Short Stuff: MacGuffins

The Hero With a Thousand Faces explores the common themes and story elements that define the world’s mythologies—the hero’s journey. Through the cycle of initiation, separation, and return, the hero undergoes great trials and tribulations, experiences death and rebirth, and gains new powers that enable mankind’s ultimate redemption.

Far from being obsolete relics from long-extinguished civilizations, the myths of the ancients have profound lessons for today’s reader. By studying the struggles, transformations, and redemptions of the great heroes, we come closer to discovering the universal truths of the human condition and unlocking the divine potential that lies inside us all.

Stories are mysterious—like music, they have an emotional power over us that’s impossible to explain. However, screenwriter and storytelling expert Robert McKee argues that stories’ emotional power is not only explainable but also something you can learn to create. In Story, McKee breaks down how stories function and uses this theory to explain how you can write a gripping story. The book is intended for screenwriters, but its principles apply to any kind of storytelling.

In this guide, we’ll explain what ingredients enable stories to engage audiences on both an emotional and intellectual level. You’ll learn how “beats” of action and reaction act as the driving force of compelling scenes and how scenes, sequences, and acts fit together to form stories that hold attention. We’ll provide background from earlier works that likely inspired Story, such as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. We’ll also supplement McKee’s writing advice with tips from other popular books, such as Stephen King’s On Writing and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!

You may not know it yet, but your life is full of stories worth sharing. So argues oral storytelling champion Matthew Dicks in Storyworthy—a guide to discovering, crafting, and sharing great personal stories. Drawing on his experience telling stories on stages around the world and teaching storytelling to diverse groups of people, Dicks offers insights on how to shape ordinary moments into stories that spark profound human connections.

In this guide, we’ll cover Dicks’s ideas in four parts. First, we’ll explain why everyone should learn how to tell their stories. Next, we’ll outline Dicks’s advice on deciding which stories to share. Then, we’ll explain how to combine all the elements of a good story. Finally, we’ll cover Dicks’s tips for memorizing, practicing, and sharing your story on stage. Throughout, we’ll supplement Dicks’s advice with tips from experts on writing, psychology, public speaking, and more.

Do you want to learn to get more out of the novels you read? Are you interested in learning how authors communicate through literary devices like symbols, archetypes, and allusions?

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a crash course in the art of reading intelligently. In this book, you’ll learn how to identify common literary conventions and gain the skills necessary to analyze them like a professor would. You’ll discover why Goose had to die in Top Gun and why sex scenes aren’t always about sex in literature.

You may not know it yet, but your life is full of stories worth sharing. So argues oral storytelling champion Matthew Dicks in Storyworthy—a guide to discovering, crafting, and sharing great personal stories. Drawing on his experience telling stories on stages around the world and teaching storytelling to diverse groups of people, Dicks offers insights on how to shape ordinary moments into stories that spark profound human connections.

In this guide, we’ll cover Dicks’s ideas in four parts. First, we’ll explain why everyone should learn how to tell their stories. Next, we’ll outline Dicks’s advice on deciding which stories to share. Then, we’ll explain how to combine all the elements of a good story. Finally, we’ll cover Dicks’s tips for memorizing, practicing, and sharing your story on stage. Throughout, we’ll supplement Dicks’s advice with tips from experts on writing, psychology, public speaking, and more.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces explores the common themes and story elements that define the world’s mythologies—the hero’s journey. Through the cycle of initiation, separation, and return, the hero undergoes great trials and tribulations, experiences death and rebirth, and gains new powers that enable mankind’s ultimate redemption.

Far from being obsolete relics from long-extinguished civilizations, the myths of the ancients have profound lessons for today’s reader. By studying the struggles, transformations, and redemptions of the great heroes, we come closer to discovering the universal truths of the human condition and unlocking the divine potential that lies inside us all.

Stories are mysterious—like music, they have an emotional power over us that’s impossible to explain. However, screenwriter and storytelling expert Robert McKee argues that stories’ emotional power is not only explainable but also something you can learn to create. In Story, McKee breaks down how stories function and uses this theory to explain how you can write a gripping story. The book is intended for screenwriters, but its principles apply to any kind of storytelling.

In this guide, we’ll explain what ingredients enable stories to engage audiences on both an emotional and intellectual level. You’ll learn how “beats” of action and reaction act as the driving force of compelling scenes and how scenes, sequences, and acts fit together to form stories that hold attention. We’ll provide background from earlier works that likely inspired Story, such as Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. We’ll also supplement McKee’s writing advice with tips from other popular books, such as Stephen King’s On Writing and Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!

You may not know it yet, but your life is full of stories worth sharing. So argues oral storytelling champion Matthew Dicks in Storyworthy—a guide to discovering, crafting, and sharing great personal stories. Drawing on his experience telling stories on stages around the world and teaching storytelling to diverse groups of people, Dicks offers insights on how to shape ordinary moments into stories that spark profound human connections.

In this guide, we’ll cover Dicks’s ideas in four parts. First, we’ll explain why everyone should learn how to tell their stories. Next, we’ll outline Dicks’s advice on deciding which stories to share. Then, we’ll explain how to combine all the elements of a good story. Finally, we’ll cover Dicks’s tips for memorizing, practicing, and sharing your story on stage. Throughout, we’ll supplement Dicks’s advice with tips from experts on writing, psychology, public speaking, and more.

Do you want to learn to get more out of the novels you read? Are you interested in learning how authors communicate through literary devices like symbols, archetypes, and allusions?

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a crash course in the art of reading intelligently. In this book, you’ll learn how to identify common literary conventions and gain the skills necessary to analyze them like a professor would. You’ll discover why Goose had to die in Top Gun and why sex scenes aren’t always about sex in literature.