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First Catch Your Rabbit: Creating Concepts and Characters

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There is a famous old cookbook recipe for stewed rabbit. The first sentence of the recipe gets right to the point. It reads: “First, catch your rabbit.”

How do you “catch the rabbit” and create original characters and stories? Where do ideas for original stories and characters come from?

A story recipe depends on the freshness of the ingredients, the quality of the preparation, and the skills of the creator.

The first two ingredients— Character and Conflict—develop simultaneously. Both must be established at the beginning of your story and, like well-written newspaper headlines, they ...

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