Timothy's Thoughts

I’m in the mood to talk about story structure. Every story has five elements, theme, plot, point of view, characters and setting. Some people say there are only four, leaving out point of view. If you leave it out, we can roll it up into either the characters, making the narrator a character, or into the setting, since our point of view determines how we perceive our setting. For this discussion, we’ll keep it separate. Theme In every story, the theme is the most important element. The theme or message is the backbone of the story. It gives the story purpose. This is true with all stories including that of a woman recounting her shopping trip to her husband. I went to the first store and I found this skirt I liked, but I wasn’t sure about the color. I decided to look in another store. I would the same skirt in another store, but it cost more. I went back to the first store and they had already sold the skirt. I went back to the other store and bought the skirt. What is the theme of thi...

Many moons ago when I was still a young pup, I went to breakfast at church camp and sat at a table with three preachers I knew. I liked stories with a moral, at the time, so I paid special attention when one of them asked, “Do you want to hear a story with a moral?” I nodded. “Someone put a block of baloney on a plate and stuck a fork in it. Before long, a fly came along, ate his fill, crawled up the fork and tried fly, but he fell and broke neck. Another fly came along and did the same thing. Then another and another until there were many flies lying dead on the table. Do you know what the moral to that story is?” “No,” I said. “Don’t fly off the handle when you’re full of baloney.” Let’s think about this story. What if we were to change this story and instead of baloney we put cheese on the plate. Instead of a fork, we will put a toothpick in the cheese. The flies eat the cheese and die after flying off the toothpick. It’s essentially the same story, but without the message. Nothi...

Over the past few years, I have received many questions from people along the lines of “I’ve done some bad things. Does that mean I’m not saved?” Some people will ask, “ How can I know that I’m saved ?” When I receive a question like this, I try to help the person as much as I can, often providing the like above. I know that many of these people would like for me to tell them, “Yes, you are saved,” but I can’t do that. The thing that fascinates me about the people who ask this question is that they are church people. These aren’t drug dealers and jail birds coming to us looking for some kind of assurance of their salvation. These people might be one people who sat near you at church last Sunday. It is sad, but there are many people who attend church and don’t know whether they will make it into heaven or not. Even worse, there are pastors and choir members who will not make it into heaven (Matthew 7:22, 23). I was reading a blog post that talked about how much the Christian novel has ...

The fire flickered in the fireplace as the children gathered around the old man. They crowded in close, sitting on the floor. One of the smaller children, a girl, climbed into the old man’s lap while still clutching her favorite doll. The adults had been talking about other things, more important things, like the price of corn or the person who should be the next President, but they too grew silent. The old man stroked his beard a couple of times, straightened his suspenders and began, “Once upon a time…” There’s something about a story that stirs the imagination. Long before there was television, there were stories. After a long day working, people would sit around telling stories. For that matter, people would tell stories while they were working and still do. Some were true. Some were not, but they told stories. Jesus told stories as he went around teaching. One of the best ways to teach something is to tell a story. We turn to television for entertainment today, but watching an act...

Book A Book B Author Marketing Hours 90 0 Publisher Marketing Hours 10 100 Marketing @ $50/Hour $500 $5000 I had an epiphany the other day and it has caused me to rethink a few things. Publishers don’t pay authors. When a publisher signs an author, the publisher cuts a check for the advance. This looks very much like the publisher paying the author. It is often structured such that the author doesn’t receive the full amount until the book reaches various phases. This makes it look even ...

Twain simply listed his last seven rules and I think I will also. An author should: Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. Use the right word, not its second cousin. Eschew surplusage. Not omit necessary details. Avoid slovenliness of form. Use good grammar. Employ a simple, straightforward style. These rules are closely related. We can summarize them by saying pay attention to details . We know that Twain advised killing most adjectives and adverbs. That is part of what he mean by Eschew surplusage , though he meant more than that. We have many words and phrases that we use in our spoke language that we don’t really need in conveying our message with written language. These words and phrases find their way into our work. Some of the rules we don’t see in Twain’s list are things like maintain a consistent point of view , avoid speaker attributes and avoid “be” verbs . Maybe these are the three that Twain didn’t include in his nineteen rules, but I wouldn’t read too ...

Moving on to Twain’s ninth rule, we see an admonition against dues ex machine . The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausably set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. Twain is telling us that we should obey the rules of the world we have created. Twain used miracles some in his own writing, such as in A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court , so he isn’t against fantasy as much as he is against things that happen without cause. I saw an example of a problem in a television show I was watching the other day. The show was portraying the fall of the City of Troy. The show had a villain who moved between the two camps through a door (painted to look like stone) that someone had put in the wall of the city. I can’t help but wonder why anyone would bother building a horse to roll into the city when all they had to do was walk through the hidden door. We also have to wo...

