Timothy's Thoughts

D on’t write the stuff that I don’t want to read, or so seems to be the admonition of Nick Harrison’s mom [ 1 ]. In what he wrote, he was talking about chapter length. Personally, I think chapter length is a rather arbitrary indicator, but we do need to be careful about writing stuff that people don’t want to read. I think we run into problems because we are trying to fill in the gaps. We aren’t really saying anything interesting, but we’re not willing to stop writing. In part, that could be because we’re looking to fill out a chapter. If our goal is ten pages per chapter and we are four pages in, our temptation will be to keep beating the dead horse until we get our ten pages. But being willing to end our chapters sooner doesn’t guarantee that we’ll eliminate the stuff people don’t want to read. I’ve seen books with whole chapters that I didn’t want to read. We often feel the need to explain things that don’t need explaining. On that note, I will end this post.

T here’s a manuscript that I’ve had in the back corner of my closet for a while. I wrote it with the intent of using it to get an agent, so I sent it out with that purpose. It didn’t get any notice, so I let it sit there. I liked the story, but the more I let it sit the more I thought about how other people might not get it. Then I started thinking of things I could do to change it. So, I’ve been revamping it. The interesting thing is that I could reuse most of the text and plot from the first three fourths of the manuscript with only minor changes. However, the closer I get the end the more the manuscript has to change for it to go with the new story. It seems odd that the actions for the first story and the one I’m working one are almost the same in the first part, but it diverges more and more as we approach the end. I’m finding that I’m deleting more than I’m keeping in the last part of the book. Of course, anything I delete has to be replaced with something new. In the first stor...

H ow do you know if a story is character-based or plot-based? Maybe what I should be asking instead is how should a writer determine whether a story should be written as character-based or plot-based? I think a lot goes back to the inspiration for the story. Yesterday, I mentioned The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . The selling point for that story is that it is about a guy who ages backwards. If that’s all you know about the story, you would be interested in it. I had no idea that it was a love story until I watched it. It didn’t surprise me that it was, since most movies have a love story in there somewhere, but that wasn’t the reason I wanted to watch it. Contrast that with Die Hard , which is a plot-based story. If I tell you that it’s about a New York cop, you don’t have a great urge to go watch it. As great as the guys in the NYPD may be, they’re ordinary when it comes to stories. We aren’t particularly interested in how they handle ordinary situations, so until we know what t...

L ast week, I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button . The movie was inspired by the F. Scott Fitzgerald story. The movie is about some morally bankrupt characters, which probably says more about the writers than it says about the story, but we don’t need to go into that. The thing that makes this movie worth talking about here is that it is a great example of character-based fiction. I’m sure that you are aware that there is something of a debate over whether character-based fiction or plot-based fiction is better. It isn’t a debate so much as a matter of personal preference. Each has its place, but some people prefer reading character-based fiction and some people prefer reading plot-based fiction. I don’t think we can say that one is better than the other, only that they are different. The first thing that we notice about the movie as an example of character-based fiction is that the characters are unusual. Benjamin Button was born an old man and aged backwards. There’s nothin...

I realize the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, but have you ever stopped to think about what sin is at its most basic form? We can talk about murder, or adultery or lust, but what is it that they all have in common? At the very heart of sin is the belief that I have the right to do what I want and to make my own decisions. Look at the guy who walks into a convenience store and demands all the money. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t believe he had the right to violate the store owner’s rights. A woman stands at the alter and agrees to commit herself to her husband til death do they part, but then she decides marriage isn’t what she thought it would be and she files for divorce. She wouldn’t do that if she believe that contract she signed had power over her. Did you know that man is the only creature that has the freedom to make his own choices? The dog that sleeps at the foot of your bed, do you think he has choices? He does the same thing every day. He gets ...

I don’t lack for ideas. Some are better than others, but I can hardly see anything and not get some kind of story idea from it. But my favorite so far has been retelling the story of Hosea in a modern setting, which I did in For the Love of a Devil . Hosea’s life story is just one of those stories that works so well for that. Granted, it is hard story to read, but it worked very well. I would like to try that again with another Bible story. In some ways, Judges seems like an ideal place to look for a story like that, and yet it is less than ideal. The thing about Judges is that the protagonists of are flawed individuals who are used by God, but only after much persuasion. Then after he used them to accomplish his purpose, many of them make bad choices. We sort of like seeing happily ever after stories in which a flawed individual learns from his mistakes and changes his life. Another problem I have with Judges is that these are primarily war stories. The people were oppressed becaus...

