Timothy's Thoughts

A couple of weeks ago, Michael Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, tweeted about a blog post by Seth Godin titled What’s your super power? in which Seth talks about the comic book introduction of a character in which the character tells people his super power. He suggests that we should introduce ourselves with something like, "Hi, I'm Don, I tell stories that spread." His thought is that people will remember us better if they know how we can help them. I understand his point, but we’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. When you saw the first sentence of this post, did you have a tinge of envy—perhaps thinking, “I wish Michael Hyatt would post a link to my blog.” If you did, that’s natural, but that isn’t the way we should look at it. Don’t you love it when someone you know introduces you to an acquaintance and says something good about you? “This is Ellen Dawson and she owns the best restaurant in town.” You aren’t alone. But notice what I...

Online, I spend a lot of time with authors—primarily unpublished Christian authors. Most have a common question. Why haven’t I received a publishing contract yet? Hidden beneath that question is another. Can’t God see how important this is to me? This second question has an easy answer, but it doesn’t make the wannabe Christian writer feel any better. I think it’s a safe assumption that nearly every Christian author has asked God to open doors for a publishing contract at some point. I God changes things when we pray, but I’ve also seen the numbers. There are a lot of people out there praying for a publishing contract who won’t get one. So what’s the problem? The problem isn’t with God. He is more than capable of giving any and all Christian writers a publishing contract. I would like to suggest that the problem is with us. Do you recall James 4:3? Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. From experience, I know that God often blesses us wi...

Some people see the world as something like a big stage with us as the actors, with God as the playwright and we are acting out scenes for his pleasure, following his script, though we don’t know the script. They would have us believe that, though we may feel like we are making choices, we are just following a script. I won’t go into why, but I don’t believe this. There are plenty of biblical reasons why this concept does not hold true, but that’s a discussion for another time. The question I have is what of our characters? Do they make their own choices? Writers are not gods, though some may think they are. We do not have the power to bring our characters to life and we certainly don’t have the ability to give them autonomy, but neither do we have the foreknowledge of God. We might begin a story by just a vague idea of where we’re headed or we might outline a story to death. Whatever we do, there are things we don’t know until we reach that point in the story. In our outline, we might...

Stories are about change. A character comes in one way and goes out another. He is changed by the events of the story and we hope the reader is as well. But one does not simply decide to change and one who changes only at the will of another is nothing but a robot. In a good story, characters move the story forward by making a decision and following through, whether that decision is to battle his enemy, run and hide, or just to stand still and let another have his way. Whatever decision he makes, it is important that we show the emotions a character feels as he makes his decision. Emotions are important throughout a story, but every story has seven points that must have strong emotion. If you can get your readers to laugh or cry or shout for joy in the moments, you are a long way toward having an excellent story. When I say moments, I do mean moments. A moment may be as short as a sentence or it may be several, but it isn’t as long as a page. The longer a moment is, the less punch it h...

So I’m sitting around contemplating the finer points of tiddlywinks when a story idea comes to me. I don’t think much about it at the time, being much more interested in my previous activity, but later I start thinking about the story and I get all excited about the story. It doesn’t take me long to develop an outline and I go to work writing away. Chapter after chapter, I develop the story and soon I have before me a new manuscript. I go to the first page and I begin reading. “That can’t be right,” I say as I realize my protagonist’s mother is dead in chapter one and he calls her on the phone in chapter ten. Then there’s the problem that his half-sister plays a key role in chapter twenty-five, but he wouldn’t have a half-sister if his mother is still alive. Something has to change. So I set to work making revisions. Then I find more mistakes and I go back and edit. I go back again, just to correct a few things. Finally, I have before me a completed manuscript, ready for the eyes of an...

The Race: From Pit Row to Victory Lane by Rick Lemons is about how we can achieve victory in this spiritual race that every Christian is in. Throughout the book, Rick uses analogies from NASCAR races to illustrate his points. If you are a NASCAR enthusiast, you will recognize some of the names and races he mentions, but don’t let that scare you away if you aren’t. He writes in a very approachable manner and spends much more time on, shall we say, the important stuff than the NASCAR analogies. To give some examples, Rick compares the Word of God to the fuel a car needs for a race. Without it, we aren’t going anywhere. He compares an accountability partner to a driver’s spotter. Sure, we could race without one, but we’ll have some trouble with the blind spots. He compares prayer to talking to the Crew Chief. In each chapter, he shows us why these things are important by going to the Word of God and telling us what God has to say about it. In the past few years, I have spent time with au...

Yesterday, I posted about some of the good things about my trip to the Christian Book Expo (CBE). Today, I’m going to say some things about the not so great things. Writing like Yoda, will I be. Actually, no, but it did occur to me that it might be good to lighten things up, since I’m going to be somewhat critical. Humor usually helps. I just wish I could do humor. For a location, the CBE organizers couldn’t have picked a better place. The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is in the heart of the Bible belt. There are more megachurches, perhaps more churches, in the metroplex than any other city. If you can’t find people interested in Christian books here, you can’t find then anywhere. Considering that, what I saw at the convention center seems odd. There were a lot of people there, but they weren’t with the Christian Book Expo. They were on the other end of the building. Once I got away from the red coats there, the building seemed like a crypt. There were two problems. One, the venue was to...