Timothy's Thoughts

A very dear friend of mine, Glenn W. Fox, went home to be with the Lord this week. Bro. Fox was my grandparents’ pastor when I first met him, which couldn’t have been very long after I was born. Bro. and Mrs. Fox were always like an extra set of grandparents to my sister and me. We often visited in their home and we would see them every month at associational meetings. Bro. Fox always enjoyed children. I remember when I was young he would often ask, “are you First Timothy or Second Timothy?” I never knew how to answer. Though we had no blood ties, it was from Bro. Fox that I gained an interest in parliamentary procedure and in how a meeting should be conducted. He always wanted things to be done properly and in order. I remember him standing up at an associational meeting, making a motion to amend a motion to get the wording correct and then voting against the motion. From that I realized that he was willing to let the majority rule, even when he disagreed with their decision. I rememb...

Why? It’s a simple question. I’ve been looking at my latest manuscript and have been trying to classify it. There’s love story there, but that isn’t the primary story. It isn’t so much about a dude with a problem, since the dude has, in part, created his problem. It isn’t about a monster in a house, though there are some similarities there. I have come to the conclusion that this story is about the question of why. Why would a con-artist who claims to be a Christian show up on a rich man’s doorstep and claim she has been raising his granddaughter? The story isn’t a classic detective story, but it is a mystery. The characters know some things that they aren’t anxious to reveal to the other characters and to us, but we have to sort through the different points of view and see if we can figure out what is going on. I can’t say that I really set out to tell that type of story, but it turned out that way anyway. It’s funny how things work out sometimes.

Once more, I’m looking at Mike Hyatt’s list of literary agents . I’m asking myself what criteria I would use to decide whether I want one of these to represent my work. There is one criterion that is etched in stone and it is related to something Mike says, “While all of them represent Christian authors, they themselves may not necessarily be Christians.” Is that acceptable? No. See II Corinthians 6:14. Thought that was only talking about Christians not marrying unbelievers? Afraid not. If an agent can’t tell about when he accepted Christ, then a Christian is better off without him. Agents receive about 15% of the contract amount. If the agent is asking for more, the agent had better be able to show why she’s worth it. If an agent is asking for less, it might be good to ask what’s wrong with him. If the agent wants money before the publisher pays, I will very nicely tell the agent that she is out of her mind. I’m not sure how many clients an agent should have, but it should be more tha...

And now we leave our regularly scheduled program… As I write this, I’m looking at Mike Hyatt’s list of literary agents . I got here via literary agent Rachelle Gardner’s Blog . If you reference the image above, which is a simplified representation of the publishing process, you will see where I am in the overall process. I chose a different route this time. It ought to be the easier route. It isn’t. What it comes down to is that when you take this route you are asking a publisher to take a $40,000 or more risk. Unless you happen to be a personal friend of a publisher, it isn’t easy to convince a publisher to take that kind of risk. So what we do is hire someone to promote our work. I enter this side of the process with a story I love, but also with some apprehension. The story, which I’ve been calling Cowtown Homecoming , is about a snobbish rich man. Fort Worth businessman Fox Jacobs is king of the world around him, but as the book opens he is mourning the death of his four grandchild...

The other day, Rachelle Gardner asked for elevator pitches. Below you will find what I submitted, along with her response . What I submitted is actually a type of fill in the blank logline (developed by Jose Silerio) with the blanks filled in with my stuff. As you can see from the response, it is enough to make her think about drinking, which does not bode well for a potential agent/author relationship. Timothy Fish: The story is about a wealthy businessman facing retirement with no grandchildren, who is visited by a con-artist claiming she is raising a granddaughter he didn’t know he had and demanding that his son marry her; believing she only wants money, he seeks to discredit her, with the help of his son’s socialite girlfriend, but when they discover the con-artist is telling the truth, he must learn that social status isn’t important, before his son leaves the family business, to prevent the homeless con-artist from joining his family. Rachelle Gardner: That is one l-o-n-g sentenc...

We talk about writing as an art and so it is, but writing also has much that seems to indicate that it is a craft. I think that is part of why slush piles are so large. There are many stores that sell various things that people like to use to decorate the walls of their homes. Usually, they are shaped like hearts with flowers and strawberries painted on them or something like that. They often have a lot of hot glue holding things together. I have a pig shaped checker board that I did when I was in high school. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you like that sort of thing, but if you buy one this week, there will be one just like it on the shelf next week to take its place. There’s nothing hard about creating this kind of stuff and many people enjoy it as a hobby, like others enjoy putting together jigsaw puzzles. That is an example of a craft. It doesn’t take any special skills to run a hot glue gun. Compare that to what it takes to make cement bird baths. Once you have a mold, anyon...

