Kathryn Comstock

@ethryndal That looks great! Haven’t read the book myself, but you seem to have analyzed its theme well.

@dragon-snapper Cool; I may have to read that myself sometime. The focusing question may be stronger as just “through means of revenge or forgiveness,” but not having read the short story itself, I couldn’t say for sure.

Ha; I’m sure you are…[Read more]

25,400 words.

Apparently I’m average. =P

To get a good publisher, generally you need to first get a good literary agent, which means learning how to write a great query letter, along with a great book. Generally-speaking, if you’re a skilled writer, publishers and literary agents will want to publish/represent you, but there is an element of luck to it. If you’re looking for good blogs…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin Great thoughts! I absolutely agree–bad experiences are absolutely motivational in forcing us to change. It reminds me a lot of what Peter says in his first epistle about how God uses suffering to refine us.

And that’s a great example of a “real life character arc” so to speak. Honestly, I’ve found that understanding experiments in…[Read more]

@kate-flournoy That looks great! I could see the transitory Experiments being either full-fledged Experiments, or just part of the middle Venn diagram section of the two opposing Experiments in Living. Kind of depends on how marked his change is. But yeah, that looks like a great way of handling the disillusionment arc.

@audrey-caylin Oh,…[Read more]

@aella Haha! We’ve certainly had pretty much everything thrown out there at this point so that’s definitely fine! Is there any answer in particular that rings particularly true for you?

Great question @dragon-snapper! Looks like you’ve already got a bounty of information on this, but I’ll just throw in there that if you want to read more about this topic, my best recommendation would be to read up on what K.M. Weiland has written about the topic. You can read her original 21-part series here, or read her expanded book on it here.

@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]