My first full-time job was with a computer training company. We basically took regular people with little or no computer experience, and then taught them how to do web development and application programming. I really liked teaching, I found out. And was rather good at it. I also realized that I was pretty good at designing lesson plans, and ultimately I became responsible for designing and writing a major portion of our 14-week training curriculum.

I just remembered all that, and realized that’s the experience which I should be drawing on mentally for preparing my book. It trained me to think very structurally about massive sets of information, and how they interacted. But most importantly, it kept me focused on the practical applications of what I was doing. I had to make sure that my lesson plans were well-thought out and explained so that they could not only be delivered successfully by pretty much any instructor, but could also be grasped - in appropriate sequence - by our students.

The other day I started putting together thematic exercises to include as chapters in my book. I don’t know whether or not I’ll use them, but they are really helping me focus my thinking. I did one basic one already, which asks people to try to extrapolate a religion based on the story told in a movie. In other words, the movie would become the sacred text of this fictional religion.

Here are two more short exercises which I’ve started putting together, based on this same sort of idea. I’m trying to provide readers with concrete stories or media examples, which they can then distort in a variety of ways to grasp firsthand important concepts conveyed in the body of the text. This first one is about the context of a story and/or the genre of it.

1. Read three classic fairy tales. From these examples, create a list of traits which seem to be common to the genre of fairy tales.
2. Make a list of other stories or kinds of stories that your chosen fairy tales are similar to.
3. Do a little research into the time period these tales were either invented or popularized. Chart out possible historical and social developments which these stories may have offered a response or reaction to.
4. Update these fairy tales to modern times. Imagine what the genre of each would be if the tale were told today. Describe how modernizing the context of the story would enhance it.
5. Now switch genres of your three stories from the previous step. Imagine each one in a genre which might be a bit of a mismatch for it. Make a list of how each story is significantly changed by putting it into an unusual context.
6. Make as complete a list as possible of other stories which reference or emulate the three original fairy tales you chose.

This could probably be expanded and modified in various ways, but its a decent start. Essentially, what I want people to focus on here is that meanings of stories depend on the larger story - the context - which they fit into. If you change the context of the story, then you will necessarily change the makeup and meaning of the story. Similarly, here is an exercise in drawing out various subtexts and alternate points of view which may be implicit in a story:

1. Choose a book you enjoy. Make a list of the top five characters, in order of their importance in the story.
2. Draw up a list of questions to ask each character in your list which would help reveal important information.
3. Choose a minor character not on your list, and imagine how they would re-tell the same story from their unique perspective. How might this alter how the characters on your list are portrayed?
4. Outline a different story which you could tell using these same characters. Also imagine other characters you could as replacements to tell basically the same story.
5. What are some of the other stories suggested in this book which are not fleshed out? Look for things like subtle character interactions, and possible implied histories. Make a list of ways you could expand the complexity of the overall story with these types of items.

I’m working on some other ones also and will post them as I figure it out.