Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 23

4 lessons I learned from reading my fables to my kids

62. That’s the number of fables I’ve written so far this year. If you had asked me a year ago what I would be writing in 2018, I never would have guessed it would be this. Yet, I’ve really enjoyed the experience and its getting results. I’m a teacher. I love helping people learn. When I started to read some of these fables to my kids and they were actually able to explain the moral of the story in concrete terms, I was amazed. I knew the power of story was significant, but imagine your kid...

Mo Willems Only Offers 49% of the Story

Mo Willems only offers 49% of the story. He relies on the audience to create the other 51%.

I heard him say this in two separate interviews (The Yarn, CBS This Morning)

This is an unnatural inclination for a writer. I have a habit of wanting to bring the full 100% and hit my readers over the head with what I want to share.

I feel like I need to make sure they have everything and understand everything.

That’s not the way to create great art.

A great work of art invites the audience to make it...

How Make Your Characters Active, Not Passive

Your characters must be active, not passive. This is a cardinal rule of writing fiction.

I really liked the simple advice that the hosts of the Writing Excuses podcast (episode 13.2) gave (listen here).

I’ll summarize and expand, but essentially have your characters:

Desire – They must want something. Plan – They must make plans to get it. Act – They must act on these plans. Success or Setback – Their actions must succeed or fail. New Plans – They must make new plans to try to achieve their...

“So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”

I cringe every time I hear my daughters say the word “can’t.” Usually, it is something little or something they really just don’t want to do, but it really bothers me. I don’t ever want them to think they can’t do something. Accepting something as impossible is a choice. I haven’t said it in a while, but for a long time I would say, “You can’t say can’t in the Dees family.” They roll their eyes, but it is such an important life lesson. #phantomtollbooth #phantomtollboothquotes #impossible...

How Tim Ferris Connected with Influencers When Nobody Knew Who He Was

How to propel your personal brand with@timferriss Listen to Episode 41 by going to: https://foundr.com/podcast-with-nathan-chan/

A post shared by Young Entrepreneur Magazine (@foundr) on Jul 18, 2018 at 12:42am PDT

Tim Ferriss’s short explanation of how he launched his first book is helpful, universal advice for any author and artist.

Here is the process he followed in the form of questions:

Who is my audience? Who is the segment of the audience that will be a domino to tell many othe...

June 2018 Project Report

Welcome to my June 2018 Project Report. My goal with these monthly reports is to help other authors, entrepreneurs, leaders, or anyone else who wants to make an impact through their work. Each month It share how I spent my time as an author and creative entrepreneur and the successes, failures, and lessons I learned along the way.

How I Spent My Time in June 2018

I track every minute of time I spend working on projects using an app called Toggl (here is why). Here is a list of the projects I...

The 5-Minute History of Young Adult Fiction

The Great American Read’s short summary of the evolution of YA fiction is really fascinating. As a form of art, it is a relatively new phenomenon in literature.

It is only in the last fifty years that a distinction started to be made between books for adults and books for young adults.

Then, the Harry Potter series, Twilight series, and the Hunger Games series were so massively successful that they ushered in many more similar books like them.

The more I see successful “YA” books, the more I...

Bridge to Terabithia (A Book Review for Writers)

Here are four writing lessons I took away from the bestselling children’s novel, Bridge to Terabithia:

Give your characters an immediate motivation.

We know what the main character wants on page 1. This is a perfect example of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to give characters an immediate motivation no matter how insignificant it is.

Jesse wants to be the fastest kid in the fifth grade. More importantly, he wants to fit in. He wants the other kids in the school to like him.

The inciting incident com...

Learn to Write Well by Reading A Lot

Second, you must read, and read a lot. Did I say A LOT? I read over a hundred books a year and have done so since I was fifteen years old, and every book I’ve read has taught me something. I’ve learned that some authors are incredible at building suspense (see The Firm by John Grisham), I’ve read others that scare the jeepers out of me (see The Shining by Stephen King). Some authors can weave an incredible number of story lines into a single, coherent novel, with all parts coming together at...

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Audience First Philosophy