Summertime Tunes

Summer is the time for easy, breezy living. Hot days, cool drinks, and catchy, danceable tunes. I bet you can name a few that were the soundtrack to some summer phase of your life. They instantly call to memory people, a time, place, and events.

If you’re writing fiction and want to have your character recall some tunes from her past, the Billboard Charts are your go to resource. But, there’s a few tricks to get the goods. You can’t navigate through their site to get to past charts.

Google “Billboard” Hot 100 “July” “1995”, for example, and that should give you a link straight the chart for the first week of the month. Be sure and put the words Billboard, the month name and the year in quotes to get the best results. Skip the Wikipedia link, which will always appear at the top and go straight to one for billboard.com.

If you want more granularity, I’ve got you covered. Website URLs typically follow a pattern and Billboard’s are no exception.

Once you get the first week of the month, note the format of the web address. https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1958-08-04/ gives the first week they have available on the website, with the date format being four digits for the year followed by two digits for the month, then two digits for the date separated by dashes. Use an online day of week calculator to get the date you’re interested in. The weekday they announced the top hits varies through time, but if you enter a date, the website will take you to the page for the closest matching week. Ah, the magic of the intelligent 404 Redirect. But, I digress.

The week I was born the #1 hit was “Can't Buy Me Love” by The Beatles. My mother was a teenager in the fifties and a do-wop fan, so she was probably listening more to the #14 song “The Way You Do the Things You Do” by The Temptations."

Have fun finding the hits when you were a teen, and/or give your character some musical memories by taking a Billboard Charts trip back in time.

Research and a 24 Hour Story Challenge - Guest Blog

Today’s blog is by my good friend and critique partner, the incredible writer Lauren McGuire.

---

Last year I won an international writing contest, and this April myself and eleven other winners were flown out to Los Angeles for a week-long master class followed by a gala and fancy-pants book signing. As part of the class, we were tasked with writing a full story beginning, middle, and end within 24 hours. 

This is not a task for the faint of heart. We were given a challenge, a writing twin, and a prompt and sent on our way for 24 hours of creative freedom.  

The challenge: Speak to a stranger. I’m Southern. I’d spoken to a stranger within the first five minutes of landing in LA. Would you like to know about Mitch, the driver who took me from LAX to the Loews Hotel, or Anthony who bagged my groceries at Ralph’s? 

My writing twin: Andrew, a fellow writer from Surry, England. We were meant to bounce ideas off one another and offer moral support. This mostly consisted of us barreling down Hollywood Boulevard as I rambled about my idea and he shivered in existential dread while avoiding a huge human in a gorilla suit. Twenty minutes later, we were buried in our own work. 

My prompt: A rock. Like one found in your backyard.

What to do? After some brainstorming, I came up with what I thought would be my opening sentence (it would actually be my last) and three ideas related to that sentence. I chose one idea to expand on, and I was off. I didn’t have time to order and read a ton of books, but I needed several things. The first was a highly magnetic element. One Google search and several scanned science sites later I had my element—neodymium. 

Next, I needed a planet or meteor on which to locate this element. This took me on a completely different research thread where I discovered a wonderful conspiracy theory dating back to the 1970’s called the Nibiru Cataclysm. Nibiru comes from the Akkadian word for “crossing” or “point of transition”. Perfect. The Nibiru conspiracy theorized that a large planetary body would collide or closely pass by Earth thus causing a cataclysm. Boom. I had a name for my planet. 

Finally, I needed to place that planet somewhere near a star with a believable gravity (what kind of star? how far?), brush up on a few more details, then I was ready to write. According to our instructors, our stories didn’t need to be completely accurate, but they did need to be consistent. I didn’t need to provide the elemental details for neodymium or provide schematics for how it made my ship’s engine work, but I did need to establish in a plausible way that the highly rare and highly magnetic element powered the ship. Also, I loved the etymology of the word Nibiru. It worked into my theme perfectly.

As for my resources, Google was a great launch pad for me, but the real key was to dive into the materials that Google skimmed. Source material was key. In this mini-project, educational resources were great as well. In the end, I used the following: 

Brittanica.com for planetary sizes, gravities, and distances from major stars.

Webelements.com for information on the element neodymium.

Wordhippo.com, a wonderful thesaurus tool, to elevate the language of my post-human characters. 

A variety of science-y and non-science-y articles about the Nibiru Cataclysm that could have easily led me down a research rabbit hole had I not been strapped for time.

A funny thing happened during my research which, coincidentally, took about two hours. The more I chased the information I needed, the more my brain ran the program for the story in the background, so that when I was ready to start writing I had a character, a setting, and a dilemma. By 2pm the next day, I had a full story that I loved. 

