Tag Archives: crown chakra and character development

How Understanding the Crown Chakra Can Improve Your Writing

Posted on by

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger from Pexels

When we have defined the shaping of our characters’ identities (Root Chakra); understood their sense of self-awareness in relationship to others (Sacral Chakra), their displays of agency in the world (Solar Plexus Chakra), and their supporting characters and antagonists (Heart Chakra); listened to them speak (Throat Chakra); and tuned into their intuition (Third Eye Chakra), we stand a better chance of reflecting their transformations.

 

The Crown Chakra is about having a deeper knowing about one’s life, perspective based on wisdom and experience, and an understanding of one’s Self as part of a much bigger picture. When a person reaches this level of development, she has been able to make meaning of her experiences, actions, and reactions.

 

If we’re writing fiction or memoir (because we are writing about a period of time in a life), we want to envision an ending, if possible. Sometimes this take a fair amount of writing to know the ending. Sometimes the ending comes to us early in the process.

 

This has something to do with perspective, and more precisely, point of view. Not only do we want to understand our protagonist’s perspective about life before, during, and after her transformation, we also need to decide who can best tell the story.

 

In the case of fiction, the story may be told in first person from the protagonist’s point of view, or it may be told in third person by an omniscient narrator or a combination of both by another character.

 

In the case of the non-fiction, self-help/how-to category, you will likely use a combination of first person and second person point of view. You will also want to be clear about who your Ideal Reader will be after she has followed your plan based on your method, process, or program.

 

Write a significant scene in your story (fiction or memoir) from first and third person points of view, considering the options for third person: totally omniscient (an all-knowing voice that has insight to all characters’ thoughts and feelings), partially omniscient (an all-knowing voice that has insight to only the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings), or a more subjective point of view from one of the other characters.

For a non-fiction book, try writing passages both with and without second person “you.” The tone you want your book to have will determine which is the right choice.

Please leave a comment below. I’d love to know what you discover.

 

 

How understanding the crown chakra will improve your writing

Posted on by

Believe it or not, your characters’ spiritual lives have a big impact on their stories, whether that’s part of the plotline or not. Just as with we humans, our characters have spiritual beliefs – or not – that inform their motivations and decisions in life. In religion, this is called the eschatology of a belief system: what we think happens to us when we die, whether or not we believe in karma, how we view humanity’s purpose in this life, or whether we believe in past lives.

Even if we don’t embrace any of these beliefs, the fact that we don’t also influences our day-to-day motivations and decisions.

It’s easy to by-pass this part of our characters’ development, but it’s essential, I think. Whether your character is a mystic or an atheist, a Buddhist or a Baptist, their belief system – or lack thereof – has everything to do with their movement through life and their story world.

After you’ve gotten clear about a character’s inner world, as we do when using the Third Eye Chakra, go one step further and think about the character’s connection (or not) to a higher power. This higher power can be anything – even their own sense of inner wisdom. Or their meditation practice. Or their love of literature. Their daily hike. Or their daily cocktail. It doesn’t have to be overtly religious or spiritual.

Understanding our characters to this degree can help us portray their complexities in deeply moving and complex ways. And this is the very quality our stories need to have if we want them to stay with readers long after they’ve put our work down.

What is the source of your character’s higher power, and how does it inform her/his way of moving in the world?