New Writer's Tool: Operational Theme
I attended a writer's conference the other day and while we were there I attended the panel on "how to write a long-running series." The Journal Entries is a very long-running series, and I hoped to learn something from other people who had tried the same thing. Long-running serials are not a new thing, but tools for talking about them certainly are.
One of my favorite ideas for long-running series is the Story Engine, which is the central premise of the story that drives every episode. This weekend I heard about, not so much an alternative, as a different way of approaching the engine that drives your story, one that may appeal to character-driven writers, and belongs in every writers' toolbox: Operational Theme.
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