Timothy's Thoughts

I ’ve talked about theme before on this blog, but as I look back, it was a year ago when I talked about it. To summarize what I said then, every story has a theme. The theme is what the story is about. The theme is like the statement you wish to prove through your story. For example, our theme could be that marriages would be happier if couples would forgive each other . I said that we should delete anything that doesn’t support the theme. I said that writing to a theme helps eliminate the problem of preachy writing. I also listed 101 Christian Themes. I stand behind what I said last year and I encourage you to go back and read it if you haven’t already, but I want to add to what I said by talking about the how of writing to a theme. Know Thy Theme To begin with, you may not know what your theme is. Sometimes we begin with the theme, but there are many ways to begin a story. We can begin with some characters, throw them in a situation and see how they handle it. In that case, we proba...

E ditor’s Note: This being the day after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I decided that today would be a good day to sit down with the three protagonists again. We’re sitting in Ellen’s café. It is all decked out in Christmas colors, there are strings of light and greenery that they don’t normally have and next to the staircase there is a tall Christmas tree. Shoppers are coming in carrying packages and the noise level is quite high, but we’ll see how we do. Timothy Fish: I want to thank you guys for talking to me again—especially you Sara. I can see how busy you are. Sara: I’m glad to get a break. I’ve been here since before five o’clock this morning. Neal: And you were here yesterday too, weren’t you? Sara: Yeah, but not all day. We had Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house. Timothy Fish: Which one? Sara: Ellen’s mother. Yeah, I wasn’t very clear, was I? That’s the problem with having three grandmothers. Timothy Fish: Neal, I suppose you’re home visiting your parents. You’re st...

T oday is Thanksgiving, so in celebration of that event I thought I’d talk about a common misconception. Many people believe that turkeys can’t fly, but if you’ve ever seen one out in the wild then you know that is clearly not true. As the video below shows, turkeys are quite adept at flight. Okay, so they have the grace of a duck, but they can certainly fly. But you may have noticed that these turkeys are leaner than the farm raised birds we feast on each Thanksgiving. I’m sure there’s some analogy to writing in there somewhere, but I’m not even going to try. I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends as we celebrate surviving another year.

F ear often accompanies change, so it should be no surprise that many people fear some of the changes in the publishing industry. Self-publishing appears to be the wave of the future. In fact, more books were self-published last year than were published through traditional publication. Big publishers are moving to provide self-publishing avenues. Many people fear that the market will now be flooded with self-published books. Some people are afraid that books won’t have to go through the vetting process and readers will have to sort through a bunch of junk that looks like a slush pile. Some people talk about how there will be fewer big successes in publishing. All of this fear comes from not knowing what the future holds. A lot of people’s worries are because they don’t really understand where this change is coming from. The current changes we are seeing are driving completely by technology, but people don’t understand the technology, what the technology can do and what it can’t. The cu...

O kay guys and gals, I’m looking for self-published novels, specifically from WestBow Press, CrossBooks Publishing and (I’m sure I’ll regret this) from Harlequin Horizons (or DellArte Press or whatever they call themselves). Authors with a book published through one of these imprints or if you are in the process of publishing a book with one of these imprints, please attempt to persuade me to read you book by leaving comments to this post. If I select your book, I may be writing comments about it on this blog in the near future. Also, tell me which publishing package you chose and why. NOTE 1: You may want to peruse this blog and consider what kind of books I am likely to like and what will offend me. Failure to do so may result in a flaming review. NOTE 2: This offer stays open until…well, until I decide to close it.

P ick one of the arts, it doesn’t matter which one, and you’ll find that it’s hard to make money at it. O, you’ll find a few people who do well, but the vast majority struggle at it. Writing is a form of art and most novelists struggle to make money at it. Painting is an art and most painters struggle to make money at it. But ironically, a skilled house painter can make a steady living without too much trouble. How do we reconcile this disparity? And why is it that it’s easier to make money with non-fiction than it is with fiction? This won’t be popular with some people, but part of the problem is that anyone who wants to do it can do it. It takes no special skill to complete a painting and call it art. Other people may look at it and say that call it ugly, but they can’t say you didn’t complete the painting. Contrast that to a house painter. If he finishes his work and he has paint on the glass windows and the old paint is still showing through the new, we can say he didn’t complete t...

W e assume that our work will be scrutinized. Why would we write if we didn’t think people would read it and why would we do revisions if we thought people could discern the story from our ramblings in the first draft?  No, as we write, we assume that someone will come back later and question why we wrote something.    Of the four writer’s drafts, the third draft falls under the most scrutiny from readers. This is the draft in which we are primarily concerned with sentence and paragraph structure. Just the other day, I saw an article about Dan Brown's 20 Worst Sentences . I’m sure you’ve probably seen it. It mentions sentences like, “ Only those with a keen eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliqué. ” (The Da Vinci Code, Chapter 5) And this one from chapter four: “ Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow. ” While I laug...