My plan is to polish my short story, Skies Over Nibiru, and send it out. If you’re interested in that journey, follow me @mcguirestoried and check out my story “Karma Birds” in Writers of the Future vol 41.

---

Thanks, Lauren. Congratulations on the much deserved award and book release. You’re amazing!

Food for Research/Research for Food

Food checks all the sensory boxes. So, the opportunity to include a dining or cooking experience in our writing should never be overlooked.

I’m Southern. My days and seasons were punctuated by the smell of bacon, the taste of sourwood honey on buttermilk biscuits, the many reds of ripe tomatoes, and the fuzzy feel of okra when I picked it. My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all cooked Southern meals and collected recipes. The image here is from the 1921 Atlanta Women's Club Cookbook passed down through the family.

I laughed when I found the ad to reduce your hips and thighs tucked into the same page as the recipe for bacon and cream sauce laden Rabun Potatoes.

I grew up watching PBS, and Saturdays focused on the cooking shows, everything from Jacques Pepin to Paul Prudhomme. Sadly in January we lost one of my favorites, Nathalie Dupree. Her approachable style and complete commitment to Southern cooking hooked me.

If your writing is set in the South, be sure to check out the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization Nathalie Dupree helped start. I love the way they incorporate all forms of media in their effort to communicate the past, present and future of Southern food, from Oral Histories, Film, a Podcast, and more.

Enjoy (ya’ll)!

The Magic of Scripts

April 3, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the movie Monty Python on the Holy Grail’s release. This prompted me to remember the power of scripts in my personal writing journey and as a craft resource.

I had the best high school English teacher, and I can prove it. Linda McCord read Beowulf in the olde English and made us laugh, sounding more like the Swedish chef from The Muppets than a stuffy academic. She made reading and writing fun, and, best of all, she let us explore our interests. This manifested itself for me when she not only encouraged, but facilitated a paper I wrote titled, “Lancelot as Portrayed in Le Mort d'Arthur, The Once and Future King and Monty Python and The Holy Grail.” She special-ordered the script book for me. You couldn’t buy it in stores. Yes, I still have the book. See the beat up cover above.

LAUNCELOT

It’s just that when I’m in this genre, I tend to get over-excited and start to leap around and wave my sword about … and …

If you want to strengthen your dialog and tighten your prose, scripts provide fantastic instruction. We often struggle with communicating backstory without an info dump, laying in humor and showing intent with nuance. Behold the magic of well written dialog.

You don’t have to special order any more. Here are some sites with tons of scripts to download:

TV Writing - old and new TV shows, both UK and US based

The Blklst’s Go Into the Story - lots of recent movies

Simply Scripts

And if you’re still looking for more, The New York Film Academy has a longer list of script sites to explore.

Tweet!

Sensory detail enlivens our prose, whether it’s descriptions of smell, touch, taste, sight or sound. Since Spring is nearly here, I wanted to offer a great resource for the season’s sight and sound, Merlin Bird ID.

Do you have a bird feeder? Over the last few years we’ve upped our backyard bird watching and have several. Now the birds count on it. They can wipe out a refill in a few days. The fun part is observing the different types of birds, those that nest in the woods, ones in the viburnum shrubs beside the house and others passing through. The red ones are obviously cardinals, but what about all the others?

I downloaded the Merlin Bird ID app to my phone, and now I can pretend to know something about ornithology. At the press a button it listens to birdsong and identifies the species, even multiple birds at one time. It can also identify birds from photos. And there’s more info on what birds should be in your area at a given time of year.

If your story calls for a tweet of the original variety, check out Merlin. And enjoy the sounds of Spring!

Find that Film (or TV Show)

Awards season is upon us. Will you tune in to the Oscars? How many of the nominated films have you seen? I’m way behind on my movie viewing for pleasure, but I’m always thinking about how to combine enjoyment, research, and knowledge resources.

I watch a lot of documentaries and movies for my writing. Inevitably I’ll find a film mentioned somewhere that came out in the 1970s that sounds perfect to fill in the gaps of my research. Now, where to watch it? Enter JustWatch.com You search for a movie or TV show and, poof, get a list of all the streaming services where it’s available, broken down by free, to rent, or buy. Best of all you can click through on any one of the links and and start the show or add to your queue on that service for later.

Let’s say you have some religious references in your latest writing, what could be more timely, with the Pope’s health all over the news and being nominated for an Oscar, than watching Conclave?

JustWatch.com also works for general searches. Enter a keyword or subject and you get a list of films with that word in the title or as part of the film’s subject.

Now get out there and up your game through visual media. Or just use it to find out where to watch Wicked.

Happy Viewing!