Story Guidelines

Thank you for your desire to share your experience of hearing God's Voice in one of our upcoming When God Spoke to Me books.

The information below provides IMPORTANT INFORMATION and guidelines about how to write and submit your story. Please read it before you begin writing your story.

This book series has the potential to change the world. For so long, hearing God's Voice was only for special people. Together, we will show the world that hearing the Voice for Love is for everyone.

Hearing God's Voice can be experienced in countless ways: through all of the body's senses, as a feeling, vision, or knowingness. It can be experienced as a feeling of love, peace, understanding, or comfort. It can be a shift in perception or a new way of seeing something. It can be received as intuition, thoughts in the mind, or as a very clear and distinct inner voice. And many other ways! All ways of hearing this Voice are equal and important. Our goal in this book is to represent as many ways of hearing God's Voice as possible.

Recipe for a Winning When God Spoke to Me Story

A When God Spoke to Me story is an inspirational, true story about ordinary people opening up to and experiencing God's Voice in their lives. It is a story that opens the heart and rekindles the spirit. It is a simple, inter-denominational, living art piece that touches the soul of readers and helps them to recognize how they may already be hearing God's Voice without knowing it and inspire them to receive guidance, healing, and communication from God in new and life-changing ways. The stories are personal and often filled with emotion and drama. They are filled with vivid images created by using the five senses. In some stories, readers will feel they are actually in the scene with you.

A When God Spoke to Me story is not a simple recounting of your life, nor is it a biography. Your "story" should recount one primary experience of hearing God's Voice in your life with a clear beginning, a cohesive middle in which progress is made toward a specific goal or a problem is struggled with in an attempt to solve it, and a punchy ending that wraps up the one main idea and delivers a satisfying and often emotionally gratifying conclusion. Put another way, your story should start with action; it should include a problem, issue or situation, and should culminate with your experience of hearing God's Voice. The main character should express their feelings though the conflict or situation, and it should end in a result, such as a lesson learned, a positive change or pay-off.

In many ways, the story itself is simply a capsule or mechanism through which to share your experience of hearing God's Voice. It provides the background and framework to convey the experience. Your story should have heart, but also something extra...an element that makes us all feel more hopeful, more connected, more thankful, more passionate and better about life in general. A story that causes tears, laughter, goosebumps or any combination of these. A good story covers the range of human emotions. Go deep with your experience. Be vulnerable, honest, and truthful to the point of having humility. These are very human stories, from everyday people, who have extraordinary experiences of transformation, growth, and healing in hearing God's Voice in their lives.

Goals for a When God Spoke to Me Story

1) Entertain. If your story isn't interesting, engaging, and fun to read, no one will want to read it. It should grab people's emotions, take them on a ride, push their buttons, and speak to them on many different levels. Every story should elicit a Wow! Tell a heartfelt, soul stirring account about how you came to hear God's Voice in your life. What shifted within you to have this happen? What was the outcome experientially? How has your life changed as a result? Exciting, sad, or funny are all great elements to include if possible. Tell your story in a way that will make the reader cry, laugh or get goose bumps (the good kind!) Don't leave anything out -- how did you feel?

2) Educate. Teaching people HOW to hear God's Voice within them is the foundation of our work. Each story should have an educational component. It should inform about one or more of the following: HOW did you open up to hear this Voice in your life? What shift did you make emotionally or mentally to open up to God's Voice? Something happened within you. What was it? Also, how does this Voice show up in your life? What does it "sound like?" Is it a thought? A feeling? A voice? A sign? A knowingness? How did you know you were hearing God's Voice? When you go to describe this experience in your story, be as specific and insightful as possible.

Another important part. Do not speak to the reader directly. You should not try to overtly tell the reader what to think or what to believe. Rather, your experience should be so clearly conveyed that the reader learns from your experience, not because you are directly trying to teach them. Your goal is to have them join you in your experience. If they do, they will learn what you learned.

3) Inspire. We can't make anyone hear God's Voice. It's always an individual choice. But when we show people how possible it really is, why we are able to do it, and why they can do it too, we inspire in them the desire and belief that they can as well. How has hearing this Voice impacted your life? What was your life like before hearing this Voice? What is it like now?

It's important to do your best to include all three of these pieces: entertain, inspire, and educate. Most importantly, your story needs to relate in some way to hearing God's Voice. Even if it's about a powerful shift in perception or change that you made in your life as a result of inspiration or inner guidance, you need to somehow relate that experience specifically to "hearing God's Voice." Read the three points above and do your best to subtly integrate all of them into your story. Above all else, let it come from your HEART! Your story is important!

Story Specifications

1. Your story must be non-fiction, ranging in length between 300-1600 words. We cannot accept stores longer than 1600 words, so whittle it down before submitting it.

2. No anonymous or author unknown submissions please.

3. Include a bio at the end of the story. Your bio is a short paragraph of 50 words or less about yourself. Your bio should not be promotional.

4. Please only include one space after the end of sentences, not two.

If the story you submit is published, you will be paid upon publication of the story. Payment amount will be determined at that time.

Now, to address your fears

We know you're probably not a professional writer or author, and you don't need to be. For nearly all of us, writing is a process. Do your best to write a first draft and submit it to us. If we think we might be able to use it in an upcoming book, we will likely send it back with suggestions and questions. We will probably go through 5 or 6 revisions with you. That is normal. We typically go through that many revisions with everyone. It's just part of the process. We all get better at writing the more we do it. Just do the best you can. That's all we ask.

Thank you again for your desire to share your story with people all over the world. It truly is an incredible opportunity to help others open up to hearing God's Voice in their lives!

With joy and gratitude,

DavidPaul Doyle