F irst, let me say that I’ve got nothing against Thomas Nelson. I have several of their books in my library and if they were to offer me a publishing contract, I would certainly consider it, but recently there has been some discussion about big name publishers like Thomas Nelson and Harlequin venturing off into the self-publishing business because that appears to be the wave of the future. The question came up about what the world would be like if we didn’t have publishers like Thomas Nelson and all authors self-published. It’s a very good question, so as of today, I’m announcing that Thomas Nelson is closed. I’m locking the doors and all of its employees have been laid off, permanently. All of you authors who have manuscripts ready to submit—don’t bother. The age of self-publishing has begun. In this new age of self-publishing, everybody gets published. No more rejection letters and you can do it for as little as $0. No, that’s not a misprint. You may have to get some sof...

H ow often have we heard someone say, "I'm a writer and I hope to one day be an author?" The implication is that we are all writers, but we don’t become authors until we are good enough or we get that publishing contract or whatever. My claim is that anyone who has ever written something that comes from his own creative thought is an author. The author is the originator of the literary work. So maybe we have it backwards. Instead of being so focused on becoming an author, our goal ought to be to become a writer. I don’t mean to say that we must become a writer in the sense that we aren’t currently writers. If we write, we are writers, but we should focus on becoming better writers. We can’t become better authors. Either we are an author or we are not. Either we initiated the creative work or we did not. There is no in between. There is no better. But we have a lot of room to become better writers. I authored my first book in kindergarten by dictating it to a sixth g...

O n Facebook the other day, I saw a conversation the made me think. You may have seen it too, but an author who is in the process of revising a book based on an editor's suggestions asked the question of whether it would be better to say "came barreling out of nowhere" or "barreled out of nowhere." The author had originally written "came barreling out of nowhere," but the editor had flagged it and suggested that he write "barreled out of nowhere" on the grounds that barreled is a stronger verb. I think the author finally decided to go along with the editor , but I’m going to make the argument that the author should have suggested the editor go take a hike . The first reason we should favor came barreling over barreled in this case is that we would never say “barreled out of nowhere” in everyday speech. I’ll get to why we wouldn’t say that in a moment, but for now, if normal people wouldn’t say something then our characters probably wou...

F irst Thomas Nelson and now Harlequin. A short time ago, Thomas Nelson announced that they are venturing into the self-publishing market. Now, Harlequin has announced that they will do the same. What’s the difference? Thomas Nelson will be putting out Christian books and Harlequin will be putting out Romance books. To tell you the truth, this whole thing is confusing me. In both cases the companies are duplicating services that are already available from other companies. The only real advantage I can see with publishing a book through the self-publishing wing of Thomas Nelson or Harlequin over publishing the book through Amazon’s CreateSpace (which will soon encompass BookSurge) is that Thomas Nelson can focus their marketing efforts toward a Christian market and Harlequin can focus there efforts toward romance readers. I imagine that Harlequin is better equipped for that than Thomas Nelson, but we still have to wonder how willing they are going to be to push books that they rejected...

H ere's a tip. Have a passage that sounds corny because it is so formal? Reduce the the severity by informalizing the speech of the characters or the narrator. For example, as soon as you start quoting Bible verses, the writing begins to come across much too formal and it may sound corny. Who are these characters who know the Bible by heart? We have a couple of choices. We can cut out the verses or we can find another way to reduce the corniness. Rather than have the characters sound like English majors, give them dialog that offsets the Bible verses with unlearned speech. Throw the words ain’t and y’all and nah in there a few places. Let me show you what I mean. Version I “Don’t ever be sorry about praying. God does some pretty amazing things because of the prayers of his saints.” “Yes, but doesn’t the Holy Spirit stop drawing people if they reject him too long?” “Yes,” Wayne said, “But I can’t help but think that God hasn’t given up if you’re still praying. He’s a ...

Q uick! What's the purpose of an editor? There are many different functions involved in the making of a book. You have the author, the agent, the printer and many others, including the editor . Actually, there may be several editors, but for our purposes, let’s lump them all into one category. We think we know what this guy does. He edits the book, right? No, this isn’t a trick question; that’s what he does. Well, unless he’s an acquisitions editor, in which case he may not actually edit the book, but that’s a different issue. The editor we want to consider today is the guy who edits the book. On another blog I saw a comment from an author saying, in essence, that it is the job of the writer to craft a story, but it isn’t really the job of the writer to revise the story. That, the commenter, claimed is the job of the editor, who is supposed to take whatever the author puts out there and turn it into a bestseller. That got me thinking. That is how we think of editors, at times. The ...

