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4 Tips to Help You Overcome the Crippling Terror of the Blank Page
I have a phobia of blank pages. No matter how excited I am about a project, as soon as I open a new document, my creativity seizes up. My eyes twitch. And cowardice disguises itself as procrastination, urging me to go brew a cup of coffee.
How to Create Characters with Relatable Thoughts
You open a book, and after several pages, you’re not yourself anymore. You’ve become the character. He’s different from you, yet somehow the same. When he remembers someone’s face but not their name, you smile sympathetically—even though your memory has always been sharp. That’s because his foibles seem true to life.
The Secret to Developing Authentic Characters That Resonate with Readers
One of our goals at Story Embers is to release series that unpack different resolutions from our manifesto and help writers pursue our vision for Christian fiction. This year, as we discussed which resolution to focus on, empathetic characters rose to the top of our list. Readers need to bond with characters, or they won’t enjoy and be impacted by a story. Accomplishing this as writers involves understanding “readers’ thought processes, emotions, and worldviews so we can connect meaningfully with them in our storytelling, knowing that human nature is repelled by simplistic representations.”
What Hand-Copying The Book Thief Taught Me about Strong Prose
On my first read of The Book Thief, the peerless prose stunned me. I wanted to achieve Zusak’s skill, but I didn’t know how. So I began a nightly experiment to see if any techniques would emerge.
3 Ways the Unique Strengths of Fantasy Can Heighten Your Story’s Themes
Have you ever come across a saying that jumped inside your mind, made itself at home, and informed your thinking from that day forward? This happened to me several years ago when I read a quote by Neil Gaiman that rephrased G. K. Chesterton’s words from decades earlier. It helped me understand the unique strengths of the fantasy genre.
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