Today, I’m continuing our talk about Mark Twain’s eighteen rules of writing. We begin with his sixth rule, a rule that is very familiar. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. Can you see it? This is Twain’s version of the immensely popular show, don’t just tell rule. If we have a character that we have described as a delicate flower and then she comes in cussing like a sailor, we have violated this rule. Perhaps we think it’s funny to have a delicate flower let loose and come out of her shell for no apparent reason, but the reader will not be amused. I saw a little of this problem with Lori Wick’s The Princess . The book begins with us seeing this sweet girl with a great relationship with her parents and other people. It is for this reason that she is selected to marry the prince. Then later in the book we see her explode when her husband changes her schedule without asking. Sh...

Today, I’m continuing our talk about Mark Twain’s eighteen rules of writing. We begin with his third rule. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. Have you ever had a character that doesn’t stand out? The character has a name, but we might as well have name her, Woman #5 since no one is going to remember her anyway. Maybe we put her in the story to give another character someone to talk to and all Woman #5 does is say, “I agree.” The other character might as well be talking to a corpse. We can fix Woman #5. First, let’s give her a name, like Barbara. Next, let’s make her interesting by giving her a peg leg. Lastly, let’s give her some thoughts and motives of her own. Maybe Barbara secretly hopes the other character’s boyfriend will break up with her and ask Barbara out. That’s a lot better than a corpse. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient ...

Authors, agents and editors talk much about the rules of writing . Most of us will agree that these rules are more like guidelines than laws set in stone. What we can’t agree on is what the rules are and what they mean. Oh well, such is life. Mark Twain said there are nineteen rules, though some people say there are twenty-two. He doesn’t say what the nineteenth rule is, though I doubt he knew since he mentions it in a critique of James Fenimore Cooper’s work . I think he chose the number nineteen to bring attention to how poorly written he believed Deerslayer to be. Twain does give us the eighteen he said Jame Fenimore Cooper violated. I see among them some of the same rules we keep spouting today, so I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at Twain’s eighteen rules governing the literary art in the domain of romantic fiction over the next few days. As we do, I will say that knowing the rules and understanding them is a far cry from being able to apply them to our own...

One of the most influential men in my life passed away last month. It made me think about some of the other people who have influenced me. I think about some of the people who I look at and think, “I ought to be more like that.” These are the people that make me feel guilty because I don’t live at that high of standard. The thing I have noticed about these people is that they all love people. It’s easy for us to love some people, like our family and friends, but what about other people? What about people we might see as being in the way of our dreams? In a blog post announcing the sale of his novel , Richard Mabry writes “there are bound to be some of my readers who are thinking, Why him? Why not me? ” Read his post and you’ll see that he has paid his dues, but the simple truth is that, if I had been asked to make a list of the authors I think deserve a publishing contract, I would have put Richard Mabry right at the top of the list. What isn’t so easy is to have that same attitude wit...

This is the last post about searching for an agent (I think) and then I’ll get back to more interesting stuff. Originally, I planned to post something about how much I hate searching for an agent. I was going to talk about all of the rules we are supposed to follow to keep from offending an agent. I was going to say something about how some agents treat their potential clients in an unprofessional manner, even calling them kids . I’ve decided instead to talk about metrics. It sounds boring, doesn’t it? But authors seem to like metrics as much as engineers do. The difference is that engineers keep meaningful metrics. Authors track Amazon Sales Rank (a completely useless metric) and the number of rejection letters they receive (which is almost as useless). At what point are we supposed to count a rejection? If I send out a query and a literary agent writes back, “I don’t represent fiction,” is that a rejection? I would say not, unless you sent him a memoir. In that case, it isn’t only a ...

As I talked about yesterday, I’ve been sending out query letters. Some literary agents want a synopsis sent with the query letter, while other do not, but it’s a safe bet that an author is going to need one eventually. The nice thing is that writing the synopsis is one of the few fun things we get to do while we’re searching for an agent. The synopsis is like the soul of the story with all of the external packaging torn away. However long a novel might be, whether it is 80,000 words, 120,000 words or just over 50,000 words, we reach the end and we have all these little details running through our heads. Did I change her eyes from green to blue everywhere? Would he be watching a football game on television at that time of year? Is there enough time to have the whole story take place during summer vacation or do I have to send the kid back to school before it’s over? We lose track of the story and we ask ourselves, if it is any good or if we just wasted twenty dollars by printing off all...