“Here’s something you might be able to answer,” I said to Gene as we continued our conversation in Ellen’s café. “I have this character—“ “It isn’t me is it?” He asked. “No,” I said. “It’s a woman, but you wouldn’t know her. You know her pastor.” “So what about this character?” Gene moved his coffee cup to the edge of the table to make it easier for the woman with the coffee pot to fill it. “She’s doing something she shouldn’t. She as this girl she’s taking care of. The girl is the daughter of a friend who died. This character has run into some hard times and she wants to give the girl a better life, so she goes to these rich people and claims the girl is a member of their family.” “It sounds to me like you’ve got it all figured out.” Gene sipped his coffee. “That isn’t the problem,” I said. “This woman has mixed emotions about what she’s doing.” “Don’t we all? He asked. “Just as soon as I get back to my desk, I’m going to draft my resignation. It isn’t something I want to do, but I kn...

I had taken the first sip of coffee when I saw Gene’s head rise above the stairs. It was a very good cup of coffee, if I do say so myself. You won’t find anything but the best at Ellen’s. They make their mistakes from time to time, but most of those stay in the kitchen. “Why couldn’t you get a table downstairs instead of making me climb the stairs? These legs aren’t as strong as they used to be.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “But don’t let that fool you. I’ve still got it where it counts.” “I just thought we could talk more easily, up here where it’s quiet.” I took another sip of coffee. Good coffee. “You could have taken the elevator.” “Not when I’m coming up here to talk about what you’re here to talk about,” he said. “Ellen told me why you’re here. I just haven’t figured out whether you’re here to ask my opinion, ask my permission or just to warn me. Can you tell me?” “No, sir,” I said, “I’m not all that sure myself.” “If you want my opinion,” he said, “I think it’s about tim...

I stopped by Ellen’s café the other day to have a chat with one of my characters. Ellen was happy to see me—she always is—but I stopped by at lunch time and the place was busy. “I don’t have a lot of time to talk right now,” she said when I came through the door. She reached for a menu, but then she paused. “I don’t guess you need that. You know what’s on it.” “Give me one anyway,” I said. I don’t know if you’ve tried this, but it’s a strange feeling to be able to walk into a restaurant and order a dish that isn’t on the menu and know that they will being it to the table, cooked to perfection. “And I didn’t come to talk to you.” “Sometime when we aren’t so busy, I might be offended, but as you can see—“ She swept her hand toward the lunchtime crowd. “Who did you come to see?” “Gene,” I said. “Your pastor is retiring. I wanted to talk to him before he does.” “He isn’t here,” she said. “He will be,” I said. “Where do you want to sit?” she asked. “How ‘bout that little table upstairs? You...

My second draft outline turned out to be a much bigger task than I originally anticipated. The final product will be several pages long. Each chapter has multiple scenes and each scene must be described with a few choice statements. So far, I have found one scene that must be rewritten. It is a scene that I already knew would have to be rewritten. It's a scene that has the four grandchildren in it and that just won't work since I changed history and they died a year before the scene takes place. It also has the main character too deeply involved in business. There are a few things I like about the approach I have chosen this time. The primary thing is that it wastes a lot of time. While I'm wasting time trying to figure out what to put in the outline about each scene, it gives me time to consider the scene and how it fits within the rest of the manuscript. Its surprising how many details you forget when you have your head down writing for several weeks. This quick pass thro...

Today, I want to talk about prayer. In particular, I want to talk about public prayer. Now most people have a canned prayer that they pray when the preacher calls on them to pray. I don’t think they intend to memorize a prayer, but it’s like sitting in the same pew. It is just a habit. When I was a kid, we had a Sunday school superintendent who would get up and pray the same prayer every Sunday. Being the bright kid that I was, I took it upon myself to memorize this prayer and when the time was right, I prayed his prayer. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want some kid to return the favor, but I don’t pray the same prayer each time I am asked to pray. The other night, after business meeting, I could tell by the way our pastor looked across the auditorium at me that he was about to ask me to pray. Now there are always good things to pray about in a public prayer. There are the sick, the lost, the ministries of the church and any number of other things. I wasn’t thinking about any of these. It...