T his weekend, Chip MacGregor decided to take on Ted Dekker. For me to say anything at all is about like trying to speak when two giants are shouting at each other. In Christian publishing, Chip is widely recognized as a literary agent and Ted is a best selling author. Me, I’m a nobody. Before I get started, let me just say that you can read the two components of this argument at http://www.teddekker.com/2009/11/07/whats-wrong-with-this-picture/ and http://chipmacgregor.typepad.com/main/2009/11/the-good-the-bad-and-the-faux-deep.html . I don’t want to be accused of putting words in people’s mouths. Both of these guys make some good points, but I somewhat disagree with both or I wouldn’t bother writing about it. Ted’s point seems to be that the Love Inspired Guidelines are much like what the Pharasees were doing, in that it attempts to define a law by which a book can be classified as righteous. Chip’s claim is that Ted is arrogant and fails to realize that the readers of Love Ins...

W elcome to Adventures in Novel Writing. Yesterday, I finished my third draft. For the fourth draft, I like to print it out and read through the pages looking for mistakes, as well as getting a feel for how the readers will see the finished work. Rather than correcting as I go, as I have done in the previous drafts, I work with pencil in hand and only correct the pages I’ve marked after I reach the end. With it printed  single sided, double spaced, the manuscript is pretty thick. So I set to work to print it out, knowing that it would take a while.   Twenty pages into the document, I ran into a snag. My printer died with a nasty error. “Wrong Cartridge,” it said, but it hardly matters what the error, my printer couldn’t fix it—not in short order, perhaps not at all. I began to consider my options. I have another printer, but it is designed for portability, not for printing large documents. Twenty sheets of paper is about the limit of its paper feeding ability and the in...

E ditor's Note: This week has been busy, so I've asked one of my characters, Pastor Wayne Hiller, to write today's article. So, while I rest, please enjoy this post. The Ten Stories in the Bible Before we get into what I have to say, let me just say that you ought not to believe him when he says he’s resting. Timothy and I have discussed this topic extensively and even as I type these words, I feel as though he is right here with me. Perhaps that’s because he’s looking over my shoulder. But on to our topic. I want to talk about the ten stories you will find in the Bible. I hope that you’ve read the Bible at some point in your life. With that assumption, I know that you’re aware that there are more than ten stories in the Bible. If all you do is read Hebrews 11, you’ll find more than ten stories mentioned, but if you consider the stories that we tell, we can classify them in about ten different stories. I’ll use the labels the late Blake Snyder gave them because t...

W hen we write, we often insert information that isn’t important. Some people call this backstory , but this information doesn’t have to deal with backstory at all. It could be description of the current scene or it could be foreshadowing as well, but we stick it in, thinking the reader needs this information to understand why a character will do what he is doing or think what he is thinking. Most of the time, this excessive information takes away from the story and should be deleted. Imagine that your story is a ticking clock. With each action word, the clock ticks forward, carrying the reader along with it. But suppose you don’t use an action word. Consider this example: Tom brought his Camry to a halt. Opened the door and ran around to the front of the car to see how badly the man was injured. The man was in his late fifties and carried a cane. The cane was on the ground. “Are you alright?” Tom asked. Notice how the description of the man brings the ticking clock to a stan...

W e've looked at the topic of flashbacks before and we compare them to the topic of backstory , saying that these are two very different things. Now, it can be noted that flashback is one way of revealing backstory , but not all flashback is backstory . The important distinction we made before was that flashback is a means of telling a story out of chronological sequence, while backstory , is from a story that precedes our current story. In For the Love of a Devil ,there is a scene in which the protagonist recalls an early encounter with his wife (pg 166). She was not his wife at the time, but rather it occurs when they are both in high school. She isn’t well liked by some of the other students, due to the rumors going around about her and her family, but Geoff makes a small effort to show kindness to her. We ask ourselves, is this backstory or flashback . Certainly, there is an element of backstory to it, since this could be part of the story of how Geoff and Heather fe...

S ome people say that Christian fiction is much better than it used to be. I suppose that might be true, if you’re comparing the current state of affairs to the prairie romances of the past, but when I think of Christian fiction of the past, I think of titles like Pilgram’s Progress , Not My Will and In His Steps . The fact is that most of the current Christian fiction doesn’t measure up to the quality of writing we find in Pilgram’s Progress and Not My Will . One of the big problems I’ve seen in contemporary Christian writing is what I will call corny writing . We see it often and I fear we all have a tendency to do it. I’m not excluding myself from this by any means. It usually shows up in the form of Christianese that should have more significant meaning than what it does. To provide an example, I’m going to pick on For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll by Nancy Mehl. In part, I’m choosing this book as an example because it is on of the winners at the most recent ACFW conference i...

