Lessons Secret Messages 5 Nov 201812 Nov 2021 One of my favorite things in stories is when the dialogue is multilayered. As I said in my post last Thursday, this sort of dialogue always comes with an obvious…
Lessons Balancing Fantasy and Authenticity 29 Oct 201812 Nov 2021 Humans are funny things. We're just as capable of finding meaning in a wild flight of fancy as in a calm, lifelike drama. We can learn rudimentary life lessons from…
Lessons Doing the Hard, Hard Work 22 Oct 201812 Nov 2021 Do you ever have that experience where you sit down at your table and churn out thousands of words of pure gold that require no polishing whatsoever? Yeah, me either. I suppose there are…
Lessons Critique Up 15 Oct 201812 Nov 2021 So here we are at the start of a new series. Each time I finish a session of stories I am well aware of all the shortcomings in my work,…
Lessons The Weaver’s Loom 8 Oct 201812 Nov 2021 Over the last four weeks we have been examining the traditional narrative roles found in most stories: the hero, the villain, the mentor, and the love interest. To aid in…
Lessons Hey, Coach, I Love You 1 Oct 201812 Nov 2021 A classic consideration when designing the protagonist of a story is what will their arc be? Is this a coming-of-age experience? A heroic epic? A tragic downfall? Will it truly…
Lessons The Good Fight 24 Sep 201812 Nov 2021 One of the endearing elements of the typical literary protagonist is that they are usually unaware of their role as the hero of the story. Instead, when we first meet our…
Lessons How to be a Good Badguy 17 Sep 201812 Nov 2021 Almost every story includes some sort of antagonist character, a villain who stands in contrast to all that the hero seeks to accomplish, and the entire crux of the story…
Lessons Tales of the Fairy 10 Sep 201811 Nov 2021 I've always been partial to fairy tales and allegories, stories like Aesop's Tortoise and the Hare or Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid. In addition to their insightful messages, I find…
Give Me Pen and Paper 