Timothy's Thoughts

R ecently, Seth Godin wrote about why he is Moving On and no longer communicating through traditionally published books. In response to that post, Michael Hyatt wrote Why Most Authors Should Not Emulate Seth Godin . He made four arguments against it. While I don’t totally agree with Seth Godin, I don’t agree with Mike’s arguments either. I will address each in turn. Most authors can’t get directly to their readers. If you read the Godin article, this is part of the reason Godin is saying goodbye to traditional publishing. His statement is that the author doesn’t sell to the reader but to the publisher. Mike rightly says that Seth Godin has a much larger platform than most of us, but I disagree with his statement that most authors can’t get direct access to the readers. In fact, when we look at the way the publishing industry works, if an author can’t get direct access to the readers he can’t get a publishing contract either. Publishers have the expectation that authors will bring read...

W hat’s the difference between plot and what the story’s about? In some ways, it seems like we’re talking about two terms to describe the same thing, but in others it doesn’t. One of the frequently used plots in television shows is that of Twelve Angry Men . You will recall that this screen play is about twelve men in a jury room who are anxious to go home. All but one vote that the defendant is guilty and even the person who votes not guilty just doesn’t feel right about having a quick vote without examining the evidence. They begin to look at the evidence and one by one they change their votes until they leave the jury room satisfied that the defendant is truly innocent. I’m sure that most film students are required to study this script at some point in their college careers. That may explain why it appears in so many television series. But there is a difference in each case. Monk’s version of this skit is very different from The Dead Zone’s version of this skit and they are both ...

I really don’t expect that I’ll ever be an A-list author. And I’m fine with that. I’ve made some observations about a similar environment, that of preachers. There are a number of A-list pastors out there. You can hear most of them on the radio or read their books. Some of them are great speakers and provide great entertainment. They can attract thousands of people each week. But here’s the interesting thing, if someone were to ask me to name the best pastor living today there isn’t a single A-list preacher that would come to mind. Of course, my own pastor would come to mind, but if I broadened my field of view to include other churches, the pastors that would come to mind mostly pastor small churches. A few of the men that come to mind pastor larger churches, but none are A-list preachers. There is a simple truth that we so often forget. God uses people who are weak to accomplish his work in order to show himself strong. I truly believe that he has put some of his best men in some o...

W e want our characters to be fish out of water. You must realize, of course, that I’m an expert on fish out of water. But that has nothing to do with writing. Often, when we look at the story structure we find that the second quarter of the story is when the protagonist is the most out of his element. In Cinderella this is when she makes her appearance at the ball. In Beauty and the Beast this is where Belle goes to live in the beast’s castle. It is always the case that we go from a character being within his element, but his element is killing him to him being out of his element and having to learn something to survive, or so it would seem. It’s interesting, but there is a whole class of stories that don’t follow that model. In fact, it is reversed. Look at the detective story. In the detective story, our protagonist begins as a fish out of water, but when the mystery appears he really hits his stride. The detective protagonist is too much for the ordinary world. Look at Diagnosis...

Y esterday, I read that publishers are accepting 1-2% of the books submitted to them, including those submitted by agents. The same blog post stated that 1-5% of self-published books are being picked up by traditional publishers. On the surface, this makes it appear that a self-published book is twice as likely to be selected by a traditional publisher as a book that has an agent. I want to take a closer look at this, but before we go too far, I want to point out that these numbers may not be completely accurate and it isn’t always easy to compare the self-published path to the traditionally published path. Still, if were willing to accept some uncertainty, this “fact” is interesting. Considering that publishers don’t like accepting unsolicited manuscripts without an agent, it isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that publishers are accepting 2% of the agented books submitted to them. But what is that in terms of the likelihood that one particular book—your book—will be picked up by ...

