If you’ve ever lain in bed trying to get to sleep, you know the battle that this can be. It’s also a vicious cycle of not being asleep, then being frustrated you’re not asleep, which wakes you up more. On the other hand, there are times when you are fighting not to fall asleep (such…
Tag: conflict
Muse on Monday – March 16, 2026
Human interaction makes up a huge part of the conflict in stories. After all, as humans, we are the most interesting subject for our stories. This conflict could come from having different values, misunderstandings from language and culture, competition for resources or lots of other reasons. It’s hard enough to negotiate with someone in good…
Strategic
Strategic Jenny and I stepped out of Giordano’s Pizza near Willis Tower, and the air shook. The top of the tower was a fireball. 9/11 flashbacks flooded me. We ran. “Who would do this?” Jenny had her phone open. “The news says it was Zimbabwe.” “Zimbabwe? Why?” Where even was Zimbabwe? “They hate our government….
Muse on Monday – December 22, 2025
A lot of interesting stuff happens on the border between two things. That’s because there is inherent tension between the stuff on one side and the stuff on the other. Borders could either be in time or space. We are coming up on a border in time between 2025 and 2026, although this is arbitrary…
Muse on Monday – December 15, 2025
Don’t you love Christmas? What, you don’t? A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with the holidays: love, because it is supposed to be a great time of celebration with family and friends; hate, because it is often filled with stress over expectations and sadness that things aren’t the way they should be. With…
Muse on Monday – December 8, 2025
For most of my life, I haven’t really known my neighbors. We might say hi in passing but nothing more. I do know the neighbors on both sides of us where we are currently and we get along well, so that’s a blessing. Bad neighbors, on the other hand, are a nightmare since there is…
Muse on Monday – May 26, 2025
One of the main elements of fiction is conflict. There has to be some problem to solve or it is not that interesting to read. A lot of stories take place in horrific circumstances, where there is conflict all over the place. However, could you write a story in a seemingly ideal situation? What would…
Muse on Monday – January 27, 2025
Have you ever read a story where the fate of the world rests on what the characters do? Probably, since that’s a lot of stories. This is what is called a high-stakes story and the reason they are so common is that the higher the stakes, the more we are invested in it all turning…
Doommates
Doommates I came home to see my bike bent out of shape. And blood covering the front porch. Not again. Jorgan the Doomhammer was on the couch, watching an infomercial. It was the same old story: you meet a barbarian in another dimension, he saves your life, follows you home. “You broke my bike.” I…
Muse on Monday – September 2, 2024
A few years ago, one of the Muse on Monday story prompts was to write a story that was nothing but dialogue. Today’s is similar but it is combative dialogue: an argument, a fight of words, an attempted persuasion, perhaps. With this kind of dialogue, the conflict is obvious. It is like a fencing match…
The Green-Walled Treehouse 