Timothy's Thoughts

F inagle’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment . This is a great thing for fiction writers to consider. A great way to make a story interesting is to throw a problem at a character at the worst possible moment. What could possibly go wrong? What can go wrong should be contingent on our plot. There are plenty of things that can go wrong that fail to advance the plot. I think I’ve used this example before, but we could have one of the characters die. In a romance, that would be a problem if the dead character is the guy the girl is to fall in love with. My point is that we want bad stuff to happen, but we need to be selective. When is the worst possible moment? Going back to the dead guy, we could have him break up with his girlfriend and then drop dead. That would be convenient, but not very interesting. A better approach would be for him be down on one knee proposing, when he is shot in the back or maybe he is driving his girlfriend somewhere w...

T he 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt seem to get harder as we go along. Today's question is What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others? This one hurts, because I see myself making the same mistake. That mistake is a leader being so focused on becoming a great leader that he fails to lead. All the leadership books in the world won't do you a bit of good if you do nothing but read leadership books. Let me bring it down to a real world example. Writers are leaders, are they not? Whether we are writing a non-fiction book, a novel or a only a blog, we write hoping that our words will influence people. And the words of many writers do. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is said to have started the Civil War. At the very least, it helped it along a little. So, every writer has the potential to be a leader through the words he writes. It stands to r...

T here will be no guest blogger today. Instead, I would like to tell you a little about the town that has served as the setting for my novels. It isn’t a huge town, having about 60,000 residents or so. It rests peacefully along the Mississippi river. It is a tourist town attracting many people to the revitalized downtown, where Ellen’s café sits among a number of old store buildings. Most have been restored to their former glory. There is a University in this town, though it, like the town, shall remain nameless. Next to Ellen’s café is a hotel. It is the newest building on Main Street. The original building burned and the hotel was built in its place. At six stories, it towers over the other buildings on the street and guests on the upper floors can watch the barges float past on the river. Down at the river, there is a paddlewheel boat that tourists can ride during the day. On weekends there is a mystery cruise during the evening. Someone dies on every cruise and the passenger who fi...

T he 1960’s television show, The Wild Wild West had three ground rules for every episode. There had to be a gorgeous woman. There had to be a strong adversary. There had to be something bizarre. A gorgeous woman does us little good in a book, since the reader decides what the cast looks like and the bizarre may force us over into speculative fiction when we don’t want to go, but there’s something to be said for these ground rules. Someone Needs Saving While in The Wild Wild West it isn’t always clear why the gorgeous woman is always working such strange men, she serves an important role in the story. In a story, it is easier to save the world than it is to save the girl. There always needs to be something at stake for an individual if we want to bring the story home. Remember The Dollmaker ? It told the story of the Detroit factory workers, but it told it through the eyes of a woman whose husband worked at the factory. No loss is ever as great as the loss of an individual. By placing...

W e all want it, but we can't all have it. The MacGuffin is a term that Hitchcock used to refer to a physical element in stories that drives the plot forward. According to him, in a crook story it is usually the necklace and in a spy story it is usually the papers. If you watch television during the eighties then you know that the MacGuffin was often the disk. On those shows it seems like everyone was storing their most valuable secrets on 3.5" floppy disks. Whoever could find the disk first is the person who could use it for personal gain. The villain could use it to blackmail someone or the detective could use it to save the girl.   The great thing about a MacGuffin is that there is only one. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but everyone wants it and only one person can have it. This puts the characters at odds with each other, creating the conflict that makes the story interesting. Unlike the non-physical plot elements, such as the role in a play, there is no room...

N ovelists are cursed. Where the average reader can approach a book with the willing suspension of disbelief , novelists tend to pick books apart. This is why we pick up a bestselling novel and ask why a publisher would publish that trash when they won’t even look at ours. It is also why we can hand a manuscript to a family member than they believe it’s great, but hand the same manuscript to an agent and she’s already made up her mind to reject it before she reads the first paragraph. Children are much more willing to suspend disbelief while the suspension of disbelief is more difficult for adults and even more so for novelists and agents. Children have no problem reading a somewhat poorly written book and calling it good, while an adult may read a book by a multi-published author and question the sanity of the publisher. Respect The suspension of disbelief is largely a matter of respect. People complain because children don’t respect their elders, but children respect adults more t...

