Advice

When I was a young aspiring writer, I had a strong aversion to the use of "said" in a story. My justification was that it was blah. It was uninspired. It was pedestrian. Why use "said," I rationalized, when there were so many other words in the English language that were way more expressive? Throughout high school composition classes, my characters squeaked, pontificated, reflected, mused and accused. As if that weren't enough to spice up their conversations with one another, I was also generous in my deployment of adverbs. After all, who's going to make for a scarier villain: the...

Read the rest of the series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 5; Part 6 Archetypes are very in, very cool, very now. That's great. There are lots of fine books, seminars, and consultants to help you understand the various and sundry archetypes. That's great, too. But now, are you and your characters ready for the next step up? Are you ready for the ArchePaths? You may now be saying, "Good grief! I just want to write my stories, I don't want to have to deal with all this theory and patterns and craft stuff." Ah, but that's where...

Read the rest of the series: Part 1; Part 2; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6 Metaphysics is not for amateurs. And that's on purpose. Everything you think you know about Conscious Media, spirituality, or metaphysics is probably wrong, half-wrong, upside-down and/or backwards, out of date, or too advanced to be of any use. Just think for a moment -- are these truths really true? All the time? Without exception? "What you think about you bring about." "The full moon is the most magical time." "40 days is the optimum time to set a new pattern." "The Law of Attraction...

When I speak of a great story, I mean stories or films that are critically acclaimed and generally acknowledged to be classics. I also mean bestsellers, box office successes, and stories that have lived for hundreds or even thousands of years. So I'm talking about stories like The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, The Godfather and The Silence of the Lambs, Batman and Superman, Milk and Charlie Wilson's War, The Verdict, The Lion King, Groundhog Day, Shrek and Macbeth, plus the hundreds of other stories that fit into this category. Being familiar with...

Read the rest of the series: Part 1; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6 Conscious Media is Transformative Media. What is that? How can you create it? Writers schooled in the ageless Wisdom have been consciously creating transformative myths and rituals for thousands and thousands of years. That's nothing new. What is new is that you don't have to go sit in a cave in the Himalayas for ten years, living on cold rice and yak butter to get the information. Much of this formerly secret information is now - on purpose - available to practically anybody with...