Timothy's Thoughts

W e need a way for our villains to seem dangerous, but give our hero plenty of time to find within himself a way to escape. This is where a deathtrap can be a very useful plot device. In spite of its name, people rarely die in a deathtrap , unless it is a redshirt or the villain himself. A deathtrap is an, often, overly complicated device by which the villain attempts to kill the hero. Rather than just pulling the trigger, the villain might hang the hero over boiling oil and then place a candle under the rope, so that when the candle burns through the rope, the hero drops into the oil and dies. The idea seems to be that the villain will get more enjoyment out of killing the hero if he knows the hero has to face his own death knowing he can’t escape. The deathtrap can also serve another purpose. Haman, the villain of the story of Esther, hated Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow to him. The king actually wants to honor Mordecai, rather than allow him to hang him on hi...

I remember a story from when I was in grade school. I don’t remember who wrote it or where I saw it, but I remember it was about some school kids living on another planet. Because of the cloud cover on the planet, the sun wasn’t visible for years at a time. Most of the students had never seen the sun, but they were excited because there was going to be a break in the clouds that day. There was one student in the class who had lived on Earth. The other students speculated about what the sun would look like, but this student told them they were all wrong. They became frustrated with him and locked him in a closet while they continued to speculate. Then someone came in and told them that the sun was shining. They rushed outside to see it and in their haste they forgot about the boy in the closet. What they saw was exactly like what he had said it would be. Why should I remember that story so clearly and forget so many others? I’ve often wondered about that and as storytellers, we wan...

T he battle with the biggest villain always comes last in our stories. Our hero battles his way through the minions, each is worse than the last, then comes the final enemy. Everything that the hero has learned to this point goes into defeating the enemy who has been behind all the problems he has faced. Only then is there a final victory.   In life, we have a final enemy. That enemy is death and there is no enemy quite like it. If we face it and lose, there is no coming back from eternal separation from God in a place of torment. If we face it and win, there is eternal joy and peace. But win or lose, to face death is to face pain and agony. Though some go quietly in their sleep, there are so many ways to die that are far from peaceful. A man’s heart stops and though he may keep breathing for a while, it does him no good because he runs out of oxygen. He gasps for air and fears the end is upon him. He knows he is dying, but there’s nothing he can do. A woman driving her kids...

J unk mail may find its place in the trash unopened. Bills may sit unnoticed until they are due. But something personal—a love letter—doesn’t go without notice. The recipient opens it carefully, anxious to see what the one he loves has written. His heart swells with joy as he reads each word. He holds the paper close to his face and takes in the faint scent, bringing him closer to his beloved. He’ll put it back in the envelope for a while, but he puts it aside with care. It won’t get torn or carelessly dropped in soup. And then the time will come when he will take it up again and read it, memorizing portions of it without even trying. I recently saw a post about the use of scripture in sermons. It seems that many preachers are being encouraged to reduce the amount of scripture. Some seem to suggest that while it is good to read scripture a preacher must move quickly to something relevant to the people in the audience if he doesn’t want to lose them. And lest you think it is just ov...

A reader who is reading Searching For Mom for a class she is in asked me several questions. I am posting them here so you can also see the answers I gave: Where are you from? I am from southeast Missouri, which is also the area in which Searching For Mom takes place. I took some artistic license with the town in which the story takes place, but the heart of it is very much like what you might find in the area of Cape Girardeau and Jackson. How old are you?, Are you married?, Where do you live? I am 34 years old and I live in Fort Worth, Texas. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? As a young child, I wanted to be a fireman. To some extent I lived out that dream in that I helped setup a volunteer fire department in a rural community and I spent one summer during college working for the fire department at a large diaper plant. What books have most influenced your life most? At the top of the list of books that have influenced my life, the Bible sits very comfortably. ...

S aying something against prayer seems like a bad thing to do, but recently I have had a few reminders that prayer isn’t always a good thing. I saw a blog post recently about “praying the Psalms.” I’ve often wondered if God bothers to listen to prayers that people read out of a book or have memorized. The Psalms are great for meditation and if that leads someone to pray about something personal that’s great, but I sometimes get the impression that people think they can use prayers written by other people as some form of incantation. It doesn’t work that way. Somehow I get drawn into some of the strangest discussions. The other day Michael Hyatt had a post on his blog about the tension we authors experience concerning self-promotion. I disagreed with the guest blogger and she took far greater offense at what I said than what I could have anticipated. She had included the words of one of her fans and had disagreed with that fan. I basically said that I thought the fan was right, so some...

