Timothy's Thoughts

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...