Happy last day of November, SEers! We’re doing something a little different on Story Empire today. We’ve chosen one word to use as a theme and are sharing a few short sentences built around that word from one of our books. Our theme word is “Tree.”

Pretty basic, right? But it can appear in so many different ways—from a sparkly holiday tree to a twisted skeleton in a dark forest, or a leafy giant in the full bloom of spring. Maybe the trunk bears the initials of young lovers, or odd territorial markings from a hidden tribe tucked deep in a jungle.

How have you used “tree” in your own works? Feel free to share in the comments below. In the meantime, here are a few treats from Story Empire.

Mae here, kicking things off with two lines from my Christmas novella, Food for Poe.

Breck led her into…

Hello to all the Story Empire readers. PH here today, getting ready for Thanksgiving! No, this isn’t a themed post. Instead, I’m here to help anyone out there who needs a start with Scrivener and just can’t figure out what to do with it.

I’ve seen several comments from other writers over the last few years which indicates they have Scrivener but just didn’t know where to begin. I understand the feeling. When I first started with Scrivener there was so much to learn and I needed to do other work that I didn’t have time to learn it. It wasn’t until I read several posts in which other authors described how they used Scrivener that I began to understand its power.

Why the confusion and reluctance in engaging with Scrivener?

It is fundamentally different from just using a text editor. It is a robust development software for an entire…