Timothy's Thoughts

On a television show that I was watching they showed the outside of a radio station. On the street outside, a truck drove past pulling a tractor on a flatbed trailer. It wasn’t a large tractor, just about the size you might want for one forty acre field. Later in the show another tractor appears. This time, a man is driving the tractor down the street. Once more it is a small open cab tractor. The two tractors have no purpose in the plot, but they serve as an important symbol . Symbols are important in writing. The appearance of a tractor tells us that we are in a rural area. A fence may represent a barrier that keeps those inside in or those outside out. Death may represent the hopelessness of a situation. The symbols we use serve to say something quickly without the need for many words. In part, they are what it means to show, not just tell . In a recent manuscript, I have a scene in which two of the main characters are on a train. One character is mentally counting her money. The o...

An episode of the television show Bones reminded me of the power and danger of fiction. The A story was of little importance. The B story, however, was about a homosexual relationship between one of the main characters and her friend from college. The show’s writers pretended to show both sides of the issue by showing people who saw nothing wrong with it and showing those who do, but the homage they paid to those who see it as wrong dealt more with tradition than it did with facts. The picture they painted of the two women involved was one of apparently healthy feelings the two still have for each other. But the real kicker was when the major character said, “I am not promiscuous,” after having broken up with her boyfriend while looking for another sexual partner. This is before the scene of her kissing her lesbian girlfriend. The danger that this episode of Bones shows us is that fiction writers can make claims without providing accurate evidence to support those claims. The homosex...

A popular plot in both science fiction and historical fiction is that of the forced marriage. It is similar to the Sabine women plot, but there is an added twist in that one or both of the couple doesn’t have a choice, while the Sabine women were given the option of returning home. In historical fiction, the plot device typically centers on the cultural taboos of the day. The woman ends up pregnant and convinces some poor sap to marry her so the child won’t be born out of wedlock. In science fiction, the plot typically centers on the cultural differences between two planets. A visitor to a planet enjoys the local nightlife until some attractive woman offers him some kind of gift, like food or something else. Wanting to make a good impression, he accepts the gift, only to discover later that by doing so he has married the woman. Both science fiction and historical fiction tend to be surreal. Everyone assumes that the law of the land doesn’t prevent these strange things from happening, b...

The story of Cinderella is one of the most loved stories of all time. It has been retold many times. It has made millions of young girls say, “I want to be a princess when I grow up.” Many people have asked if this is the message we want to send to children. Others aren’t sure what kind of message the story is sending to children. When we consider the story, the first thought is that we don’t want to tell children that they can solve problems with magic. But if we peel back the layers of the story and look at what it promotes, the story isn’t really about magic. The magic in the story is just a convenient way to make the story understandable to children. It is much easier to say that the magic stops working after mid-night than it is to develop a non-magical reason why she must flee without giving anyone her name. Looking at the true theme of the story, the real message of the story is that justice will prevail, even when it appears the unrighteous are prospering from their evil deeds ...

I’m in the mood to talk about story structure. Every story has five elements, theme, plot, point of view, characters and setting. Some people say there are only four, leaving out point of view. If you leave it out, we can roll it up into either the characters, making the narrator a character, or into the setting, since our point of view determines how we perceive our setting. For this discussion, we’ll keep it separate. Theme In every story, the theme is the most important element. The theme or message is the backbone of the story. It gives the story purpose. This is true with all stories including that of a woman recounting her shopping trip to her husband. I went to the first store and I found this skirt I liked, but I wasn’t sure about the color. I decided to look in another store. I would the same skirt in another store, but it cost more. I went back to the first store and they had already sold the skirt. I went back to the other store and bought the skirt. What is the theme of thi...

Many moons ago when I was still a young pup, I went to breakfast at church camp and sat at a table with three preachers I knew. I liked stories with a moral, at the time, so I paid special attention when one of them asked, “Do you want to hear a story with a moral?” I nodded. “Someone put a block of baloney on a plate and stuck a fork in it. Before long, a fly came along, ate his fill, crawled up the fork and tried fly, but he fell and broke neck. Another fly came along and did the same thing. Then another and another until there were many flies lying dead on the table. Do you know what the moral to that story is?” “No,” I said. “Don’t fly off the handle when you’re full of baloney.” Let’s think about this story. What if we were to change this story and instead of baloney we put cheese on the plate. Instead of a fork, we will put a toothpick in the cheese. The flies eat the cheese and die after flying off the toothpick. It’s essentially the same story, but without the message. Nothi...

Over the past few years, I have received many questions from people along the lines of “I’ve done some bad things. Does that mean I’m not saved?” Some people will ask, “ How can I know that I’m saved ?” When I receive a question like this, I try to help the person as much as I can, often providing the like above. I know that many of these people would like for me to tell them, “Yes, you are saved,” but I can’t do that. The thing that fascinates me about the people who ask this question is that they are church people. These aren’t drug dealers and jail birds coming to us looking for some kind of assurance of their salvation. These people might be one people who sat near you at church last Sunday. It is sad, but there are many people who attend church and don’t know whether they will make it into heaven or not. Even worse, there are pastors and choir members who will not make it into heaven (Matthew 7:22, 23). I was reading a blog post that talked about how much the Christian novel has ...