path of the storyteller / blog

I was looking back over the seventy-plus livestreams I've done over the last two years.

(That’s more than seventy hours of free training, storytellers! If you’re not subscribed to the YouTube channel, please do that by clicking here.)

Can you guess what the most-viewed topic is? 

It’s this: Have All the Good Stories Already Been Written?

I was surprised too, but I guess shouldn’t be. The scary subject of originality comes up again and again for writers.

Why does it always seem to happen that when we start working on a great idea for a story, all of a sudden we discover ten other books about to come out on the same subject? 

For many writers this can be deflating. It was OUR idea, after all! It’s not like we stole it. 

But it’s not like those other writers stole it, either. 

So how should we think about the inevitable discovery that we may not be walking on untrodden ground with our subject matter? Should we...

[live broadcast starts about at about 1:18. Feel free to zip to it by dragging the little dot on the video playbar!]

Hey, storytellers!  Today was the start of something really fun: I’ll be broadcasting live on Facebook and YouTube every Wednesday at 1 PM Pacific. Tune in for frank talk about writing, and of course, if you can show up live, you can ask questions, too.  Links appear at the bottom of this post.

Today’s talk was a response to a great question that came in from one of my blog readers. In its essence: 

Why do all my story ideas feel like they’ve been done before?

Awesome question, right? In my answer, I talk about

• why all stories are about the same thing
• the shape, or structure, that all stories share
• the truth about human nature that all stories strive to express

In the follow-up questions, we talk about what happens when other people compare your work to published books.

I also get into the question of...