Timothy's Thoughts

A couple of my friends are having marital problems. I’ll call them Dick and Jane, rather than use their real names. There’s nothing unusual about a couple having marital problems. It happens. What’s unusual about this situation is that it has been playing itself out on Facebook. A few weeks ago, Jane wrote “Some people you think you know let you down.” It wasn’t immediately obvious that she was talking about Dick, but after she wrote about a child crying herself to sleep and there were comments from some of her closer friends, it became much more obvious. There were a few similar posts from Jane over the next few weeks and then there was this simply message, “Jane is now single.” In the context of the other posts, those words were so weighted, so heavy it seemed they might drop from the screen. Weeks passed and there was yet another message, “Dick is now friends with Jane.” And you wonder. Is he really? Are they going to get back together? We can only hope. It’s the kind of story I mi...

W hen I hear some people talk about their story ideas, I’m amazed at what they think is a great idea. One author described her great idea as “an adventure story from the girls’ point of view.” She also described it as a female Lord of the Rings . Doesn’t that just make you want to rush out to the story and buy her book? Yeah, me neither. I see nothing wrong with putting female characters in an adventure story. We’ve seen several authors do it. But what’s the story? The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley could be described in the same way as that above, although there are many things that are different. What that tells us is that the author above has told us very little. At most, she has told us the plot and one characteristic of the protagonist. But as you’re aware, there is a decade of plots, depending upon who is numbering them. A story idea includes characters and plot , but these things alone are not enough. Change is the element that completes the triad. We start with a chara...