Skip to main content

Rooglewood Brainstorming Part 4

What do you want to say?

Have you thought about that?  About the lessons people will learn from reading your story?

Some morals are written out plainly.  Maybe the writer wrote the whole story about forgiveness.  Or friendship.  Or God's mercy.  From beginning to end, the story winds its way through the highlights of it's theme.

Some morals are more subtle.  What choices are rewarded in your story?  What choices gets the characters into trouble?  Who wins in the end?  Maybe not even the author knows what she is saying until it is all written.  That happens for me sometimes.

I don't see a lot of inspiring lessons in the original Sleeping Beauty tales (do you?), but I think it provides an easy base for whatever you want to say.

Which brings me back to my original question: 
what do you want to say?


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. JanieJuly 28, 2015 at 8:13 AM

    I tend to pray a lot about my stories, and when I focus on writing them with as much deep truth as I can find, I have discovered that the morals pretty much take care of themselves. I have, at times, written stories with symbols and themes that I could not even recognize until after the thing was accomplished. This makes me smile and say, 'Thanks, God!'

    I have to say, after reading SPINDLE, I'm a little tempted to jump on the Sleeping Beauty bandwagon, myself. But I really don't think I have the time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Esther Brooksmith (wisdomcreates)July 28, 2015 at 3:54 PM

    I love it when God works something in a story that was far beyond the writer!

    Janie, you would have fun on these retellings, and I would love to see what story God wrote through you.
    But I understand if you don't have time, and I doubly appreciate the time you took in reading mine.
    On the flip side...the deadline isn't until December... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Katherine S. ColeJuly 28, 2015 at 5:55 PM

    ooh...somehow I'd missed that you were going to enter this...[I missed so many things happening in the world of blogging this past year...oy...] fun! :D I am toying with the idea, but basically I'd have to be inspiration-struck and write it all out in a flash...I don't know how likely that is to happen before December. XD

    Usually I don't chose a lessen or a moral for my stories. (Out of everything I've written I may have only done that once...) As I write, I start noticing themes showing through, and the characters' lives strangely seem to end up dealing with issues I've had to face recently or things I've been learning in my own life. XD Especially when I am writing for maximum emotional impact...what I believe spills over into the story, and I'm usually surprised to see what I ended up writing about. :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Esther Brooksmith (wisdomcreates)July 29, 2015 at 9:12 AM

    Me, too!
    SPINDLE especially worked out that way. Halfway into it, I realized that this story came because one of my friends (who I hang out with a lot) had just received a very bad report from a doctor. This was somehow a subconscious response to that.
    But, even at the halfway point - knowing that this story was connected to my real life, I still didn't know what all was in that story. That's why it was so cool to sit back and read it afterward.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning.  I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that.  And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send."  Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story.  And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it.  I wrote them.  And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....
18 comments
Read more

The Countdown: Eight Days

Eight days.  Do you know what that means?  Barely over a week.  Tomorrow will be one week from the announcement date. Are you excited? I am. So, today, I want to talk to those who wrote something for the contest, whether or not you entered it in the end. What made you start writing your story?  What was the first inkling of an idea that tickled your brain?  What was it that you liked about your premise?  As you wrote, did you have a favorite character or a favorite scene?  And are you glad you wrote it down?  Do you feel like you learned and grew in your ability as a writer as you tried out things for this contest? And, if your story isn't included in this year's Rooglewood anthology (either because you didn't submit it or because it didn't fit with the other four stories selected), what will you do with it?  Will you market it elsewhere?  Or will you lock it away in a drawer?
20 comments
Read more

Rooglewood Countdown: 12 days

     For the next 12 1/2 days, as we do our final countdown until March 31st, I'm going to do 4 posts asking about something you would like to see in the Snow White collection.      There are so many ways all of us, writers and readers alike, can win in this contest.  Maybe a familiar name makes it into the final five -- hurray!  Maybe a story in your favorite genre ended up in the collection this year -- woohoo!  Maybe you finally get to read a winning story about an evil king and his Snow White son -- how awesome!      So, in celebration of all the many things we can root for, I want to know some of the things that you think would be cool to find in this year's set of winners.      Without further ado, here is my question for the day: What is a point of view you would like to see in this collection?  Would you like a story written from the prince's perspective?  A story from Snow White's p...
9 comments
Read more