Y ou’ve probably heard that location can be a character, but more frequently, we may find that an organization is a character. Christian authors often mention a church in their books. In many of these books, the church is more like McDonalds than it is a church. A man and a woman attend a church – his church, her church or some church they attend on vacation. The pastor preaches some great sermon, the woman takes notes and the man and woman discuss how great the sermon was on the way home. The whole point of the sequence is to “show” that they attend church. Does that sound anything like the church you attended on Sunday? I hope not. On Sunday, I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my truck. I saw some friends across the parking lot talking to some other friends. I reached the front door and another friend of mine opened the front door. He made a comment about something, that was something of a private joke. Another man—a man whom I have visited in his home—handed me a bulletin ...

W hat is the biggest challenge facing leaders today? is the question I'm answering today from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . That's a tough one. I look at some of the challenges and I can't help but think that things haven't changed in thousands of years. There's never enough resources. There are always people who don't get along very well. Then there are those people who get along too well. Just when you think you've gotten the resource problem licked, something changes and you don't know which direction you should be going anymore. It's just the same old stuff, repackaged. So, is one of these the greatest challenge? Is there something bigger? If I could name one thing that is the greatest challenge facing leaders, it is a lack of faith. Did you know there isn't a problem out there that a leader couldn't handle if he would just turn it over to God? ...

E ditor’s Note: Today I decided to turn my blog over to Brianna Skyler and she turned the tables on me. I fear I may be losing all control of the creative process with these posts. Brianna Skyler: Timothy, since you told me I could write about anything, I thought I would interview you, if you don’t mind. Timothy Fish: That wasn’t what I had in mind. I was hoping the readers would get to know you better. Brianna Skyler: In a way, they will be getting to know me better, since this is what I do in my day job. Timothy Fish: I thought they might be able to see a side of you they hadn’t seen before. Brianna Skyler: Oh, come on, this will be fun. Timothy Fish: For you, maybe. Brianna Skyler: I should have thought to bring a cameraman with me. O well, first question: Why novels? What do you hope to accomplish by writing a novel? Timothy Fish: Mostly, I think I want people to be entertained. Of course every novel has a theme and I want people to “get it,” but there’s just something special abo...

M y characters have been so cooperative as guest bloggers that I thought I would ask them to write blurbs for my books. Yes, I jest, but it occurs to me that a blurb written by one of my characters is bound to be as useful as some of the blurbs I’ve read. Blurbs written by people I don’t know might help to influence me, but there really is no reason why it should, since I don’t know how my likes and dislikes compare to those of the blurber . If I do recognize the name and I end up disagreeing with that person, then I tend to avoid books written by that person as well. I suspect that many blurb writers hope that having their name on the back of other author’s books will help them sell books as well, so they have an incentive to recommend a book, even if they wouldn’t actually buy it. So the words of my characters aren’t really that much less believable and if they choose their words well, it might give potential readers better insight into the nature of the book. Here are the blurbs som...

H eroes. We need a few, but what are they? Many people equate the hero with the protagonist , but many protagonists are poor excuses for heroes . On the other hand, some people will raise the hero to the level of a superhero . For our purposes, let’s define a hero as someone worthy of admiration, since that definition will encompass heros who are brave and heroes of other types as well. If our protagonist is worthy of admiration, then he is a hero or heroine . If not then he is an antihero or a villain . But let’s look at heroes . We need to draw a distinction between a hero and a superhero . A superhero is a special case of the hero . The superhero is almost always a misunderstood person. Because of his special abilities, he must be of extremely high moral character. If he were not, he would use his powers for evil and become a villain . Everyone wants to be the superhero’s friend, but they are afraid of him. He is able to do things that they can’t, so they feel the n...

W hen I think of the various genres, some of them sort of run together. Romance , Women’s Fiction and Historical Fiction tend to run together. Science Fiction and Fantasy tend to run together, so much so that they are often referred to as Speculative Fiction . Then there are Thrillers , Suspense and Mystery . What is it that distinguishes a thriller from a suspense novel from a mystery ? Keep in mind that each of these can have elements of the other. A thriller may have mystery and a mystery may have suspense . For that matter, they may contain romance . So to the answer the question, we should look at the book as a whole. We should consider the most dominant elements of the book. The most dominant element of a thriller is action. An example of a thriller might be that we begin with a car chase on page one. Our protagonist cop is chasing a cop killer through the streets with many other cars. The chase comes to a deadly end for the cop killer, but before he dies he tells t...

