Stefan Emunds
Our personality has six chief faculties: intention, imagination, feeling, intellect, memory, and body. These faculties are hierarchical, meaning a wrong intention would ripple through all layers and multiply into various errors.
Accordingly, our intention deserves most of our attention. Intentions arrive as inspiring ideas. They are concise, meaning we should be able to put them down in one or two sentences. Don’t underestimate such ideas, they can be very powerful, even disrupt societies. In the case of my book God Child, it was the intentional idea to promote monohumanism, the idea that there is only one human.
The intention is the seed that will grow into a great tree: our book. It’s very precious and should be wrapped up like a Christmas present. That's where imagination comes in - the vision of the story. At this point, imagination isn’t detailed yet – take your idea and wrap a synopsis around it. Your vision/story serves as a catalyst to promote your intention. In the case of God Child, I imagined the diary of a man, who had a super-natural vision and connected to the inner voice that would instruct him in spiritual secrets.
After the story’s scene is set, it needs to be brought alive with emotions: love, hate, fear - you name it. Emotions depend on your book’s intention, whether you want to write a love story, a horror story, a drama, or thriller - you get the idea. Emotional elements are supposed to hook the reader and engage him – make sure there is plenty of it. In the case of God Child, a work of spiritual fiction, I tried to write with love from beginning to end.
When our story sparkles with emotions, it’s time to make a plan: define the plot, detail the story line, list all subjects to be covered, think up conflicts to spice up the story, consider the interests of potential readers, etc. That's cold-blooded, intellectual work. In the case of God Child I deliberately chose a priest as protagonist. By taking the perspective of a religious person, I avoided aloof, spiritual statements.
Our personal database serves as a reservoir of materials we can weave into our stories. I’m not just talking about memories, but also experiences, and all the things we learned in the past.
At long last, we can take our pen and write. On that level it's important not to deplete energy. It's like sport: if we strain our muscles too much, we need to recover before we can jog again. It’s better to write like practicing Yoga: go only as far as it's comfortable. The next day you can push an inch further.
But what about the writer’s block? Why this long introduction? Well, it’s like having dinner: we cook for an hour or two and eat it up in ten minutes ;-).
Anyways, in order to do something about the writer’s block, we need to check first on which level it occurs: did we write without intention? Do we have a poor story line without proper sequences? Did we engage insufficient or wrong emotions? Were we lazy to make a detailed plan? Are we missing experiences that help filling our story and didn’t do necessary research? Are mind and body overworked and do we simply need a break? I think you can take it from here.
Accordingly, our intention deserves most of our attention. Intentions arrive as inspiring ideas. They are concise, meaning we should be able to put them down in one or two sentences. Don’t underestimate such ideas, they can be very powerful, even disrupt societies. In the case of my book God Child, it was the intentional idea to promote monohumanism, the idea that there is only one human.
The intention is the seed that will grow into a great tree: our book. It’s very precious and should be wrapped up like a Christmas present. That's where imagination comes in - the vision of the story. At this point, imagination isn’t detailed yet – take your idea and wrap a synopsis around it. Your vision/story serves as a catalyst to promote your intention. In the case of God Child, I imagined the diary of a man, who had a super-natural vision and connected to the inner voice that would instruct him in spiritual secrets.
After the story’s scene is set, it needs to be brought alive with emotions: love, hate, fear - you name it. Emotions depend on your book’s intention, whether you want to write a love story, a horror story, a drama, or thriller - you get the idea. Emotional elements are supposed to hook the reader and engage him – make sure there is plenty of it. In the case of God Child, a work of spiritual fiction, I tried to write with love from beginning to end.
When our story sparkles with emotions, it’s time to make a plan: define the plot, detail the story line, list all subjects to be covered, think up conflicts to spice up the story, consider the interests of potential readers, etc. That's cold-blooded, intellectual work. In the case of God Child I deliberately chose a priest as protagonist. By taking the perspective of a religious person, I avoided aloof, spiritual statements.
Our personal database serves as a reservoir of materials we can weave into our stories. I’m not just talking about memories, but also experiences, and all the things we learned in the past.
At long last, we can take our pen and write. On that level it's important not to deplete energy. It's like sport: if we strain our muscles too much, we need to recover before we can jog again. It’s better to write like practicing Yoga: go only as far as it's comfortable. The next day you can push an inch further.
But what about the writer’s block? Why this long introduction? Well, it’s like having dinner: we cook for an hour or two and eat it up in ten minutes ;-).
Anyways, in order to do something about the writer’s block, we need to check first on which level it occurs: did we write without intention? Do we have a poor story line without proper sequences? Did we engage insufficient or wrong emotions? Were we lazy to make a detailed plan? Are we missing experiences that help filling our story and didn’t do necessary research? Are mind and body overworked and do we simply need a break? I think you can take it from here.
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