Stephanie here.
Many of you either write or have dreams of writing a sweeping, epic story. Something with a big scope and lots of point of view characters that will take hundreds of thousands of words.
Or maybe you’re writing about a big topic, like Margaret Mitchell did in Gone With The Wind.
However large your story scope might be, I think this is great writing advice:
“When writing about war, write about one man’s war.” – Angela Hunt
(I came across this quote in Angela’s Writing Historical Fiction. She said it’s an old writing adage, but my Google searches yielded no results so I’ll attribute it to her unless otherwise corrected.)
Something unique about our art form is how personal we’re able to make it. We’re able to draw others into the hearts and minds of our characters. Don’t forget that even when you’re writing about something big—war, cancer, alcoholism—your goal should be to make it very personal.