I'm using a different approach to creating the second draft than I've used before. You may recall that the first draft is where I say we just have to get something down on paper and the second draft is where we work with large chunks of the story. In the past, I have created the outline, written the first draft and then didn't mess with the outline so much in subsequent drafts. This time, I deleted everything in the outline except for the title, and the things that remain the same for every story. Starting with a blank outline template, I am rebuilding the outline as I develop the second draft. This is a little like an engineer filling out a traceability matrix. There won't be anything in the story that isn't in the outline and nothing in the outline will be left out of the story. What do I hope to accomplish with this approach? For all practical purposes, the outline is the story. The rest of it, the description, the dialog, etc., is just icing on the cake. If some...

When we write a story, we often include events that don't happen very often. These events can make things more interesting, but they can also come across as being unlikely. It can be helpful for the author to do a fault tree analysis to figure out what things he or she needs to put in the story in order to line things up to allow some important event to occur. I have included an example of this in Find_the_Story.pdf . If you would like the FreeMind file, it is available at man_jumps_to_his_death.mm .

How far is too far? Writing a novel is often about throwing the worst thing we can think of at a character and watching him squirm. How far are we willing to go? We can look to the book of Job for our example. God allowed Satan to test Job in many ways, but he didn’t allow him to take his life. Satan was able to take his children and harm him physically. It revealed the character of Job, but he never did as Satan wanted and his wife encouraged—curse God and die. We hope to test the limits of our characters, so we must ask ourselves what our characters would think is worse than death. One character might rather die than lose his children, while another might rather die then find out she is pregnant. Another might rather die than have his wife become his boss at the company where they work. After we throw these things at our character, he must either change or die. He doesn’t want to change. He doesn’t want to accept the thing he hates, but he doesn’t want to die either. It is this strug...

As states go, Kansas doesn’t strike me as a very interesting place. That, I’m sure, is why Dorothy and Toto hitched a ride on an outgoing cyclone and went for a visit in the Land of Oz. The Land of Oz is a sharp contrast to Kansas. As boring as Kansas might seem, it turns out that it is more interesting to have a character in Kansas than to have him do nothing but talk on the phone, especially if he doesn’t want to be in Kansas. I have a character that I had talking on the phone and it was about what you would expect. When I put this city slicker in the middle of Kansas farm country, suddenly, something as simple as a business meeting became an adventure. When we get our characters outside of their comfort zones, good things happen. It’s a little like throwing a cat in a swimming pool to see what will happen. Throw a fish in a pool and no one pays much attention. It’s just a fish in a pool. Throw a cat in the water and they’ll watch to see what it does, even it they think you are being...

Modern technology has given us many ways we can communicate without seeing a person face to face. One example is talking on the phone. In writing, they all amount to the same thing. They create scenes in which the characters are communicating, but they aren’t doing much. Sometimes that’s okay, but we must be careful. Unless we have an omnipresent narrator, we can only follow the actions of one of the characters. This quickly degrades into a he said/she said scene. Even though he may be doing something while he talks on the phone, he is still tied to the phone and there is a limit to what he can do. We can help these scenes by giving our narrator character something to do as he talks on the phone. He might be opening his mail, driving down the road or polishing his shoes. Nearly anything will work, except in situations where the character is consumed by the conversation. When he is so consumed, he won’t be doing mundane tasks, taking us back to a scene with pure dialogue. It may be hel...

When I write a book, I work with an outline. I’ve tried to work without one, but I kept getting lost and forgetting what I needed to say and what I had already said. The outline for my current work in progress is shown in the picture above. I use the FreeMind mind mapping tool. On the left I keep little details about the characters. Lizi Mills, for example, has blond hair. Donna Jacobs has black eyes. That’s a fact that I must have mentioned early in the manuscript, but I don’t recall saying that. I’ll see it in the second draft, but keeping that fact handy will help keep me from saying something about her piercing blue eyes. On the right side I structure my outline around Blake Snyder’s beat sheet and it essentially replaces the storyboard that he recommends. My method is constantly changing and out of five manuscripts I haven’t done it exactly the same way twice. I put a word count total next to each section of the outline, rather than a page count. When working with novels, a word ...

When we write there are things hidden there, under the surface, that the reader never sees and yet these things have a great impact on what the reader sees. Among these undercurrents is the back-story. When we plunk a character down in a story he comes from somewhere. He went to school somewhere or he didn’t go to school. He was born in a hospital or somewhere else. He has ex-girlfriends or not. Many things shape the character’s life, but we don’t tell the reader about these things unless they become relevant to the story. Who cares about the character’s ex-girlfriend if he doesn’t know where she lives, but if she parks her car in front of his house every night then it just might be interesting. Another thing hidden below the surface is what I will call the author’s message. When we write a story, we don’t just sit down with our characters and ask them to describe their day. Nor do we describe the most interesting periods of their day. Instead, we create a day for the character that mo...

