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Why I Like Stories About the Old West
When I was a young boy, I enjoyed playing Cowboys and Indians. In the late 40s and early 50s, west Texas was a wonderful place to act out my childhood imagination. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Lone Ranger were my favorites. I wore the toy guns and holsters, chaps, and boots to get the feeling of being a real cowboy. I played all day long, pretending to shoot the bad guys and to fight the Indians. We would tie up our captives and leave them for a while to think about their crime, but somehow they always managed to escape.
From my youth to this day when I am traveling, I continue to think about what life must have been like in the old days of the west. In my mind, I see Indians crossing the vast landscape or sitting on their horses atop a nearby mountain overlooking the vast expanse below. I see wagon trains slowly rolling across the plains on their way to a new life. I think of the many hardships they must have faced in order to make a better life, and I think of the many that never made it to their destination because of accident, disease, and ambush by Indians and devious white men. It amazes me to think of the millions of buffalo that roamed the vast western plains then. A small herd of buffalo roams near my home and images of the Old West seem so real. That is, until the camel appears. It is a strange sight to see this long-legged dromedary mixed in with the buffalo.
Write a Bestseller! 7 Places to Find Great Story Illustrations
The stories you tell in your self-help book must have meaning to your audience. What kind of stories will interest them, provide them with hope and motivate them to move forward in their lives? The answer is “stories about people like them.”
Think about what your audience looks like, believes, rejects, and values. Remember their age, gender, and other relevant characteristics. Most importantly, get in touch with their more difficult emotions: discouragement, frustration, guilt, shame and so forth. Then concentrate on the feelings you want them to feel: hope, competency, success and pride in a job well done. The more you understand your audience, how they think, what moves and motivates them, the better you will be at selecting most compelling stories.
Write a Bestseller! How Many Stories Do You Need in Your Book?
As you might suspect, there are no hard and fast rules about how many stories to include, what length they should be or who tells them. A book can include long and short stories, told by you or others. Some authors set up a standardized way their chapters will be structured, and place their stories at regular intervals. Others allow themselves a lot of latitude by using different chapter structures with un-standardized need for stories. We’ll take a look at two books that illustrate the difference between these styles:
Take the U Out of Clutter
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