D eath happens to all of us. Most people know people who have died. I didn’t know him personally, only having read his books and his blog, but just the other day I opened my feed reader and where I would have expected to see a blog post from Blake Snyder I saw a notice saying that he had passed away. He was in his early fifties. This experience made me think about how we handle the deaths of our characters. When we write, some characters die. If we are writing a murder mystery, that is pretty much a requirement. With other books, the story may not tell us about anyone dying, but death is in the back story and future story of every character. Death is a part of every story. The decision we must make is how to handle it. Ignoring Death There are a number of different ways to handle death in a story. One thing we can do is simply ignore it, as if death doesn’t happen. In many stories, death is not an important part of the story. Though the characters have lost friends and loved one, we do...

T he characteristics of leaders the topic of the day when answering one more question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess? Humility. The leader who is too proud to bow his knees and cry out to God is not fit to lead. The leader who does not see those he leads as being more important than himself is not fit to lead. If anyone had reason to boast, Paul did. He had seen heaven, but the Lord gave him a thorn in the flesh. Without it, Paul wouldn't have been fit for much. The thing that destroys most leaders is pride and it is one of the hardest things for a leader to fight. One can watch people take action at his command and it is easy to imagine that he is somehow more special than those he leads. Then the day comes when he leads them in a way he shouldn't lead. Maybe they follow. Maybe they don't, but his little e...

W hat is the difference between a writer and an author ? In a recent comment to Rachelle Gardner’s blog, one person implied that it is pretentious to call one’s self an author until one has a publishing contract. Comments like that leave me feeling a little uneasy because it makes published authors to be snobs. I have four books in print. No one will say that I am not the author of those books, so that makes me an author . That doesn’t, however, make me better than the lowly writer who has no books in print. Either there is no difference between a writer and an author or we need a better way of drawing the distinction. I suggest we go back to the beginnings of the word. The word author comes from the word autor (“father”). An author is the father of a work. An author is the person who began or originated the work. You will recall the use of the word in Hebrews 12:2, which describes Jesus as the “author and finisher of our faith.” As we frequently use the term author , an aut...

E ditor’s Note: Today, I’m talking to Wayne Hiller. You may recall his book, How to Become a Bible Character . If you don’t, I hope you’ll purchase your copy today. For the interview, I met Wayne at Ellen’s Café, during the afternoon, when it wasn’t too busy. We sat at one of the tables next to the large windows at the front of the building. We could see the shoppers and tourists walking past on the sidewalk outside. Ellen brought us blackberry cobbler fresh from the oven with ice cream. I offered to pay, but she wouldn’t hear of it. This is the more interesting parts of our conversation: Timothy Fish: Brother Hiller, thanks for agreeing to this interview. I’m hoping my readers will remember you. Some of my fans said they liked you. Wayne Hiller: I’m glad to do what I can, but I’m not all that concerned about what people think of me. There are too many other things that are important to be concerned with that. Timothy Fish: Now, my readers will likely remember you from How to Beco...

T here is a difference of opinion about Speaker Attributes . Some authors, such Brandilyn Collins make a point of avoiding speaker attributes . These authors will often replace a speaker attribute with an action beat. For example, The Martian said, “Take me to your leader.” would become The Martian pointed with his three fingered hand. “Take me to your leader.” On the other hand, some authors would say that this line would be better written as The Martian pointed with his three fingered hand as he said, “Take me to your leader.” The problem that people have with speaker attributes is that in some exchanges they can be tiresome: “Give it to me,” he said. “No,” she said. “Why not?” he asked. “Because,” she said. A page full of that and the reader will quickly grow tired. For that matter, the author will grow tired of writing the word said . Let’s take that same exchange and rewrite it so those speaker attributes aren’t so tedious: Bob and April were walking to class one spring day....

