On The Race, I have been reading an incredible book written by Donald Miller called, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." If you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it. The book is about Donald's experience with Story, and the elements that truly make a story worth telling. Here were a couple of my favorite excerpts:
"The greatest stories, Steve told me, are the ones in which the character's very life is at stake. There needs to be a question as to whether the character will make it, whether he will defeat the enemy or the enemy will defeat him. The second element that makes a story epic, he said, was the ambition had to be sacrificial. The protagonist has to be going through pain, risking his very life, for the sake of somebody else."
"The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle…"