A writer’s voice is that part of his writing that makes him unique. Read Mark Twain and you know it’s him. Read Dickens and you know its him. Read Poe and you know its him. Voice is a lot like a person’s accent. We may think we don’t have an accent, but we all do. We have all learned to say words a certain way and to move our mouths a certain way. It is unique for each of us. A writer may spend time trying to “find his voice.” You don’t have to “find your voice.” If you are writing from who you are, then your voice is already there on the page. If you are cynical, that will show. If you are light hearted, that will show. If you are meticulous in word choice, that will show. So what happens when you get a rejection letter and the agent says, “you need to work on your voice?” The agent isn’t saying that you don’t have a voice. We all have a voice. What the agent is saying is that he doesn’t like your voice. That’s a little like the American Idol competition. A few years ago, there was ...

A s writers, we want to write compelling stories. The Bible has many compelling stories that we can use as our example, but today I would like to do a case study of the most compelling story of all, that of Hosea. It’s a short story that you should go read for yourself, but allow me to paraphrase. The Lord spoke to Hosea and told him of a message he had for his people. As a way of illustrating that message, the Lord told Hosea to go marry a woman from a family involved in prostitution. Hosea goes and marries Gomar. They have a couple of children together, but then there is a third child that may not have been Hosea’s. Gomar seems to have tired of Hosea at this point and leaves him for other men. She believes they can give her what she wants better than Hosea can. Hosea remains aware of what is going on and takes care of Gomar by giving the men she is with the resources to provide for her. She is unaware that it is him taking care of her and not the men she is with. He withdraws his he...

S ome time ago, I did a comparison of BookSurge, CreateSpace and Lulu in terms of value per dollar related to self-publishing a book. Both BookSurge and CreateSpace are owned by Amazon.com and recently they merged. I don’t think this surprised anyone, considering that having the two companies using two different pricing schemes only made things confusing, which is part of why I did that comparison. I recently received an e-mail from a reader, asking me to do a similar breakdown of the new CreateSpace. I am happy to do so. For our purposes, we will assume the author has a print-ready PDF for both the interior and the cover of the book. The author may have done this work himself, or he may have had someone else do it for him, but as he enters this process he believes he is ready to upload his files. In the new CreateSpace, he has several options. One is the Author’s Express Package. This is essentially the same cheapest possible package that was available under BookSurge and costs $299. ...

E ditor’s Note: Today’s post is the second entry in Lieutenant Gamble’s Personal Log. (Reading Time: 2 Minutes) Lt. Gamble’s Personal Log (29 D.T.D): The outlook didn’t look any better when we woke this morning. Doc thinks he has the time of our death pinned down as close as he can get it, but he wants to run a few more tests to make sure. He’s using the equipment at the national hospital, which is just down the street from the palace. We’ve made the palace our base of operation. It and the hospital are about the only two places that haven’t lost power. It also has some of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever seen and there’s still food in the kitchen. It’s frozen, but I suppose the royal family must have had too much to take with them. Doc seems to think the people of this planet left after they found out they were exposed. If we can get off the planet within a week or so, we might be alright too, but that doesn’t look likely. The princess keeps asking our prisoner a bunch of question...

I ’ve got one more book in the series I’ve been writing over the past few years. The cover will be blue. I know most of the characters. I know something of the events that will be taking place in town at the time of the story. I know some of the things that will happen. I used the previous book to setup part of the story. I just have one problem; I don’t know what the story is about. With me knowing so much already, you would think I would be set. If I were like some authors, I might just start typing and see what happens, but I haven’t found that to be an effective way to work. If someone were to ask me about the story, I could say that Sara is the protagonist and that a movie is being filmed on the street in front of Ellen’s café. Kelly has a role in the movie. David and the other movie people from And Thy House are all there. Ellen has a contract to feed the cast and crew, so Sara has a good excuse to hang around the movie set. Kelly’s dad will be making an appearance. I may bring ...

L ast week we talked about book videos and whether they are worth the time and trouble. One commenter saw no reason for an author to have a book video unless the money is available to advertise on television. When we consider the cost of television advertising, that would pretty much rule out any book videos except for bestselling authors and for those authors with books that are suitable for infomercials. The argument for that attitude is that no one really watches video except on television. I’m a video guy and I couldn’t disagree more. I promised to address other uses for book videos than expensive fifteen or thirty second ads. Facebook Status Updates I was surprised last week at the number of comments from people saying they had only watched one or two book videos. My experience has been that I watch video online all the time. When someone posts a video to a blog or on Facebook, I frequently click on it just to see why they thought it was interesting. I’ll admit that I don’t al...

I stumbled across a television show when I was looking at Netflix’s offerings. The name of the show was Dead Like Me . While I can’t recommend the show and I don’t know that I should have watched it myself because of foul language and sex scenes, what I have seen of the show got me thinking about the perception of the world. The premise of the show is that there are grim reapers living among us who are responsible for collecting souls when people die and escorting people to their final reward. They don’t get paid for what they do, so they must find a way to support themselves, through jobs or whatever is required. But what I found most interesting is the view the characters have of God. Even though they have already died, the grim reapers aren’t sure whether there is a God or not and the writers keep bringing in this concept that “the Universe” will keep everything in balance. In one episode, a Catholic priest dies, but before he does, he questions whether there is a God or not and re...

