Douglas Robbins's Blog, page 2

The Unwritten Chapter in Every Life

What if the most important part of your life has not even been written yet?

We walk through our days as if the story is already set. The job, the bills, the routines that keep us steady but also keep us small. But every life has an unwritten chapter waiting. It is the one that changes everything and reminds you your story is not over.

The Script We Mistake for a Story

We are raised to follow a linear script: childhood, school, work, retirement, fade to black. But scripts are not sto...

Fiction About Breaking Free from What’s Expected

Breaking free fiction challenges what we’re told to accept. Most of us grew up with a script.
Get the job. Be polite. Don’t rock the boat. Be whatever version of yourself is easiest for other people to digest.
But what if that version has nothing to do with who you really are?

That’s what makes breaking free fiction so powerful. These stories don’t just entertain. They push back. They challenge what’s accepted and ask what’s true. They make you pause and think, Wait… do I even want the life...

What Baseball Dreams and Bikers Teach Us About Success

In a world that rewards speed, grind, and curated perfection, I wanted to tell a different kind of story.

Baseball Dreams and Bikers isn’t your typical coming-of-age tale. It’s a story about ambition, failure, and what happens when life veers wildly off course. It’s about the moments that never make the highlight reel, and why they matter more than we realize.

The story follows a young boy navigating the pressures of youth sports, the complexity of a dysfunctional family, and the unexp...

How to Blend Meaning and Entertainment in Fiction

How to Blend Meaning and Entertainment in Fiction

In fiction, there’s a myth that you can either write something meaningful or something entertaining, but not both. That false divide keeps writers from fully exploring what stories are capable of. The truth? Fiction with meaning is entertaining when it’s done right.

Why I Don’t Choose Between Depth and Drive

As a writer, I don’t believe in choosing between impact and readability. I believe in stories that hit you in the heart and sti...

Fiction and Identity: Writing Stories That Challenge the Narrative

In Black Cloud Rises, identity isn’t a backdrop. It’s the battlefield. My characters aren’t just shaping plot; they’re reclaiming identity, confronting erasure, and defiantly defining themselves on their own terms. This is fiction about belonging. Fiction about resistance. Fiction about finding home in your own story.

Why Writing About Identity in Fiction Matters

In a world where identity politics often play out as spectacle, writing about identity becomes a radical act of truth-tellin...

Why Readers Are Craving Substance Over Escapism

There’s a cultural hangover happening right now, and fiction with depth is rising in response.

After years of bite-sized content, bingeable shows, and endlessly scrolling feeds, something’s shifting. Readers are tired. Not just of the noise, but of stories that don’t mean anything. Shallow characters. Predictable arcs. Worlds built to distract, not to wake us up.

We used to turn to fiction to escape. Now, more and more of us are turning to it for clarity. For truth. For something real....

Why Uncomfortable Stories Matter More Than Ever

Some stories are hard to read.
They sit heavy. They make you shift in your seat. They don’t wrap up cleanly or go down easy. But uncomfortable stories that matter often stay with us the longest, because they tell the truth we’ve been trying not to look at.

We don’t need more comfort. We need more clarity. And sometimes clarity hurts.

In a time when outrage cycles spin fast and attention spans spin faster, it can feel safer to keep your writing light. Entertaining. Apolitical. But if you...

How to Write Real Characters With Emotional Depth

When I’m exploring how to write real characters, I always start with two questions:

What are they hiding?
And what are they craving?

That inner conflict, the tension between fear and longing, is where a character’s emotional truth begins.

In Max Johnny, the protagonist wasn’t heroic in the traditional sense. He was angry. He was grieving. His emotional struggle wasn’t decoration, it was the story.

Because if you’re learning how to write real characters, perfection isn’t the goal. ...

How Storytelling Builds Emotional Intelligence

We don’t just read stories. We feel them. And that feeling—that emotional pull—is where transformation begins. In fact, emotional intelligence in stories is often what makes fiction unforgettable.

In a world that trains us to move fast, stay numb, and keep scrolling, storytelling slows us down. It invites us into someone else’s shoes, asks us to care, and reminds us what it means to be human. At its best, storytelling strengthens emotional intelligence in stories—not just in readers, but ...

Books for Deep Thinkers: 5 Novels That Will Stay With You

Some books entertain. However, books for deep thinkers do more—they challenge you, rattle the cage, and shift something deep inside. Those are the ones that stay.

Not every book changes you. But every once in a while, one doesn’t just tell a story—it opens a door you didn’t know you’d closed. When that happens, you walk through it, and you see the world a little differently.

For me, those are the books that matter. They’re not the ones that play it safe. Instead, they dare to say somet...