F requently, I see someone talking about something they believe would make a great story. Sometimes it’s a writer. Sometimes it’s a person who has no idea what it would take to write a story. The problem is an issue of plot vs. situation . A situation is the current state of things. For example, if you wreck your car then you have a situation. If you meet an important person, that’s a situation. If you have a disease of some kind, that is a situation. As unusual as your situation may be, it doesn’t guarantee that writing about that situation will produce and interesting story. Plot is what happens in a story. The plot makes or breaks the story. We may begin with a situation, but we have to work it into a plot. Consider the book, The Magic of Ordinary Days . The situation was that a young woman committed adultery and must keep her pregnancy secret. Now, consider also the book Not My Will . It too is built around the situation of a woman needing to keep her pregnancy secret, but the two...

Y esterday, I wrote about a person being split in two. A more realistic situation is that of a person being declared dead, then returning home to find that his wife has married someone else. I would never want that to happen to me, but I like the concept because there’s no clear cut solution that works well for everyone involved. The woman married one man, expecting to grow old with him. She moves on to another man, so when the first returns she’s in love with two men. Of course, neither man wants to give up on his claim to her affections. Stories like these are like a pressure cooker. As the story builds, the pressure grows greater and greater. Eventually, the story will burst. Something will have to happen to release the pressure, but it isn’t clear where that will be. As in real life, the break will occur in the weak spot, but it may take a lot of pressure to find where that spot is. The two equals will face off against each other and the pressure will keep building. That’s exactly...

T he good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one” the line says from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan . The argument seems valid. If the death of one person can result in saving the lives of a hundred, it seems like a good trade, though none of us want to be that one or for that one to be a close friend. It’s the way wars are fought. A commander doesn’t want to lose men, but sometimes he has to send people into a battle they probably won’t win so that the rest of his men can position themselves for a battle that they will win. Soldiers choose to go to war because they know that even if they die it will make life better for their families back home. But it’s not easy to show an individual’s willingness to sacrifice for the group. With Spock it made sense because he was a very logical character. From seeing him in action before we knew that for him to do what he did he would have thought it out logically and had come to the conclusion that his sacrifice was the logical opti...

P eople like being scared. When we were children, we would hide ourselves away in a dark closest and tell ghost stories. I broke a window one time because of doing that. Some friends were over at the house one day. They, my sister and I had been sitting on the front porch telling ghost stories. We all went around to the back of the house to go inside. Us four had just gotten to the back door, with me leading the way, when the dog barked. I know I jumped, but I kind of think the other three pushed me forward. Whatever happened, my arm slammed into the glass and broke it. It takes more to scare most adults, be people still enjoy being scared. There’s an element of fear in every good story. We build a reader up to expect that certain things will happen, but we also introduce the possibility that it won’t . In suspense, the level of fear is pushed somewhat higher than what you might find in other genres, but every story has to have something to fear. The greatest fear comes from things w...

R ay Bradbury talks about his writing journey in the video below. I apologize beforehand for the product placement in the video, but near the end of the video he talks about what he decided is the right stuff to write. What the video and then we’ll discuss it. “I was writing for me and I discovered that was the way to go.” On the surface, that sounds vain, but when we consider what he’s saying it makes a lot of sense. While our ultimate goal in writing is to communicate with the reader, writing that doesn’t draw upon our innermost feelings will come across as hollow. There are a number of stories that I could write just because I’ve read or watched so many of them. Being able to write a story is one thing, but understanding the motives of a story is another. If we aren’t writing about our own emotions, we won’t get them right. We might end up with a villain who is just bad because he’s a villain and a hero who is good because he is a hero. The reader will be much more interested in a...

I ’ve hard that the best stories come about when you write yourself into a corner that you don’t think you can get out of, but you do. Writing shouldn’t be easy. When you find that a character is doing something without a good motivation, you might decide to quit. You might decide to go on to another story, but if you keep going and work through the problem you might discover that what you have is one of your best stories ever. It might take you a while, but work it out and see what happens.

B ooks aren’t like television shows. The thing about television shows is that some people will watch them just because there isn’t anything else on. You’re tired and you want to watch some mindless entertainment. You want to watch it now, so you turn to the most interesting thing you can find that is on now. With books, people pick and choose. Occasionally, they’ll pick something up just because it is there, but someone had to make the decision that the wanted it in the first place. It’s interesting because television shows can get by with some of the worst plots. They’ll throw an episode in there that is nothing but clips from previous episodes. Usually, the main character is away somewhere and the supporting cast is remembering what a great person he is. Can you imagine if we tried doing that with books? Instead of writing a new book, we would just pull chapters from other books to tie together with some weak plot. No one would buy the book, but television producers don’t seem to t...

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...

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 ...

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 ...