Josiah DeGraaf

@aratrea that lesson just blew my mind and helped me so much! Outstanding stuff! Thank you!!!

Now for the question…. Putting myself in my character’s shoes is my favorite thing to do 😀 I find that it’s especially interesting if I’ve been in their position before. If I haven’t, I read up on their Myers-Briggs personality type or people-watch…[Read more]

@Aratrea Well, after three days of pondering, I’ve finally figured out the theme of my novel, which I’m currently editing. Here we go:

Theme: The intrinsic worth of humanity

Focusing Question: What gives a person value?

1. If they’re useful to society
2. If they have great social appeal (beautiful, smart, funny)
3. If they’re good
4. If they’re…[Read more]

@aratrea:

Sure thing. I’ll post when I think of any. 🙂

@aratrea

No, sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant to say that the post timestamp is at, like, 2:00 in the morning, or 11:53 at night, depending on the time of day I post. It’s not delaying them at all, on the contrary, they come up the second I click submit! Yeah, what you said. 😛

Okay, EST. I’ll have to look that up. 😛 Well, concerning the updates,…[Read more]

@leumeister Wait, it delays your post?

I think it’s set to EST. I don’t know about changing the time zone. Let me tag Josiah. @aratrea

@Aratrea that’s true. I guess that just goes to show how important perspective is.

@aratrea I like being able to include everything that works together as a puzzle (like what Kate said in the first lesson 😛 ) and work together like gears in a clock. The Theme seems to tie all the lose ends I had before.

Les Miserables. 😀

Theme: justice and mercy.
Focusing question: which one triumphs?
Message: it’s justice that makes mercy necessary.

Hmm… those are slightly different than the format of the others you shared… and now my brain is tickling… I wonder…
Oh yes. This was that idea— I’ve thought about this some already. 😛 It seems to me…[Read more]

Same here. For me, life IS the story, and since life without Christ is not complete, it stands to reason a story without Christ is not complete either. So it’s a matter of learning to see reality through the correct lens and put it down just as it is— death, life, despair, hope, sin, God, and everything! 😀

And I’m currently feeling like all my…[Read more]

@daeus thank you! I absolutely love these lessons 😀

@aratrea oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll definitely add it and remember that for the future. Thank you 🙂

@aratrea What excites me most about theme is the ability to write fiction that’s deep and meaningful, not just a ‘fun’ book that people immediately forget because they’re nothing but glue holding it together. I want to be able to touch people, to move them with my writing while being a testimony of Christ.

@aratrea first, can I say how incredible the lesson was? I think I learned more about theme in that twenty minutes than I have in the past four years of writing 😀 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR DOING THIS!!!!

Okay, so I currently have a novel completed and in the alpha reading stage. I knew the theme but I never specified the message. This probably…[Read more]

@aratrea I really had to think about this one. That was an AMAZING lesson that really got me thinking!

Story: A Time To Die by Nadine Brandes.

Theme: One’s purpose in life

Focusing Question: How do you know what your purpose is?

Message: God gives us opportunities to fulfill our ultimate purpose of serving Him.

I think I made the message too…[Read more]

@aratrea I pretty much second everything everyone else has said. Powerful Christian themes that aren’t cheesy. I also want to learn how to weave every thread of my story into the theme, because for the most part, the flow of my stories feel a bit jerky because not everything ends up being connected to the theme. (characters, villains, climax, etc)

@aratrea I want to learn how to weave every thread of my story into the theme. For the most part, the flow of the story always feels jerky because not everything ends up being connected to the theme. (characters, villains, climax, etc)

@Dragon-Snapper XD
I have a quick question, @Daeus @Aratrea. Do people who enrolled in the beta-version not have access to the polished version once it’s, you know, been polished?

@aratrea what excites me most about theme is the ability to reach people with a powerful message through my writing. I usually like to write about things I’ve experienced and come to realize in real life, and want to somehow weave those messages into my writing in a way that will hopefully help someone else, either to encourage them or bring them…[Read more]

@aratrea Exactly what you made it for, to write appealing Christian fiction that’s not ‘bored-to-tears’ type of reading. To learn how to incorporate theme into all my writing and that it would be moving. I’ll admit that I have had problems with the boring repetition for any audience. Either I was telling someone something they already knew, or I…[Read more]

@Aratrea well… I like poetry. *grins*

@aratrea @daeus
How does this work if multiple people in a household want to look at it? I wouldn’t do it on my own, but I’d like to go though it with Gideon.
I was going to try to teach him what little I knew that could improve his writing and this seems like it would be so much better. Great job guys!