I’ve been sending out query letters. The jargon is different, but sending out query letters is equivalent to the government or a business making an announcement that they are looking for a contractor to do a job for them. Government agencies and businesses put announcements on websites and in newspapers. Authors attend conferences and send out query letters. With both processes, there is the possibility that no one will submit a bid, or in literary agent jargon, offer representation. This is probably more common with literary agents, but there are often government sponsored projects where a bureaucrat dreams up a project that no one knows how to implement. Likewise, publishers are especially reluctant to take a risk on authors without a proven track record and a recognizable name, so agents are reluctant to represent them. Some agents know they aren’t going to offer representation to unknown author and have published notices saying so on their websites. I am trying to respect that, so ...

This blog has been something of an journal of my writing activities, I thought it appropriate to post my form query letter for my latest novel. This is the letter that I am sending to agents. If you happen to be a literary agent and you haven't gotten your own personal copy with all of the information filled in then there are several possibilities. I may not know about you. I may know about you but I read the statement on your website that says something like "I'm making so much money with my existing clients that I don't want to look for more." Of course it could be that I just don't like you very much. If you want your own copy, you're welcome to ask for one, but for the rest of you, this is all you get. Timothy Fish [My Address] ...

Many Literary Agents see themselves as the gatekeepers of the publishing industry. The sad thing is that they say this with pride. “We are the ones who keep out the riff-raff. The quality of books being produced by publishers is better because we only allow good books through.” Sounds great, doesn’t it? Too bad it isn’t true. Talking that way is good for a few people’s egos, but the publishing industry doesn’t work that way. You would think that there is a single point of entry that an author won’t be able to go through until his work is good enough to make it through the quality catches that an agent uses prior to agreeing to represent an author. Going with the gatekeeper analogy, what actually happens when an author approaches an agent and the agent says, “access denied” is that the author goes and finds another agent or looks for an unguarded gate. Instead of one gate, there are many gates. The true gatekeepers are still employed by the publishing companies and they always will be. ...

Dear God, I know you love me and want to bless me. I know you own the cattle on a thousand hills and all that. I know that all the wealth of the world is yours, so it is a small thing for you to do this one thing. To you, it isn’t a very big thing at all. Could you give me a big book contract? I don’t ask for much. I just want enough I can go buy a bigger house and a new car. And I want to enough to be able to quite my job so I can go to speaking engagements all over the country. And I don’t want to have to worry about money again. I know it’s a small thing for you and I am trying to ask in faith, even though there are thousands of other Christian authors out there who don’t have a publishing contract. Now I know I might be asking with the wrong attitude, but at the very least, won’t you get me a contract so people will see that I’m as great of an author as I think I am? In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen. Ever pray like that? I’m afraid that I have all too often. That is part of why th...

Rabbits are funny creatures. They can fight and be quite vicious, if they choose to, but most of the time they just run. Or if they are in a cage they will just sit there, though breathing very heavily when they are scared. They are built for sprinting, so in an open field it is possible to chase a rabbit until it can’t go any farther. It will run out of energy and out of breath. It will just lie there catching its breath while its captor approaches. Do you ever feel that way? You have your eye on the prize. You run and run and run, but then you reach the point that all you can do is just lie there and try to catch your breath. We either want to cry or break something and we know that neither will do any good. If we keep lying there, we’ll die or we’ll fail or live out our lives in a miserable state. Whatever happens, we won’t reach our goal if we don’t change something. We don’t enjoy being in that position, so why should I bring it up? It isn’t because I have some profound advice on ...

Today, I'm being lazy and posting a video link from the digital marketing group at MacMillan USA. It is obvious that they have too much time on their hands, but it provides for entertaining videos. I can't help but wonder. If digital marketing groups have time to do this kind of stuff, why aren't we seeing more book trailers that might actually sell books? On second thought, here's the real post for today: Writer's Burnout Passion is the spark That starts the blaze. Passion is the stone That ripples the lake. Passion is the twinkle Before the smile. Passion is the luster Of finest gold. Passion is the heart Of every story. Passion is the hope When all is lost. Rachelle Gardner recently asked about passion and training . Her question dealt with how naturally talented authors can learn the craft of writing without losing the passion. A number of people responded. Among those was Brandilyn Collins who stated, “And here's the other side of the coin. Your passion ...

I watched Get Smart the other day. There are some things that it would have been better if they hadn’t been in the movie, but if we ignore those things and just consider the story it was great. It is one of those stories that you know how it is going to turn out from almost the beginning. As soon as you see the interaction between the two main characters, you know that they are going to argue for a while and eventually fall in love. You can pick out the double agent villain almost as soon as he makes his appearance. Then you sit through the show and think, “I hope I’m not wrong. I hope I’m not wrong.” We talk about writing unique stories, but people don’t want to read unique stories. People want to read predictable stories. They want the guy and the girl to fall in love. They want the father to defeat the bad guys and carry his wife and children home to safety. They want the monsters from outer space to turn into a smoldering pile of ash. Yeah, it’s predictable, but that’s okay. While...