What sets your Soul on Fire?

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. It’s a blustery Wednesday and most of the state of Michigan has closed including the company I work for. So, I’ve been snuggled under my blanket in front of the fire working on my story. That’s when the inspiration hit for this blog post. So, here we go!

Photo credit: paul+photos=moody on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC

Women through out history have been given conflicting messages from society when it comes to their role in life. Dealing with this is exasperating and draining, so here’s my take on that.

Women should decide for themselves what they want to do with their lives.

Don’t ask your partner because most likely he or she will pick what they want, and that may or may not be what’s best for you. Now, this may be uncomfortable for you because we were raised to be nice and think of other people’s feelings first, but it’s okay to be self-focused about this. You have just as much right to pursue happiness as everyone else on the face of the earth. It’s written in the constitution.

Photo on Visualhunt.com

To do this, you have to prioritize your goals. Choose the ones that are most important to you. It may be you want to stay at home and be there for your kids. It may be you want a career because accomplishments are important to you. Whatever the case may be, decide what aspirations are important to you and pursue those goals.  Don’t listen to anybody else.

To find the goals that resonate with you, you must know yourself, know what sets your soul on fire. It takes time to do this and sometimes it might be a little uncomfortable, but it’s worth the discomfort. Trust me. Once you know what’s important to you, the setting and following goals part becomes much easier.

 

Photo credit: David Reber’s Hammer Photography on Visualhunt/ CC BY-SA

As you go through this process, you’ll see not everyone has the same dream and not everyone will understand your journey, and that’s okay. We all have our own paths to take and once we accept that, we’ll be able to allow everyone in our lives to walk their own path. It doesn’t mean we won’t feel pain or discouragement, but  maybe we won’t spend so much time wallowing in those painful emotions. We’ll learn our lesson and move on.

Once we do this, things will start to flow. Decisions will be easier to make because we’ll ask ourselves, does this align with my dreams? If the answer is yes, we know what to do, and if the answer is no, we know what to do.

So, take a few minutes, or a few hours, or a few days, months, or years and think about what sets your soul on fire and then go for it!

Photo on VisualHunt.com

Thanks for taking time to read my post. I hope it resonates with you! What are your dreams and aspirations? What steps are you taking to go after them? Leave a comment! I love hearing from you!

The Inciting Incident: Every story needs One

 

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I thought I’d talk about Writing. I haven’t done this in a while and I figured it was high time  I did. 🙂

 

Today, I want to talk about the “Inciting Incident.”

Every story must have one. So, what is the “Inciting Incident?”

The Inciting Incident is the Event or Decision that begins the story problem. It’s the catalyst of all the events in your story. The spark that lights the fire.

Photo credit: compassrose_04 via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

So, naturally it should be in the first chapter. Usually in the first paragraph, but not always. Sometimes you have to introduce the characters first, so the reader will understand the importance of the incident. For example, in my story “The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer” I had to introduce the Cat Lady before the incident in order to establish her importance as the victim. In that novel, the inciting incident is when the girls make the decision to investigate the Cat Lady’s death on their own.

In “The Super Spies and the High School Bomber” the inciting incident is when an explosion demolishes the high school and the girls make the decision to search for their uncle who was in the school when the bomb went off. The explosion happens at the beginning of the story, but the decision to investigate doesn’t happen until the girls realize he’s missing. The decision to find him is the catalyst for all the other events in the story.

I know all the young adult experts out there are saying you have to start your story in the middle of the action. This is good advice just as long as you have the inciting incident in there. It is an important story element that you can’t go without.

You can’t begin your story after the decision has been made. Novel writing doesn’t work that way. All the tension or the angst you want to create naturally won’t be there because you’re starting your story in the wrong spot.

The inciting incident doesn’t have to be any major event, either. It can be something as simple as making a decision about which path to take, or finding a cell phone.

In the story, “The Super Spies and the Pied Piper” the inciting incident is when the FBI gets a “ping” on the main character’s parents’ cell phone and then they lose it. Again, the girls make the decision to investigate on their own. This is the catalyst for all the events throughout the story.

 

As you can see, the inciting incident, although small, is a very important part of the story problem. No novel is complete without it.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post today. Do you have anything you’d like to add about the inciting incident? If so, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!