People Are
Stories-in-Progress

 

Table of Contents

 

Introduction.

 
 

Story Currents + Processing

 

In the second section, we look beyond the story’s structure, by looking at ways to understand, process, and integrate stories you’re in the middle of—whether it’s a story you’re living or a story you’re writing.

  • STORY: “The Thread of Grief” {A Story I Lived Through}

  • Story Processing:

    • Tool: Journal

    • Tool: Freewrite

    • About Other Methods

  • Story Currents: Elements at play in a story alongside the story’s structure

    • Tool: Helping + Honing Currents

    • Tool: Internal + External Currents

    • Tool: Eddies

    • The Importance of Story Currents

 

Pattern Recognition + Puzzle Pieces.

 

In the third section, we examine how to develop a full character arc in a story, by revisiting your original intentions for the story and reconsidering what already exists in the story to find and complete the pattern.

  • STORY: “The Tales of Lena LaMarelle.”

  • Completing a Story:

    • TOOL: Targets

    • TOOL: Touchstones

    • TOOL: The Method of Using Known Elements to Complete a Story

  • Completing Lena’s Story

Self-Transmutation + Small Shifts.

 

In the fourth section, we take a look at how you can transmute what already exists in a character into the best version of themselves and how to make change feel believable in your story and/or achievable in your life.

  • STORY: “In Sickness and in Health”

  • Transmutation: the method of becoming more of yourself (or your character coming more of themselves)

    • TOOL: Self-Acceptance

    • TOOL: Emotional Patterns

  • Microshift: the small shifts that accumulate into big changes

 

Afterword.

 

In the afterword, we take a look at how I’ve utilized all these tools in my own life, especially in the past couple years, and how you might use them in your life as well.