Martha Alderson is the best-selling author of Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks and Writing Blockbuster Plots: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Plot, Structure, and Scene. She is a plot and transformational consultant whose clients include best-selling authors, editors, and Hollywood movie directors. Martha, widely known as the “Plot Whisperer,” has written several books, led workshops, and created an award-winning blog to help creatives express themselves and tell their stories.
Martha joins me today to explore the creative process and define what the universal story is. She discusses the ubiquity of opposition in all artistic pursuits and outlines how creatives can overcome them. She reveals the three major emotions with which all creatives face and explains how we are all in the world to heal. She also emphasizes the importance of forgiveness, its relationship with creative endeavor, and how we can give it to ourselves and extend it to others.
“Creativity is fraught with obstacles – that’s what the universal story is all about. Writing a story will change you.” – Martha Alderson
This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:
- How taking risks helps you stretch, grow, and expand who you are
- Why Martha wrote Boundless Creativity and how brilliant writers get tangled in fear and insecurity
- The reason Martha dedicated her life to helping others express themselves
- Our tendencies to re-traumatize ourselves
- The universal story and its similarities and differences with the Hero’s Journey
- The elements that create a compelling narrative
- The stages of the universal story and how to travel it well
- Unveiling the universal stories in our lives
- Strategies in overcoming the Dark Night of the Soul
- The three major emotions that stop creatives from moving forward
- The importance of meaning and purpose in life and how we can find it
- The Wounded Healer archetype and why forgiveness is key to the creative process
- Why writers should start with the end of their stories
- The power of plot and structure in developing a story
Related Content:
- Kindness and Wonder: The Fred Rogers Philosophy with Gavin Edwards
Resources Mentioned:
- Boundless Creativity: A Spiritual Workbook for Overcoming Self-Doubt, Emotional Traps, and Other Creative Blocks by Martha Alderson
- Writing Blockbuster Plots: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Plot, Structure, and Scene by Martha Alderson
- The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana
- Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
- The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd
- Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen
Connect with Martha Alderson:
- The Plot Whisperer
- Martha Alderson Website
- Martha Alderson on Facebook
- Martha Alderson on Instagram
- Martha Alderson on Pinterest
- Martha Alderson on Twitter
- Martha Alderson on YouTube
- Martha Alderson on LinkedIn
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Watch the interview on YouTube.
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Visit the Martha Alderson guest page right here on goodliving.com!