There are a lot of houses in the publishing industry. I glanced through my personal library and saw these names on the spines of books: Random House, Bethany House, Charisma House, Portland House and my personal favorite, The Chicken House. If that wasn’t enough, Thomas Nelson’s logo is a house and they put it on the spine of pretty much every book they publish. The Thomas Nelson house is a strange little house--four stories and an attic, but it’s a little bigger at the top than it is the bottom. It looks a little eerie. The one you see here isn’t their logo by a 3D image based on the drawing. It still looks eerie. With all of these houses, I started to wonder just what kind of house this thing is. I’ve decided that it’s a doll house. You know how some children will play by making up things for their dolls or “action figures” to do? I had the little Lego men when I as a kid and I made up things for them to do. Isn’t that what novelist do? The characters in our books are nothing more th...

This is a bonas post, if you will. I'll follow the lead of others such as Michael Hyatt and post links to some of my more popular posts. I don't track statistics for the whole year, so this is based more on a random sample. The following are my most popular blog posts: How to Describe Beauty An Example Book Outline Protagonist/Antagonist "To Be" Verbs -- To Use or Not To Use A Sample Synopsis Show, Don't Tell - Confusion in Action Should Christians Support Prayer in Public Schools? How to Impress God The Faithful Sidekick If I took the figures for the whole year, #4 would probably be at the top, but its popularity was earlier in 2008.

A few days ago, Rachelle Gardner reposted a post about encouragement . I heard of one pastor who said that he doesn’t believe church staff workers need encouragement because only those who are truly passionate about what they do should be doing what they do. I won’t go that far because there are things that get us down from time to time, but I have seen enough church workers put in long hours at a job that only the Lord will notice to know that there is some truth in what he said. Even if he were completely correct, we should encourage each other because God commands it (Hebrews 10:25). Rachelle was talking about the need writers have for encouragement. They are looking for someone to say, “you can do it,” or something like that. I was sitting in my living room and looking at the painting you see here. If you can’t tell by the signature on the painting, I am the artist. When I painted it, I wasn’t trying to paint something that someone would purchase or hang in an art gallery. I didn’t...

When I see writers ask agents questions like “Is it ok to introduce a passage of showing with a passage of telling?” it makes me think that they are missing the point. While show, don’t tell can be very good advice, it is useless if people don’t understand how to apply it. Before a foot race, there may be a lot of talk among those who are running. Hopefully it is good natured, but one runner might tell another runner, “I could run backwards and still beat you.” That is telling. It is just talk unless the runner actually runs the race backwards and wins. In that case it is showing. Character is revealed by action. You could tell your children that you love them every day, but the truth isn’t revealed until we see whether you are the type of parent who fixes your kids’ lunches or who slaps them in the face every day when they get home from school because you know they must have done something to deserve it. The same is true of fictional characters. Their nature is revealed through the a...

Evaluating our own writing is always a difficult thing; we are always too critical or not critical enough. Even so, it is a necessity and when I look at my own writing, including the three novels in print and my current work in progress, I can see similarities among there differences. If you have read the three novels then you know that they are very different in their focus. Searching for Mom is about young Sara’s attempt to find a mother through an online dating service. How to Become a Bible Character shows a teenager’s desire to receive recognition for his service to the Lord, through the eyes of his youth pastor. For the Love of a Devil is Hosea’s story told in a current day setting. My work in progress is about a mother who takes her daughter to meet the girl’s father. All of these are similar in the role the family and friends play in the outcome of the story. Any of these could have had a much darker tone then they do, especially For the Love of a Devil . What really stands ...

It’s the first day of the year, so I would imagine that many people have made or are making New Year’s resolutions. As in years past, I figure there is a large number of people who have decided that this is the year that they will write that novel they keep saying they will write. Books are a status symbol. There are many people who want to have written a book. I think people like the idea of writing a book because it is difficult enough that it seems like a big accomplishment, but there’s nothing to keep anyone from trying. With four books behind me, writing a book doesn’t seem like as much of an accomplishment as it once did, though it hasn’t gotten any easier. Once someone writes a book, it doesn’t take long to discover that there are even more status symbols in publishing. In the publishing industry, a person with an agent has a higher status than someone who has only finished a manuscript. A person with a publishing contract has a higher status than people with no more than an age...