It cannot be denied that females are underrepresented as main characters in the world of mainstream stories. Can we understand and fix that? You...
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Profiling Your Characters
Putting together detailed profiles of your characters can help bring them to life in your writing mind, but doing so takes time and effort—which...
Finding Stories in the I Ching
The I Ching ("Book of Change"), is an original Chinese classic the origin of which may lie as far back as 3,000 BCE. Is it a source of wisdom?...
Noontime in the Garden of Characters
When you get the idea for a story, characters may come calling in droves, begging to be let in and put to work. The question is: How do you identify...
Stories from Idioms | Numbers
Some idioms contain a quality or value that can provide an easily extractable basis for a story theme. But even those that are merely descriptors...
A Tale of Two Thomases
When looking for clues about what makes a story work, it can be very instructive to compare and contrast two versions of a given story—especially if...
Stories from Photos | Prayerful Mourning
The principles in Discovering the Soul of Your Story can be used to generate stories from photographs—such as this one of a woman engaged in...
Why Theme Makes Stories Memorable
In some sense, the plot of any story may be viewed as simply a delivery system for its theme. But why is theme so important, and how does its...
Stories from Aphorisms | Duty
Aphorisms are especially well-suited to generating story ideas, because they often contain recommended approaches or courses of action that serve as...
The Joys of Discovery and Validation
Whether in science or in writing, the pleasure that results from any revelation is amplified according to its reach. But just as thrilling as the revelation itself is confirmation from testing that it holds true.