Timothy's Thoughts

I 'm a software engineer by trade and in my studies I learned about a programming language called Prolog. Unlike most programming languages, which are written as a sequence of events, with Prolog you define a goal and let the computer figure out how to accomplish it. It’s a fascinating approach to programming, but most of the examples looks something like this: dog(spot). dog(rex). cat(tom). cat(sheba). animal(X) :- dog(X). animal(X) :- cat(X). ?- animal(Y). spot ; rex ; tom ; sheba ; ?- I won't ask you to try to make sense of that, unless you really want to. Essentially, given a list of named dogs and cats, and a definition that specifies that dogs and cats are animals, the computer will return the names of all animals. I’m sure I find that more impressive than you do, but even I have to wonder what is so great about being able to get the complete list of animals in this way. It demonstrates the language, but it doesn’t really tell us...

H ow important is the B-story to a novel? Depending on who you talk to, it may not be very important at all. If you’re getting your writing advice from literary agents and editors, you might not hear much about it at all. Most of what they talk about is the stuff they use to make their determination about whether they are interested in the book or not. Given that many will reject a manuscript based on the first few pages, the B-story occurs far too deep in a novel to become a major factor in the decision. If it’s terrible, yeah, an agent might reject the manuscript because of it, but the agent is already leaning one way or the other by the time he sees the B-story. Even if the agent requests a synopsis, the B-story doesn’t come into play because we say very little about the B-story in a synopsis. It doesn’t seem important at all.   But wait. Let’s not rule it out completely. In fact, if we consider some of the stories we’ve read, the B-story is hugely important. Take The Lord...

O ne of the theories on how to handle a narrator is to write in what we call close third person . The idea behind this approach is to write so that the reader is so close to the action that it is as if he is the one experiencing the action. The reader sees through the character’s eyes and has access to his thoughts. It’s a good theory, but it presents a real problem when we begin to consider backstory. All characters have a backstory, but we try to avoid telling the readers, unless it becomes part of the story. When the backstory is part of the story, it is called a flashback. When it isn’t—well, it just isn’t a very good thing to do. But here’s the problem. For a reader to truly experience the story as the principal character experiences it, the reader needs to know the backstory. If the reader doesn’t know the backstory then we have a Quantum Leap situation in which the reader is jumping into the body of someone else with no idea what has happened to the person before the jump. Ther...

E ditor’s Note: It’s always a good thing to keep your protagonist s happy, so I invited all three of the protagonists from the books I have in print to have dinner with me. During the meal, they consented to answer a few questions. Timothy Fish: Each of you have had the experience of being the protagonist in one of my novels, tell us something about your experience. Neal: Maybe one of the others should answer first. I fell like the odd guy out. I thought you’d made a mistake when you sent me that e-mail inviting me down here because I was one of your protagonists. I figured you meant to send it to Brother Wayne. Sara: I don’t know how to answer either. I was twelve at the time and I don’t think I even knew what a protagonist was. If someone hadn’t told me that I was in that book, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it. Geoff: Yeah, it’s not like we realized we were protagonists at the time. I’ve read what you’ve written and I’ll have to say that you wrote it just like it happene...

O kay, here’s the thing. If you blog, having a guest blogger is a good thing for a number of reasons. It gives you a break. It attracts readers from the other person’s blog. It gives the appearance of an endorsement of your blog. It helps you develop a friendship with your guests. With so many reasons why we would want to have guest bloggers, you might find it odd that I don’t like guest bloggers. That may be too strong of a statement. It isn’t like I’m going to go short-sheet their beds or something, but I’m not a big fan of guest blogging, in general. I see a number of problems with guest blogging. The first has to do with my personal experience with guest bloggers on other blogs. I follow a number of blogs and some of them have guest bloggers. When I see that a guest blogger has written the post, I tend to ignore or skim the post, even when the guest blogger has a blog that I follow. On top of that, guest posts tend to be longer than they really need to be. It’s as if the guest blog...

N ovember is National Novel Writing Month . It's also, National Buy Timothy Fish's Books Month , but that gets far less attention than NaNoWriMo . As you can see, November is upon us, which means that thousands of authors will be trying to generate a novel before the end of the month. This will be the tenth year for NaNoWriMo. I will not be participating. That doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t. Many people have “write a novel” written somewhere on their bucket list. If NaNoWriMo lets you cross that one off, go for it. One of the things people who've never completed a novel ask is how authors do it. As someone who has completed several books, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s not as hard as it looks . A lot of people resort to tricks and many of them are just that. Some people force themselves to write a minimum number of words per day. Want to write a book in a year? Write 220 words per day and by this time next year you’ll have an 80,...

F iction is different from non-fiction. A non-fiction book that can provide an answer to solve a problem faced by readers will practically sell itself. Take the For Dummies books for example. While they may not be the books of choice for a college textbook, they’re designed to provide answers about how to do very specific things. The topic each book covers is on the front and many people who need answers related to that topic purchase the book. What makes fiction different is that most readers aren’t looking for the book. Imagine that, with non-fiction, the reader is wondering around confused, looking for some solution. When we stick a book out there and wave a flag to say, “the solution’s over here.” The reader then makes a beeline for the book. Compare that to the fiction reader, who isn’t confused. He’s just looking for a good story, but rather than one flag waving author to serve as a beacon of hope, there are thousands. All else being equal, the reader need only pick up the fi...