M y research on the subject is by no means scientific, but my observations indicate that most authors aren’t interested in learning how to write, just in getting whatever they’ve written published. I base that statement on the fact that I get far more traffic and comments from people looking for information about getting published than the people who are looking for ways to improve their own writing. I have naïvely hoped that by posting about writing I would be able to spur some discussion about writing. I thought maybe someone would disagree with me on a few things and it would get interesting, but that has not been the case. What I have found, however, is that people are very interested in posts I’ve written about the details of getting published. Let’s face it folks, getting published is easy and cheap. With a little knowhow, you can get anything you want published in book form and available for sale around the world within a few days. But convincing other people that they want to ...

R ecently, I’ve been thinking about three words, blessing , praise , and worship . In those three words we have two pairs. We often use blessing and praise in a similar way. The Bible tells us to praise God and it also tells us to bless God. And we often talk about praise and worship. But as we consider these words, I think few people use blessing and worship correctly while praise isn’t used enough. The reason I say that is that I believe many churches are doing a lot of praise while forgetting about blessing and worship. Praise is an easy word to understand. When a child does something good, we praise him for it. We never praise a child for something that he will do in the future. The same is true when we talk about praising God. We don’t praise God for the things he is going to do, but when we talk or sing about the great things he has done for us, that is praise. The song says, “Praise him! Praise him, Jesus our blessed redeemer. For our sins he suffered and bled and died.”...

H ow do we make a character likeable? It isn’t always an easy task and yet we need people to like a character or they won’t stick with him throughout the story. By like I mean that readers want to know more about him, not that they want to be his friend. It isn’t as easy as making the character the good guy. Jar Jar Binks is perhaps the most despised character in the Star Wars franchise and yet he is one of the good guys. Conversely, the television show Dexter is built around a serial killer. I haven’t watched more than a few minutes of the show, but it seems that he is a likeable character. Blake Snyder used to talk about making a character likeable through the use of a device he called the save the cat moment. Essentially, this works by having the character do something good, such as saving a cat, when we’re introduced to the character. Whatever bad stuff the character might do later, we’ll always remember that there’s something good about him, there’s something worth saving. In ...

W hen you blog, sometimes things you say take you by surprise. The thing that surprised me about yesterday’s post was the statement that many story ideas begin with the inciting incident . I believe that’s a useful thing to know because it helps us know where we are and what we need to do. The inciting incident is a great starting point for the story idea because it allows us to ask the question of how we, other people, or our characters would handle the situation if something happened. If a child is killed in a hit and run accident, one person might lobby for a new traffic light, while another person might hunt down the driver and kill him with her car. The inciting incident is the same in both cases, but the story is very different.

P lot or character? I suppose you might call it a debate, but there are people who insist upon writing plot based stories and there are people who insist upon writing character based stories. I’ve also seen some people say we should chuck it all and writer premise based stories. I can’t say that’s such a bad idea, but the person who said it didn’t know what a premise is, defining it as the foundational idea upon which the characters and plot are based. [1] It may be good at this point to remind you that a premise is the statement we attempt to prove or disprove in an argument. The statement “writers should focus on character development first” is a premise, but that doesn’t mean we can create characters and plot from it. At the heart of this debate over plot, character, premise, or whatever is the underlying question of where should I start? Let’s say you have a story idea. We won’t call it a premise, but you know enough to want to write the story and you’re looking for the best ...

R ecently, in the comments on The Kill Zone , Nancy J. Cohen stated, “In a murder mystery, [the premise] is usually who the victim is and where the body is found.” She’s actually wrong, but her statement is a premise . May sense? If so, you can stop reading now, but the rest of us are going to look at what a premise is. Many people have the idea that the premise is what the story is about. Frankly, I may be guilty of using the word that way from time to time, but if we look at the dictionary definition of premise we find that it is “a proposition that forms the basis of an argument or from which a conclusion is drawn” (Encarta Dictionary). In more simple terms, a premise is a statement we’re trying to prove. Many novelists take issue with this because they see themselves writing to entertain rather than to make a point, but when examining story structure it’s beneficial to look at the similarities between a story and a traditional argument. Before we go too deep, let’s look at an...