H ow dark is too dark in Christian fiction? Before we can answer that question, we need some idea of what dark fiction is. What is Dark Fiction? Dark is devoid of light. It also refers to evil, or something that is dismal or gloomy. All of these are somewhat related, so when we talk about dark fiction we are talking about stories that deal primarily with evil and/or are without hope. Suppose our story is about a drug dealer who eventually kills a pastor who has been standing against the drug dealer while sleeping with the drug dealer’s wife. With two evil men as our protagonist and antagonist, there is a strong possibility that the story will turn out dark. To insure that the story is dark, we could focus our attention on the shadier parts of the story, showing the drug dealer carrying out his business with the children in the area, showing the pastor sneaking around with the drug dealer’s wife. The more emphasis we place on the evil, the darker the story becomes. Some people descri...

Y esterday, we looked at safety net characters and said that they lighten a story. It then stands to reason that to darken a story we need a glass ceiling character. This is a character that has the ability to thwart our protagonist’s attempts with impunity. Just as the safety net character is able to aid the protagonist without fear of the antagonist, the glass ceiling character is able to aid the antagonist and nothing the protagonist might like to do will harm this character in any way. This is more than just an antagonist with the upper hand. We all know of scenes in which the protagonist begs the villain not to shoot someone, maybe even reveals a secret to prevent it and then the villain shoots the person anyway. That too darkens the story, but the villain will eventually get his due. A true glass ceiling character is more like these secret organizations that are supposed to be above the law. Our protagonist arrests someone and that person is out of jail in short order becau...

L ast week I mentioned a character who has too much going for him to be a protagonist. Then Ellen came and talked to us. She also has too much going for her to be an affective protagonist. But these characters can serve as safety nets. I’ve used Ellen and her family that way in the past. I had a character who needed a house, so Ellen and her husband went out and bought a house, which they then allowed this character to stay in rent free. Without her successful restaurant, that wouldn’t have been possible. Some people will cry foul, suggesting that it would be better to leave the protagonist without a safety net, but that isn’t the way it works in real life. As much as I hate the thought of losing my job and not being able to pay my bills, I know that in time of need there are people I could go to for help, such as my church or my family. Putting these safety net characters into a story changes it in a very specific way. They help raise a story out of the darkness. Think about the Cin...

A nother couple of questions from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . Today they deal with new employees and hiring. How do you help a new employee understand the culture of your organization? I wish I had a profound answer to this one. I don't. Some time ago, I had a man take offense to something I did. He questioned whether I had violated Robert's Rules of Order . I suppose, if you want to take it down to the letter of the law, yes, I did, but I have grown accustomed in our organization for people to be more interested in working together in harmony than worrying about some of the finer details of Robert's Rules of Order . Had that culture been communicated to this person when he came onboard, the issue might not have come up and it would have saved us both a lot of heartache. But how do you communicate something that requires experience to learn? Write a story? Create a video? That'...

E ditor’s Note: I stopped by the Main Street Cafe and Pastry Shop the other day. It was as busy as ever, but Ellen graciously agreed to a guest appearance on my blog. I’m not much of a writer, but Timothy asked me to talk about my business and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to talk about one of the great passions in my life. I own the Main Street Café and Pastry Shop . A lot of people have asked me why I don’t just change the name to Ellen’s Café , since that’s what everyone calls it anyway. I suppose that would make sense, but you’ve got to realize that it isn’t my café. It is, obviously, since I own the place, but my grandparents started the place. There are days that I can still see them there, either in the kitchen or out talking to the customers. It has changed a lot over the years. It started out as just a coffee shop, if I remember correctly. It was small enough that my grandparents could run it by themselves. They lived upstairs and the shop took up part of the bott...

S ome authors include alter egos in their books. We have to slip into the heads of all of our characters, but even while doing that, we stay distant from most of our characters. There are things about our characters that we can’t fully understand. A man writing about a woman or a woman about man creates one obvious situation in which a full connection between author and character cannot be achieved. To reach such a connection would be just wrong. Even so, we can achieve some very good stories while remaining somewhat distant from the characters. Then there are those characters that just mesh. In my WIP, there is a character who is that way for me. In many ways, he isn’t like me at all and yet when I think about the story I imagine that if I could slip into that world for a while that he is the character I would want to be. He has a minor role in this story and doesn’t even have a name yet. He’s one of these big picture kind of guys who may not know everything that’s going on, but he h...

