One can have faith in the natural order of things without being bound by religious constructs — As an addict of meaning, I’ve always been obsessed with the question “What does it mean?…yes, but what does it really mean?” I found over time that we as a society take a lot of things for granted, and one of those things is faith. Faith is the knowledge of…

overcome the perfect character trap — As writers, it is only natural that we seek to create characters that are perfect. We strive to propagate the admirable qualities we desire in ourselves and in others. I mean, who doesn’t want to be Superman with his infinite perfection, James Bond with his eternal suaveness, or Mary Poppins…

2. No clear inner obstacle — This post was written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel. I’m a storyteller who teaches other people how to tell better stories via my weekly newsletter [Subscribe here]. A great story can't happen without great characters. That’s easy to say. The hard part is designing these characters, especially your protagonist (the…

1. Classic bad guy villain — This post was written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel I’m a storyteller who teaches other people how to tell better stories via my weekly newsletter [Subscribe here]. Conflict is an integral part of your story. If you mess up the conflict, you mess up your story. Since conflict is essential…

Give them a good side — This post was written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel I’m a storyteller who teaches other people how to tell better stories via my weekly newsletter [Subscribe here]. Do you know why people love stories? They help us explore the meaning of our experience on earth. Stories won’t be able to…

Write high-quality stories even as a newbie — Writing is incredibly fun, yet very complex. For newbie writers, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of new information you have to chunk down before you can start writing quality stories. …

Overcome the danger of plot armor — Written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel Nothing will damage your story more than weak tension. No amount of interesting characters or witty dialogue can save a story from weak tension. On the surface, it looks like it would be easy to create strong tension. But it’s not. Because when it…

Attributes of a killer opening scene — Written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel As writers, our main job is to entertain the audience. Yeah, we have a great message to tell and a nice cocktail of emotions to share. But all of that is useless if we cannot make the audience care. The audience takes a big…

1) Lessons from the screenplay — Written in collaboration with Ejiga Emmanuel On the perilous road to becoming a great writer, there are so many resources you can turn to for help. Obviously, the most comprehensive of them would be books, but not everyone is suited to books. They can become boring quickly, especially if books…