Timothy's Thoughts

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...

W e received word that a man who had attended the Baptist Missionary Association (BMA) Theological Seminary and recently returned to his native home in Africa has been killed. While the details are still sketchy and may never be completely known, my understanding is that because of the danger he knew he would face, he left his pregnant wife and their children here in the States before returning home. While there, he was arrested and killed. This is very poignant reminder that persecution is very real. One particular passae keeps coming to mind. Hebrews 11:37-38 says, “They were stoned, they were saw asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy) . They wandered in the deserts and in the mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” While I never met this man, but a feel a closeness to him because of his affiliation with the BMA Theological Seminary. But the wo...

O n a news report I heard about a study showing that men are five times more likely to cheat on their wives if the wife makes more money than the man. Though there are people out there who would like to say that it doesn’t really matter who the major breadwinner is in the family, I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this. Christians should be especially unsurprised by this. In reading the Bible we see that God made us that way. That’s not to say that God made men to cheat on their wives, but God designed men and women in such a way that they man is to the be head of the home, the protector, the chief provider. God made men in such a way that they desire the respect of their wives. It’s understandable that a man who is earning less than his wife misses the respect afforded him when he is the chief provider. I don’t know what we can do about the situation these days when so many women are going to school and getting high paying jobs while so many men aren’t manning up and doing w...

S hould bad guys have something about them that makes them likeable? Some people say yes, but I have a hard time saying that is true in all cases. We certainly need our protagonist to be such that readers can identify with him, but I don’t think that’s always the case with the villain. There’s nothing wrong with having a villain that people like or identify with, but one way to look at a story is to see it as a protagonist facing a series of challenges. When we first see these challenges, we may not know who is opposing the protagonist. We might have a villain who is creating these challenges off camera, so all we know about the villain are the challenges the protagonist faces. We can’t be expected to like these challenges. So, your mother died. Yippee! Once the villain makes an appearance, we may already know enough about him that we don’t like him and have no intention of identifying with him. That’s okay. It’s okay if the reader despises the guy. It may not be a comfortable feeling...

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...

O ne of the things that scares me about my writing pursuit is that I might have to choose an agent someday. The more I learn, the less I like the thought of that. Ideally, you want an agent that you can get along with, but you also want someone who can stand behind your work. But when I look at some of the agents out there that seem to be great agents and are practically everyone’s short list, I am left saying “No for me.” I think that what scares me is that I see a lot of ecumenism in Christian publishing. I suppose it is to be expected because the publishers aren’t going to make money if they are too selective about which authors they choose and the conferences want to be as all inclusive as possible. We start to see a problem when we see that you can go to a Christian writing conference and they attempt to handle it like a church service. I’ve even heard of some conferences doing the communion thing. To me, that just says that the people running the conferences want to play church...