Josiah DeGraaf

Welcome to the site, @cloudy! What’s the premise of the current story you’re working on?

@That_Writer_Girl_99 Got it. The early stages of planning can be my favorite part of writing a novel at times, so that’s a great stage to be in!

If you’re looking for more resources on this topic, one of our writing team members wrote a good article about how to outline a novel a couple months ago that you may find helpful:…[Read more]

@that_writer_girl_99 I’m jealous now. 😉 Nice catch! Neat story idea there too. How far along are you in the planning process?

@audrey-caylin Could you say that the story explores the potential tension between truth and forgiveness and that much of the story is about showing how these two themes actually connect together at the deepest level?

@hope No… it’s on my reading list and I really hope to get to it at some point!

@audrey-caylin That sounds like a solid plan right there. Weiland’s resources are excellent on that front! And yeah, I definitely find for myself that it generally isn’t till the second or third read that I can really pick up on all the thematic stuff that’s going…[Read more]

@jenali How does this conflict manifest itself thematically? Does the conflict seem to have any effects on the protagonist’s character arc?

@shaina How does this conflict manifest itself thematically? Does the conflict seem to have any effects on the protagonist’s character arc?

Welcome to the site @that_writer_girl_99! Have you read Batson’s Sword in the Stars series? That’s my favorite series he’s done and, in my opinion, probably one of the best works of Christian fantasy out there. What type of science-fiction do you like to write?

@audrey-caylin

That’s great to hear. 🙂 I will be sure to let you know if there’s anything else you can do to help us out on that front! Putting these principles into practice in your writing is a great first step to take. Have you thought much about which resources you may want to use when you want to study this topic more?

Good idea with the…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin That’s awesome–glad to hear you enjoyed it so much!

Yeah–that’s definitely a real challenge. And I would tentatively agree that some of it has to do with the individual reader. However, I think when you look at stories like Brothers Karamazov, Speaker for the Dead (written by a Mormon, not a Christian, but it portrays believers…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin Sounds like a plan. I like using one major theme for a whole series. How would you say that the theme of truth interacts with the theme of forgiveness in this book?

@audrey-caylin Got it. Making that comparison clear to the readers can certainly be very effective even if the protagonist never sees it. Looks good overall!

@audrey-caylin So would you say the father will end up influencing the protagonist away from that POV, then, as she sees that the main reason he believes this is due to his mental disabilities?

@audrey-caylin Nice work. I like Tairock’s EiL and how that connects with the protagonist’s arc. With Tairock’s father, just to clarify, does he have a very similar view of truth because he’s mentally disabled and thus is erroneous in his view due to that disability, or does he have a similar view of truth because his mental disabilities help him…[Read more]

@jane-maree You seem to have a good grasp there on how these scenes are pushing him in his character arc. Those three scenes sound like they work together well then!

@jane-maree Sounds like a good start. How would you say Will’s EiL is tested and moved over the course of these three scenes? Or, to put it another way, how do these scenes build on each other in exploring Will’s EiL?

@jane-maree I didn’t feel like you went overboard at all–both of those examples look great! Nice work!

@kate-flournoy Ah–got it. Sounds like that doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories I proposed then, but it does actually resemble a fourth category Daeus and I discussed where two themes might coalesce to create a third message that stems from both themes. We couldn’t find a ton of examples of that technique in literature, so we decided to…[Read more]

@jane-maree Got it. Building tension can definitely be an effective way to use that sort of argument. Good example!