Know Your World, and You’ll Know Your Story

There is a world outside of your story, outside of your characters. And while you don’t need to show it in its entirety, it can help ground the story you’re telling to give your readers snippets of this bigger world. It can also help you by providing a better structure for what happens. Every world has rules.

Session 15: Writing Prompt – All Good Things Come to an End

You’re just reading, consuming the words, unclear that what you’re seeing is real, unable to believe what has been written.

You turn to the last page.

You read the last sentence.

You feel betrayed.

You’re Not Simple; Read Other Things, and Write Better

You’re being oppressed. Your country has been overtaken by authoritarians. You disagree with them but cannot stop them. Then a resistance forms. It’s not one of weapons – though that is surely to come – but it’s one of ideas, of words. The regime aims to quash those who resist by enacting laws that stop…

Treat Your Characters with Respect

Characters aren’t props. They are living, breathing people inside of your head. And when the reader/audience experiences a character, they become a living creature inside their heads too. They are real in our minds, even if they aren’t flesh and blood. We have laughed with characters, smiled at them, cried because of them, and raged over them. They may just be characters, but they produce real emotions in us. And so we should treat them with the respect they deserve.

Session 14: Writing Prompts – The Reveal

Pick a scene in which you reveal something to the audience.

Your Writing Sucks… And That’s Okay

Your writing sucks. It just does. You know it does.

We all have those pieces of writing that suck.

And that’s okay, because nobody writes well.

Session 13: Writing Prompt – A Character of Conflict

In this session, you will be writing two scenes. Write the scenes out in full, as you picture, with all the details you want in them. These are not practice scenes (unless you want them to be).  Make the scenes as long or as short as you want, but include everything you’d usually include. Dialogue, setting, actions, everything.

It’s All About the Little Things

It’s easy to write a grand story. It’s easy to put an action scene here, or a murder scene there. It’s easy to make things big, and loud, and dark, and dramatic. These things are easy. And these things are sometimes necessary. An action movie without actions scenes wouldn’t work. A slasher movie must have murders; that’s what they are. But there are dozens of these types of movies and yet, there are few that are considered iconic, or classic, or even just a good time. To do that, you need the little things.

Session 9 & 10: Let’s Figure Out What Happens to Your Character

Every important character has an arc. Or at least they should have an arc. An arc is the journey in which your character transforms. The most basic “transformations” involve characters who shift between opposite traits: greedy to charitable; evil to good; scared to brave. You don’t need your characters to be this basic. Nor do their transformations need to be as severe as completely changing who they are.

Session 8: What Does It All Mean? (Themes and Symbolism)

Themes and symbolism are not everyone’s cup of tea. I personally love them. I look for them in everything, all the time. I think every piece of writing has a theme in it, even if it wasn’t intended. It’s a subconscious thing in us as writers that comes out. I also think it adds a depth to our stories that we sometimes feel is missing. It helps with direction. If we know what our theme is and what we’re trying to say, it could help craft the story.