B lake Snyder is dead now, but the other day I listened to an interview he did shortly before he died. One of the things the interviewer asked was what mistakes he saw screenwriters making. In response, Blake said that he saw a lot of people making the mistake of pitching the catalyst rather than the fun and games. I could tell from the follow up questions that he interviewer didn’t have a clue what he was saying, but I listened with interest and thought to myself that he was absolutely right, patting myself on the back for not making that mistake. Then a few days later I opened a document in which I’d recorded what I saw as the logline for one of my stories. As it turns out, my clearly worded logline was the catalyst (inciting incident). So let’s say it’s an easy mistake to make. If we pick on Where the Red Fern Grows again, the story is about a boy training two dogs to be championship quality hunting dogs. We’ll all agree that’s true and it turns out that that is exactly what happe...

T he Bible has a number of unusual stories. In Genesis 32 we find the account of Jacob’s name being changed to Israel. The unusual thing is what happened before God changed his name. Jacob was alone and wrestled with a man. Why he wrestled with the man isn’t clear, but Jacob wrestled with this man all night and refused to give up until the man blessed him. The man Jacob wrestled with was God. Many of the details of this story aren’t clear, but God felt it was important that it be included in the Bible. I have to think that there’s something more here than just that Jacob’s name changed. Oh the audacity of Jacob to wrestle with God, but Jesus spoke of how men ought to pray and not faint in Luke 18. He told of an evil ruler and a woman who came to him for help. He wouldn’t have helped her, but she was persistent and he helped her because of her persistence. Jesus contrasted God with that ruler, saying that God would avenge his elect speedily, but he also talked about them crying unto hi...

T oday we leave our regularly scheduled program to talk about the big news in the Christian publishing world. (Okay, it’s a few days old, but we’ll talk about it anyway.) Anne Rice has left Christianity. Apparently, Anne Rice thinks you can switch from being a Christian to not being a Christian like you can change your underwear. Some time ago she left to become an atheist, then she came back. Well, now she’s gone again. And you know what? I refuse to be like some of these other churches and beg her to come join us instead of doing whatever she’s doing. As someone has said, none of us have a right to hear the gospel twice before everyone has heard it once. I believe she is a prime example of what is wrong with Christianity today. But before I get into that, let’s look at her own reasons for leaving Christianity this time: In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse t...

Y ou may not have noticed, but Christianity is losing ground. The percentage growth of the world population exceeds the percentage growth of the Christian faith. What we’re doing isn’t working. Or at least it isn’t working as well as it should. I realize that we have no control over how many people accept the gospel, but we have the responsibility to share it anyway. I realize that many people hear the gospel and reject it. And maybe the world is on final approach to the last judgment and we’re losing ground because the Lord is about to put an end to this period of grace. There’s plenty of maybes, but I don’t like to just throw up my hands and say, this is just the way it’s going to be. I don’t like to be on the losing side of anything. I don’t like that it makes God appear weak because his people aren’t accomplishing what he has called us to do. The most important thing we can do to turn this thing around is to pray. There is much that God can do that can change the current trend. We...

M arriage is a sacred institution, but some people just don’t get it. In a book I read the other day was a statement by a character concerning another character that was considering leaving her husband for another—actually, I can’t say man here because she would’ve left him for an elf. The statement was along the lines of you are the only one who can decide what will make you happy. Happy? Really? At what point did marriage become about the happiness of the individual? And what if the other person doesn’t make you happy? Marriage is about commitment. The Bible tells us that a man is supposed to leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. The Bible also tells us that a man is supposed to love his wife and the wife is to respect her husband. That’s not to say that if a man doesn’t love his wife and she does respect him that they should split up. These things aren’t optional. These things are commands. Men are commanded to love their wives, but even if they don’t, wives are com...

