Timothy's Thoughts

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...