said to me. She told me to open up a bit so that people would perceive me for who I was and so I could have a voice. I found it more relevant than ever to use my writing skills, because I had entered a new phase of my life, gone was the old, in was the new and I knew no one. Me, paper and pen, became inseparable to the point that a guy in my community said I would become psychotic because I was forever reading and writing. With each poem I wrote I noticed growth, maturity and it served as a reminder of the person I authentically was and whom I wanted to evolve into. Writing helped when, I was at college studying Film and Television Production. I possessed the ability to compose a concept for a story far more adequately, than my fellow college mates because writing regularly assisted me in reaching my full potential in terms of the vocabulary of the English language. My enthusiasm as a writer is at its apex and I intend on using it for the betterment of my life and that of those around me. Each poem, essay, article or story I write is a representation of my experiences and opinion, I write about things that interest me or are breath-taking in a positive or negative manner. It assists me in observing the status quo, events happening me in my life, goals, dreams and fantasies. All these things get penned down each time I pick up a pen. I could not have chosen another career, writing is my life, joy and pride. It serves as an affirmation that there are more important things than social media and that readers are leaders and writers are the ones that hold the lighters to intellect.

I remember returning to my dorm room after class on no particular day in late February, kicking off my shoes, putting on fuzzy socks, and plopping into bed. I was scrolling through Youtube as I usually did, expecting to see the normal comedy videos, beauty tutorials, or DIY's recommended for me. But on this day, a documentary popped up on my homepage about a man's experiences living in Wuhan, China amidst the COVID-19 outbreak. As much as I felt like this video had nothing to do with me at the time, I felt like I couldn't look away from it. During this time, life still felt normal in the U.S., and the possibility of an outbreak here felt like a distant dystopia that we were removed from. Still, I had a lurking concern that this would soon be my reality, but everytime I mentioned this to my friends, I was told to stop worrying. So, I watched documentaries, like this one, on my own. What struck me the most about this documentary was a seemingly insignificant moment when the videographer passed by a dog on the street, and nonchalantly explained that he won't be able to pet a dog for a long time due to COVID-19 health concerns. I paused the video and began reminiscing on all the times I saw a dog on my college campus, and the joy I would feel when the owners invited me to come pet them. As small as this gesture seems, these encounters would make my day, the feeling of the dog's soft, warm fur melting my stress away. I couldn't imagine passing by a dog and thinking “danger” or “stay away”. I couldn't imagine refraining from petting a dog as they gazed into my eyes with adoration. I couldn't imagine living like the man I saw on my screen in the documentary, afraid of such a simple interaction. Yet I had a feeling I would soon have to live this way. In early April, a few weeks after college campuses sent students home due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., I took a walk with my dad. These walks became a normal part of our routine, a way to pass the time and feel a sense of artificial freedom within the confines of our sleepy neighborhood. During this walk, I remember telling my dad how unreal this “new normal” felt to me. I explained that I still clung to the hope that I would soon be going back to college, that my dorm room still had “Megan and Tiffany” hanging on the front door, that my clothes were still hanging in the closet, and that my string lights were still shining along the perimeter of my tapestry. The reality that my room was empty, cold, and vacant was unfathomable. During this conversation, my dad and I spotted a neighbor walking their golden retriever, my favorite breed of dog. I watched as the dog quite literally skipped along the sidewalk, tail wagging, tongue out. His face looked like he was genuinely smiling, his teeth showing and his eyes squinting. My natural response was to go ask the neighbor if I could pet his dog-- but I quickly stopped myself. Not only did I need to keep my distance from the neighbor, but I also needed to stay away from others' pets, unsure if they could carry coronavirus. I had to just keep walking by, even making a conscious effort to walk further away from them to maximize our distance. In that moment, I remembered the documentary I watched about the man living in Wuhan, and the clip where he had to resist the urge to pet a dog he saw on the street. It was then that I realized this was my reality, too. I was now the one who couldn't pet the dog. I was the one wearing a mask I never thought I'd need. I was the one whose life felt apocalyptic. Taking ownership of my new reality was unexpectedly liberating. Rather than watching the news from a disconnected perspective, I could now accept that this was my narrative, too. As scary as it is, this is our “new normal”, at least for now, and the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can take precautions to keep ourselves and others safe. We can't afford to live in denial. By accepting this new reality, we free ourselves from dwelling on the inconveniences we now must endure. In doing so, we open ourselves up to the present and on what we each need to do to minimize the spread. By not petting that dog, I put myself in the present-- this one sacrifice gave me the reality check I needed. Staying safe right now is a matter of making little sacrifices like this one, sacrifices that seem irrelevant in comparison to the bigger-picture risks. I implore everyone to continue taking precautions; to wear masks, social distance, and wash hands frequently; to stay present and grounded; and to keep the life-threatening risks in mind when temptations to break these safety measures start to blur our new reality.