T he solution comes first. That’s not the case all the time, but I’ve been looking at the process of developing story outlines and what I’m seeing is that the most logical place to start is with the solution . In location, the solution is the first half of the second act. This is the section that Blake Snyder called the fun and games section because this is where the characters are doing all the fun stuff that we see in the movie trailer. In the movie Up , which I talked about before, this is the section in which the house goes floating into the wild blue yonder. In Where the Red Fern Grows this is where Billy trains the dogs. In Searching For Mom this is where Sara searches the Internet for someone she can set her father up with. And if you were going to tell a literary agent what your book is about, this is the section that you would focus most of your attention on. This section is what the book is about. I think you see where I’m going with this. Without an interesting solutio...

N o backstory allowed. That’s the rule anyway, but so many authors are quick to violate it. Usually it is because we feel the need to justify a character’s actions rather than trusting the reader to figure out that if the character is doing something then there’s something in the character’s past that caused it. As my pastor likes to say, when you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know he didn’t get there by himself. In writing, it’s sufficient to write about how the turtle gets down from the fence post. But we still have a tendency to explain the whole thing. Backstory is a story that happens before the story. It isn’t actually part of our story, but how can we tell the difference between things of the past that are part of our story and things that aren’t. Using our turtle example, if the turtle got even with the person who put him on the post, then the action of putting the turtle on the post is part of our story rather than being backstory. And I’ve thought about the mo...

I deas for stories come in many different forms, but I sometimes struggle with converting those ideas into an actual story. Often what happens is that I picture a scene that intrigues me, but I don’t know where it fits or what I can do with the characters. Even with an outline framework, I began to question what part I should figure out first. As I considered this, I realized that there are five basic elements to every story, a character, a problem, a solution, a challenge and a victory. If we can determine each of these then we have our story. A Character The character is your protagonist . Sometimes you’ll know who this is at the first and sometimes it is better to wait till you determine the other four before deciding on the character. A Problem Your character begins the story with a problem. This isn’t the hook or the initial disturbance , though those things may help to show what the problem is. The bigger the problem is the bigger the story. If you’re talking to a friend, you mi...

T oday’s topic: pet words. A pet word is a word that a writer tends to use in his writing to the distraction of the reader. A pet word could be anything, such as just , so , was , inconceivable (I couldn’t resist paying homage to The Princess Bride with that last one). There’s a guy that used to work where I do whose pet word is really . He says it loudly and with a question mark at the end as if whatever someone said is utterly surprising. It gets irritating. We don’t want to irritate our readers. Our brains are wired to use pet words. When someone asks us something, we answer in practically the same way every time. Only when we take time to think about the answer do we say things differently. Because we are talking to different people throughout the day, no one notices that we said the same thing as we said before. Also, different people have different pet words, so a person listening to several conversations may not pick up on the pet words. In a book, we magnify our pet words be...

I read the book because it was written by a friend. Not a close friend, but an author I’ve encountered online in various places. Don’t start thinking that this author is just another self-published author who frequents agent blogs and other websites, but has no talent. This author has an agent and the book was published by a traditional publisher. This author also does the conference circuit as a faculty member. The book itself had some editing problems and some echo problems. It had things that we should try to avoid, but stuff happens. No book is perfect and this book told a story. The book has plenty of blurbs by well-known authors on cover and if you were to read the book you wouldn’t be bored. But the author committed an unforgivable sin in storytelling. The story is forgettable. I read another book by this author and it had the same problem. I read this book and I can’t say which is the most forgettable because I don’t remember much about what happened in the other book. A few ...

F ile this one under problems to avoid. I’ve been reading a book written by a friend of mine. I won’t mention the author’s name because many of you would recognize this particular person, but I keep seeing echoes . I’m not sure what else to call them. Essentially, a character says something like “It looks to me like it might’ve been caused by a blunt object,” the police come in and say, “The victim was hit over the head with a blunt object,” echoing what the previous character said. In real life we experience echoes all the time. People tend to say things the same way, so when they see the same thing they may use very similar words to what the other person used. In a novel we want to avoid echoes, because our characters aren’t really talking to other characters; they’re talking for the benefit of the reader. If the reader already knows the victim was struck by a blunt object, we don’t need to say it again unless there’s something interesting about the fact that we’re pointing it out ...