Michael Stanton

@hope Ahh; got ya. Sounds like you may have two different themes going on here. Success would work well as a theme. Another way you could take it if you wanted to stick with the finite ability of man, would be to have a focusing question like this: “Given the finite ability of man, how can man succeed in life?” The answers would then just need to…[Read more]

@hope Good choice! There definitely are a number of themes in LotR (the lust for power is another central one), and that theme is certainly one of them.

@hope Those are great possible answers to the focusing question; I really like how many of those answers are pretty sympathetic answers that many people would choose, and not just obviously wrong answers like fame or power. That has the potential to make your theme a lot more compelling as readers can see themselves drifting to those wrong…[Read more]

@hope Great analogy! I like it. And I definitely agree with you on how great it is to find books with great themes. Nothing hooks me to a story as much as a strong theme does.

@hope That’s great. Haha, I can definitely sympathize with the struggle of moving a theme from the concept-level into the actual story! Keep that goal in mind while working through the course and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the other end of the course on how much the course helped you with that goal.

@anne-swiftblade That’s great! We’ll be…[Read more]

@kate-flournoy Plays are great! And that sounds like a great example of catharsis. I haven’t read those plays before, but I’ll need to put those on my reading list now…

@northerner hm, yes. :/ Unfortunately the comedies have a lot of that. Quite honestly I stopped reading the comedies once I got a quarter of the way through The Merry Wives of Windsor. Not worth it. The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing were good. Otherwise, pretty much senseless.

@Northerner *is consoled* His histories are definitely my favorites. Most of his other work I really don’t care for. A few exceptions— The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, and Macbeth if only for the villain 😛 but the histories are most certainly wonderful. Probably doesn’t help that it’s my favorite period of history too.…[Read more]

@Emma-Flournoy it’s a passage from Hamlet with the key words replaced. 😉

@DAEUS! *groans* You ruined it! *sobs* And Hamlet isn’t even my favorite either. *oceans of tears*
*goes to console herself by reading Henry V for the eighteenth time*

(Hilarious, by the way. 😀 )

Um… can I do plays??? XD Shakespeare’s Richard II coupled with Henry IV— don’t know if you’ve read them, but Henry IV is the continued story of Richard II. They’re directly linked.

Anyway.
The negative character arc for Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) begins when he is charged with high treason and banished overseas by the inexperienced…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin Good question; sounds like I didn’t make it clear enough. The idea is to share something like a plot outline where you briefly sketch out each of the major five character arc scenes with a couple sentences and explain how you plan on sketching out the big-picture view of your character arc.

@ethryndal Basically what Daeus said. The Experiments in Living should be looking pretty similar to the answers you came up with before; the only difference is that this time they should be a bit more “embodied” so-to-speak in a lifestyle, and a bit less abstract. 🙂

Ooops, or third, apparently. XD

Hello, Gabrielle! Let me be second to welcome you. 😉
I’m actually a fellow Tolkienite and I had never read that poem… I just went and looked it up and now I’m choking. THAT. IS. AMAZING. I have a new favorite. Thanks so much for recommending it!

And your book sounds lovely. Welcome to KP. 🙂

For those of you surprised they didn’t do better, thought I’d point out that this test is a knowledge quotient test, not necessarily a judge of how deep your vocabulary is. Most of the words on that list I could have figured out just by dissecting their roots, but as I was supposed to click the ones I knew I let them lie. Also, though this…[Read more]

@audrey-caylin Ha; that makes sense. There is a fair bit of overlap between these two questions. And that’s awesome. The more you as an author see your characters as real people and write like that, the more your readers will see them as real people as well. Glad to know I’m making people excited about homework. 😉

@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]

*gulp* XD I almost spelt it like that! And then I second guessed myself… *sigh*

Tattoine. 😉