Josiah DeGraaf

@audrey-caylin Haha, well sounds like my examples were extra-effective then. 😉 Yes, the process of developing character’s experiments in living may very well give you new insight into what your theme actually is. Another thing to keep in mind that we’ll be addressing later on in the series is that many books may have multiple themes, so you may…[Read more]

@daeus Man, three themes at once… I guess you always have been an overachiever. 😉 I like the idea of using two themes as supporting/complementary themes to the main one. Moving your protagonist to a different EiL each time could work; the one challenge would be picking experiments where it does represent a positive arc (even though he’s ending…[Read more]

@overcomer Awesome! We’ll be getting into a lot of story planning stuff in this course, so it should be right up your alley. Keep that goal in mind while taking the course and we’d love to hear once you’ve finished how helpful this course has been to your story planning.

@overcomer Thanks for the catch! That’s actually something we haven’t completed yet for the beta test (at one point we thought it might, but plans change), so unfortunately we don’t have that available yet. However, the worksheet when completed will just be asking you to write down your story’s theme, focusing question, message, and four alternate…[Read more]

@lightningmouse Apologies for the glitch, but thanks for pointing that out to us! We’ll be working on fixing that file. In the meantime, if you go to https://kingdompen.org/subscribe/ and put your email address in there, that link should work to get you the 2016 ebook. 🙂

@kate-flournoy You got me.

@overcomer That’s a great answer! I know for myself, I’m never fully motivated to write a story until I know what sort of theme I’m hoping to tackle with the story, so I’m right there with you on that!

Haha, great to hear how much you’re learning from the course, Kate! And yes, I can be a bit of an organizational freak, so I did try to bring some of that into the course. 😉

And putting yourself into your character’s backstory is absolutely huge. That’s probably one of the main techniques I end up using since most of my characters have undergone…[Read more]

Oooh; I like this topic. Lots of great points, Kate. I totally agree. Perhaps another important difference is that in 2/3 examples you picked, the MC was /not/ the winner of the love triangle, so instead of just being a gushy ending of success, the MC actually has to face hardship and work through it to become a better person. But yeah. Really…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin Yeah, I think it pretty much comes in the job description that authors need to enjoy putting themselves in their characters’ shoes. 😉 People watching is a great way of analyzing how people react in different situations. And I’m going to take a bet that @kate-flournoy is going to be joining you in the Myers-Briggs boat of delving…[Read more]

@Ethryndal That sounds like a great theme with a lot of potential! Sounds like your book is on the right track there, and I love that message. Thrilled to hear how impactful the lesson was for you as well!

@dragon-snapper ^What Daeus said. Another thing to mention is that a lot of stories with multiple themes will distinguish between major themes (which the story focuses on) and minor themes (which are present but aren’t the focus so much). Depending on what you define as a minor theme, most stories arguably have a fair number of minor themes. My…[Read more]

@faithdk Glad to hear your excitement! Definitely understand the school constraint; we’ll be opening the course up again sometime toward the summer, so maybe you’ll be able to join us then. 🙂

@leumeister Haha; no worries about the confusion! And yes, when we have the proper tech skills, we will definitely try to implement this. Feel free to keep shooting us any additional ideas you have for site improvements. 🙂

@leumeister Thanks for the feedback! Like Daeus said, are you saying that it will delay your post for several hours, or just that when you’re posting during the day, it’s in the middle of the night for people in the US?

The time zone is currently linked to our web server’s timezone, which is EST. I love the idea of giving users the option to…[Read more]

@kate-flournoy I personally don’t see a huge distinction between personal and universal themes since it seems to me like several themes, like love or mercy, could really fit into either category depending on what kind of story it is. I really like your point about how much of a difference POV makes to a story’s theme, though. I wonder if this ties…[Read more]

@ethryndal Yep; I’m totally with you. That’s what tends to frustrate me the most about much of contemporary fiction. There’s a lot of popular novels out there that are entertaining stories, but not much more than that. =P

@kate-flournoy That’s awesome! And yes–that’s definitely a really important aspect of making a strong theme. We’ll be…[Read more]