In Lesson 4 we nailed down some specifics in the midst of a chaotic creative maelstrom, amplified our protagonist’s Dilemma, breathed life back into what can become a dry problem-solving exercise in story creation. Now we’ll take everything we’ve created so far and spread it out on the table to get a good hard look at it all. Some of it is already working, some remains unsolved, some ideas will be discarded, and some will be opened up much more. We’ll also figure out our protagonist’s complicated ally, who is equal parts savior and disaster.
HINT FOR NAVIGATING THIS COURSE: In Lesson 5.4 I ask you to write about what you just learned. This is an important part of learning because it forces you to recapitulate what you just learned and explain it back to me in writing. It’s been proven that this is an extremely effective way to seat what you’ve learned in your long-term memory instead of having an incomplete understanding that fades from memory the way much learning does. We’re trying to instill deep expertise in you, so we’re going the extra mile. In Lesson 5, the topics that have assignments or exercises are 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7.