P lans change. When I was in college, I had a vision for the future. I would graduate, get a job in St. Louis, start attending a big church, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after in a big house. It didn’t quite turn out that way. I did graduate, but I didn’t move to St. Louis. I didn’t start attending a big church, though it seemed big to me at first. I did fall in love, eventually, but we didn’t get married and I haven’t a clue where she is now. I don’t live in a big house, but its big enough for me. A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. Proverbs 16:9 My dad studied botany. His plans were to work for the US Forest Service after he got out of college. But God called him to preach and he ended up pastoring a church and working in fire protection at a diaper factory. I don’t know much about the US Forest Service, but I’m pretty sure it would be difficult to work for them and pastor a church at the same time. When I was younger, I hoped God wou...

E ditor’s Note: Today’s post is the first entry in Lieutenant Gamble’s Personal Log. After abandoning the best starship in the fleet for fear that it would explode, Lieutenant Gamble finds himself stranded on a planet with seven other people. The planet was once thriving, but now it has either been evacuated or the population has been killed due to a type of plague. The eight of them must find a cure or a way off the planet, or they will suffer the same fate 31 days after their arrival. (Reading Time: 8 Minutes) Lt. Gamble’s Personal Log (30 D.T.D): It’s a terrible thing knowing when you’re going to die. I used to imagine that it would be nice to know, you could do all the exciting things in life without having to fear dying. I really wished I could have known that when I joined the military and received my orders to board a starship going out into deep space. The war had just started and Mom was sure that the ship would explode as soon as it went into battle. I assured her that there...

R achelle Gardner’s post yesterday was about book videos. Do we need them? Do we not? Do they sell books? Do they not? The fact is that we don’t know how much we need them and how many books they sell, if any. That hasn’t stopped us from doing other things, such as handing out bookmarks, or book signings or blogging, but book videos are getting a lot of discussion. The real problem is that they are expensive. Even if we do it on a shoestring budget, book videos require an investment of time, but when we get the publisher involved, the cost of a book video starts at around $3,000 and a well produced one could run into tens of thousands of dollars. Is it worth it and what’s the point? Let’s step back and take a look at the big picture. Most readers don’t spend their days watching book videos, so even if we have one, that fact alone isn’t going to push our book sales up. It is a little like killer bees. One bee sting probably won’t kill you. Two bee stings probably won’t kill you. You ma...

Y esterday, I mentioned that the antagonist and the villain aren’t the same thing. Today, I would like to export that in more depth. In our example yesterday, I talked about the villain in a comic book. In a situation like that, the villain is very often the same thing as the antagonist, but when we move out into different kinds of stories, we find that the antagonist may not be the villain at all.   When we think of the villain, we think of one character. Lex Luther, for example, might be the villain in a Superman comic. But when we consider the antagonist of a story, we find that though it may be one person, it may also be several people. In one chapter, it may be one person. In the next chapter, it may be the another. In yet another chapter, it may be the weather. They all work together to keep out protagonist from his goal, whatever that might be.

I ’ve heard that some actors prefer playing the villain to playing the lead character. I won’t go into why they prefer that role, but as writers it might do us good to pay attention to this. So many times, it seems like we give the most attention to the protagonist, but I would like to suggest that the most important character in any story is the antagonist or the villain. For our purposes here, we need not go into the finer points of the differences between an antagonist and a villain and we’ll simply focus on the villain, though I suspect those finer points are part of the reason we don’t more readily see the antagonist as the most important. To demonstrate my claim, let’s consider a simple comic book story in which we have a Superhero and a Super Villain. In this story, the villain is bent on taking over the world. He has commandeered a fleet of ships and is on his way to Washington D. C. Our hero discovers his plot, swoops in and saves the day. Now, let’s look at the next issue of ...

I n my day job, I work in an engineering environment. Surrounding me on a daily basis is a bunch of really bright guys. There are some women, but mostly guys. A lot of the time, an engineer will be working on a project, just trying to get it done, but keep in mind that these are bright guys. Someone will come up with an idea. It may be something that can be implemented right away, or it may be something that requires some research. Inspiration strikes and someone decides that he would like to go investigate something, rather than doing what he is doing. Well, the company sets aside some money for that, but that money is limited. While it’s good to pursue fresh ideas, there are too many of them to let everyone do whatever he wants, no matter how good his intentions. There are similarities between this and the publishing industry. For an engineering company, there is usually some group of people who decide which ideas are worth pursuing and which aren’t. Those that show the most promise ...