Beth Carpenter Books

When I meet someone new, we start to talk about what we have in common, and if we hit it off, we tell stories. Stories of events, where we came from, the people in our lives. In other words, backstory. We share these things because the events in our lives have shaped us into the people we are today. It’s the same with characters in a fictional story. She stood at the crest of the hill, her short sun-bleached hair tousled by the wind. Mud streaked across her NAU sweatshirt. Okay, we have a snapshot of her, but who is she? In order for that character to seem real, we need to know her background. Was she an only child? Did she have any pets? Did she stomp in mud puddles or did her mother keep her indoors? Writers know these things, and since we’re trying to introduce the character, we want to tell the reader everything we know, as soon as possible. That’s where we run into trouble. If that person I just met immediately bombarded me with all his history and his most intimate d...

This week, I saw my first Joshua tree. I’ve seen pictures, but never before seen them in person. Their scientific name is Yucca brevifolia, so they’re more closely related to yucca than to trees, but they seem to grow like trees, even to the point where they appear to have bark. The legend is that they were named by Mormon pilgrims, because the upraised arms reminded them of Joshua, the man who led the Jews into the promised land, and they were on the way to their own promised land. There seems to be some debate about whether the name is really that old, but whether it was pilgrims or latter inhabitants, they were named after Joshua because they seem to raise their arms to God. One of the stories in Joshua (10:13) says that Joshua asked God to hold the sun still, and it stopped in the middle of the sky for a whole day. I wonder if this was the verse they had in mind when they named the Joshua tree. Traveling through the desert in the summer, it must sometimes seem as if the sun i...

English is a rich and wonderful language, with contributions from other languages around the world. Writers can have their characters interact at a gathering (Old Dutch), a forum (Latin), a tete-a-tete (French), a powwow (Narragansett), or a shindig (American 1800s). But proper English has a few gaping holes in ease of use, and I’d like to suggest a fix for one or two that bother me the most. First of all, we need a word for “his or her.” Writers constantly tie themselves in knots trying not to say, “I want to thank the anonymous donor for their contributions,” because of course, that’s incorrect. Donor is singular and their is plural. However, “I want to thank the anonymous donor for his or her contributions,” sounds awkward. That’s how we get sentences like, “The contributions of the anonymous donor should be applauded, and I’d like to be the first to say thank you.” So, here’s my first recommendation. “Their” should officially have a recognized meaning of “his or her,” in addit...