T his article is going to tell you when you should and shouldn't use telegraphing. I hope I didn't spoil it for you. Years ago, travel was long and difficult. You didn’t just head off to someone’s house at someone’s house. You might get there and the guy wouldn’t be home. It might not be so bad for you, but your horse might not like you all that much, since she’d have to carry you all the way back. And telephones were scarce, so you couldn’t just call up your friend and discuss when you would show up. Instead, you’d send a short message by telegraph, “Arriving April 17 by rail.” It’s just enough to tell your friend you’re coming. What Telegraphing Is Telegraphing in writing is very similar. Instead of sending a message saying, “I’m coming,” we’re telling the reader what to expect. This goes beyond foreshadowing , although they are closely related and what one person calls telegraphing another might call foreshadowing . If we look at the extremes, foreshadowing is only ...

C haracters are supposed to stay in those nice little boxes we create for them. At the very least, they ought to stay in their books. They aren’t supposed to be able to escape Fantasia, but somehow one did. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. If there was ever a character of mine who could do such a thing, it would be Sara. Last week, I sat down with a couple of other protagonist s and we had a discussion, but Sara wasn’t very happy when I left, but I pushed that aside. That is, until Sara showed up in my office to talk to me. ”We’ve got to talk,” she said. I pushed back my chair and looked at her. It isn’t often that a figment of my imagination shows up like that. ”Talk away,” I said. ”I want to know about you trying to kill me off.” I didn’t try to kill you off,” I said. “Not exactly.” ”But you said…” ”Let me explain,” I said. “I didn’t know you very well when I was considering that. I was still looking at the stor...

A question came up the other day about Flashback and Backstory . Backstory , as you know, is considered a bad thing to include in a story—or at least in the opening pages—and yet many writers use flashbacks .  If you look at Where the Red Fern Grows , which is always a great example to use when talking about how to write a novel , the vast majority of the book is flashback . We, obviously, can’t be talking about the same thing with these two terms, but where do we draw the line and what’s the difference. A Couple of Definitions Before we talk about the differences, we need a couple of definitions. Some people define backstory as narrative interjected into a story that tells what happened before the current action. That definition makes it sound an awful lot like flashback . That isn’t very helpful for our purposes. I prefer the Merriam-Webster definitions: backstory a story that tells what led up to the main story or plot (as of a film) flashback interruption of chronologic...

I 'm a software engineer by trade and in my studies I learned about a programming language called Prolog. Unlike most programming languages, which are written as a sequence of events, with Prolog you define a goal and let the computer figure out how to accomplish it. It’s a fascinating approach to programming, but most of the examples looks something like this: dog(spot). dog(rex). cat(tom). cat(sheba). animal(X) :- dog(X). animal(X) :- cat(X). ?- animal(Y). spot ; rex ; tom ; sheba ; ?- I won't ask you to try to make sense of that, unless you really want to. Essentially, given a list of named dogs and cats, and a definition that specifies that dogs and cats are animals, the computer will return the names of all animals. I’m sure I find that more impressive than you do, but even I have to wonder what is so great about being able to get the complete list of animals in this way. It demonstrates the language, but it doesn’t really tell us...

H ow important is the B-story to a novel? Depending on who you talk to, it may not be very important at all. If you’re getting your writing advice from literary agents and editors, you might not hear much about it at all. Most of what they talk about is the stuff they use to make their determination about whether they are interested in the book or not. Given that many will reject a manuscript based on the first few pages, the B-story occurs far too deep in a novel to become a major factor in the decision. If it’s terrible, yeah, an agent might reject the manuscript because of it, but the agent is already leaning one way or the other by the time he sees the B-story. Even if the agent requests a synopsis, the B-story doesn’t come into play because we say very little about the B-story in a synopsis. It doesn’t seem important at all.   But wait. Let’s not rule it out completely. In fact, if we consider some of the stories we’ve read, the B-story is hugely important. Take The Lord...

O ne of the theories on how to handle a narrator is to write in what we call close third person . The idea behind this approach is to write so that the reader is so close to the action that it is as if he is the one experiencing the action. The reader sees through the character’s eyes and has access to his thoughts. It’s a good theory, but it presents a real problem when we begin to consider backstory. All characters have a backstory, but we try to avoid telling the readers, unless it becomes part of the story. When the backstory is part of the story, it is called a flashback. When it isn’t—well, it just isn’t a very good thing to do. But here’s the problem. For a reader to truly experience the story as the principal character experiences it, the reader needs to know the backstory. If the reader doesn’t know the backstory then we have a Quantum Leap situation in which the reader is jumping into the body of someone else with no idea what has happened to the person before the jump. Ther...