“When I grow up, I want to be a doctor! A firefighter! A teacher! An astronaut! A ballerina!” All the kids yelled out with excitement, when the teacher asked what everyone wanted to be when they grew up! Now, those very same kids are all grown up, sitting in a staff meeting, wearing stuffy business suits, drinking coffee and thinking “this definitely could've been sent in an email”. What happened to those excited little kids from a couple of sentences ago? There's a four-letter word that I think explains what happened perfectly; LIFE! That's right folks I said it… LIFE can be something else! Now life is different for everyone, we may share similar experiences, but our responses and the affects these experiences have on an individual are usually different. This isn't going to be some sad story about how life threw a bunch of lemons at someone and knocked them out! Nope, this story is about collecting those lemons & making delicious lemonade! Of course, I'm not really going to talk about making lemonade! Take a minute and think... when the teacher asked you in elementary school, what you wanted to be when you grew up, what did you yell out? I said I wanted to be a doctor, because I wanted to help people! There I was, five-years-old and I already had life all figured out, or so I thought. If I could give five-year-old me some advice, it would be: grab a helmet, knee & elbow pads cause this ride is gonna get rough! So, here we are folks, it's senior year! Adrenaline was pumping, nerves were I don't know nervy I guess (lol). I was excited and ready to walk across that stage, down the steps, through the parking lot and into adulthood! PUMP THE BREAKS MISSY! That's me yelling at myself! Why were we so eager to “grow up” to become “adults”? How come the adults didn't warn us about… oh wait, okay…that's what all that “Don't rush it, before you know it, you'll be an adult” chatter was all about! Mm, I see now. I don't know about you but I would've preferred a breakdown, like I tell kids all the time specifically why they shouldn't rush being an adult! Like how they should take advantage of naps because they're not included at work. How about these pieces of paper you get in the mail that list out stuff you've purchased or used and at the very bottom, are some numbers that are behind a dollar sign…. These papers are called “Bills”! I can't believe I almost forgot to mention the most terrifying part of adulting… there's a place you go to for about eight hours out of your day (maybe more it depends) and you do tasks (some you might like and others you may not) … this place we call “Work”! So, enjoy being five while you can, because it doesn't last forever! I just needed to get that off my chest! Now back to my education timeline. Here we are, and its college graduation time woo hoo!! Finally, I can be done with all this school stuff, get a career, make lots of money and be happy! But that's not quite how it went for me! Remember in the beginning when I said life is different for everyone? Well, it's true! Some of my school friends graduated, got their degrees, their dream job and they are living life. While others I graduated with, have a couple of degrees in different fields, started off in what they thought was their dream job and realized none of that was what they really wanted. Then there were some who said forget college, they mastered a skill/craft, found their passion and either work at a job they love, or they have their own business. You see life is truly what you make it! It's like a game of cards, we're all dealt different hands BUT at some point, we all have/had similar cards, it's what we choose to do with them that results in the outcome of our lives. And I believe the only time it's too late for change, is when we're sleeping eternally! Some of you are probably saying, “ok what's your point?” And that is an excellent question! When I first started writing this, I wasn't sure which way I was going with this story. I just knew that I wanted to be able to encourage someone to get up and say “you know what, life threw a hell of a lot of lemons at me and now it's time for me to make some lemonade!” I know I said I wasn't going to talk about lemons and lemonade but I couldn't help it!! Here's my “real” conclusion, where I bring everything, I talked about altogether! Most of us dream when we're little and sometimes those dreams fade away as we get older, but it's never too late to fulfill those dreams! We've all been given life but live it differently. Some of us know what we want right out of high school, while others of us find our way a little bit later in life. Some people take life's lemons and complain about how sour they are, while other's make lemonade. Now it's time for you to decide… what will YOU do with the lemons in your LIFE?! ~Tiffany Renee~