W e learned yesterday that Blake Snyder passed away due to a heart attack. Blake was a well known screenwriter, but his claim to fame wasn't as much for the movies he wrote as it was for his Save the Cat books. These books dealt primarily with the categories of plots that all stories fall into and the basic outline for each of these plots. The writing community has lost a good friend.

S ometimes I run across information that seems like it ought to be helpful, if I could just figure out what to do with it. Below is a list of names and yes, I am aware that there are a few repeats: Lauren Barnholdt Jan Karon Rachel Hauck Leisha Kelly Kathleen Popa Herb Heiman Jay Asher Jim Stovall Wally Lamb John Grisham Sarah Dessen Karen Kingsbury Karen Kingsbury Melody Carlson Melody Carlson Melody Carlson Melody Carlson Beverly Lewis Melody Carlson Philippa Gregory Karen Kingsbury So, what can I do with this list? First, I probably ought to explain where it came from. These are the authors of books that customers who bought Searching for Mom also bought on Amazon.com. My name should also be in that list, but I didn’t expect it would be very helpful to know that people who bought my book also bought my other books. But knowing that my book made some kind of connection with readers of these authors—mostly Melody Carlson and Karen Kingsbury, apparently—seems like it could be helpful ...

I n today’s culture, to be offended often means that someone feels emotional discomfort because of something someone said or did. It used to be that to offend meant that someone had actually done something more grave than “stepping on someone’s toes,” but such is our world. The simple truth is that we have no control over what will cause people emotional discomfort. Take our political system, for example. If I were to get up and talk about how great trickle down economics is, most of the Republicans in the room would think it was a great speech, but the Democrats would be “offended.” So here’s the problem. If we remove the right to offend people, we remove the right to free speech. As people define it today, the Constitution of the United States guarantees a right to offend people. If we have any hope of defending our right to free speech then we must also defend the right of others to offend us. Yes, I said to offend us. Just because someone doesn’t agree with us doesn’t mean tha...

Z ero has a nice sound to it, doesn't it? This is especially true when it comes to e-mail. Michael Hyatt is a big fan of a zero inbox. So am I, but that isn’t the zero I’m talking about today. For several days now, I’ve been enjoying zero spam . By this I mean that I open up my inbox and there is nothing there but e-mail that I want to be there. Considering that my inbox represents five e-mail addresses, all of which I readily give out over the Internet, this is no small task, but it is do able. Spam is a numbers game. Spammers make money by sending out billions of copies of an e-mail, knowing that only a few will produce results, but if they can get a few thousand to respond then it makes it all worth while. They prey on the weak and greedy. Apparently, the people who respond to spam are interested in cheap Viagra, foreign lotteries and widows who want to give them millions of dollars, or we wouldn’t see so many of these things. It is a waste of spammers’ resources for them to in...

A s you have probably heard, Justin D. Gawronski claims that when Amazon.com removed illegal copies of a book he was reading, it messed up his notes so much that it forced him to redo his homework. Rather than ranting for an hour and then settling down to redo his homework, like you or I would have probably done, Justin D. Gawronski has decided to sue Amazon.com . I'm no legal expert, so I don't know all of the issue involved here, but I ask myself what it would mean to me as a writer if Justin D. Gawronski were to win this case. Did Amazon.com do the Right Thing? Some people have argued that Amazon.com was wrong for deleting the book, which had been made available without the permission of the copyright holder. They argue that this situation was handled differently than it would have been for a print book. Most likely, with a print book, the copyright holder would have notified Amazon.com of the situation and Amazon.com would have removed it from availability immediately. A...

T oday’s question from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt deals with communication. How do you or other leaders in your organization communicate the “core values”? They are being taught from the pulpit. They are being taught from the Sunday school classrooms. They are being taught by the Awana workers. And I hope that parents are teaching them in the home. That was short, so let’s look at another question. How do you encourage others in your organization to communicate the “core values”? When you place these questions in the context of a church, some of them seem almost too obvious. Is not one of the core values to communicate the core values ? As we communicate the core values we are also encouraging their communication. Do you set aside specific times to cast vision to your employees and other leaders? No, not usually. How do you ensure the your organization and its activities are aligne...