Timothy's Thoughts

E ditor's Note: This week has been busy, so I've asked one of my characters, Pastor Wayne Hiller, to write today's article. So, while I rest, please enjoy this post. The Ten Stories in the Bible Before we get into what I have to say, let me just say that you ought not to believe him when he says he’s resting. Timothy and I have discussed this topic extensively and even as I type these words, I feel as though he is right here with me. Perhaps that’s because he’s looking over my shoulder. But on to our topic. I want to talk about the ten stories you will find in the Bible. I hope that you’ve read the Bible at some point in your life. With that assumption, I know that you’re aware that there are more than ten stories in the Bible. If all you do is read Hebrews 11, you’ll find more than ten stories mentioned, but if you consider the stories that we tell, we can classify them in about ten different stories. I’ll use the labels the late Blake Snyder gave them because t...

W hen we write, we often insert information that isn’t important. Some people call this backstory , but this information doesn’t have to deal with backstory at all. It could be description of the current scene or it could be foreshadowing as well, but we stick it in, thinking the reader needs this information to understand why a character will do what he is doing or think what he is thinking. Most of the time, this excessive information takes away from the story and should be deleted. Imagine that your story is a ticking clock. With each action word, the clock ticks forward, carrying the reader along with it. But suppose you don’t use an action word. Consider this example: Tom brought his Camry to a halt. Opened the door and ran around to the front of the car to see how badly the man was injured. The man was in his late fifties and carried a cane. The cane was on the ground. “Are you alright?” Tom asked. Notice how the description of the man brings the ticking clock to a stan...

W e've looked at the topic of flashbacks before and we compare them to the topic of backstory , saying that these are two very different things. Now, it can be noted that flashback is one way of revealing backstory , but not all flashback is backstory . The important distinction we made before was that flashback is a means of telling a story out of chronological sequence, while backstory , is from a story that precedes our current story. In For the Love of a Devil ,there is a scene in which the protagonist recalls an early encounter with his wife (pg 166). She was not his wife at the time, but rather it occurs when they are both in high school. She isn’t well liked by some of the other students, due to the rumors going around about her and her family, but Geoff makes a small effort to show kindness to her. We ask ourselves, is this backstory or flashback . Certainly, there is an element of backstory to it, since this could be part of the story of how Geoff and Heather fe...

S ome people say that Christian fiction is much better than it used to be. I suppose that might be true, if you’re comparing the current state of affairs to the prairie romances of the past, but when I think of Christian fiction of the past, I think of titles like Pilgram’s Progress , Not My Will and In His Steps . The fact is that most of the current Christian fiction doesn’t measure up to the quality of writing we find in Pilgram’s Progress and Not My Will . One of the big problems I’ve seen in contemporary Christian writing is what I will call corny writing . We see it often and I fear we all have a tendency to do it. I’m not excluding myself from this by any means. It usually shows up in the form of Christianese that should have more significant meaning than what it does. To provide an example, I’m going to pick on For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll by Nancy Mehl. In part, I’m choosing this book as an example because it is on of the winners at the most recent ACFW conference i...

T his article is going to tell you when you should and shouldn't use telegraphing. I hope I didn't spoil it for you. Years ago, travel was long and difficult. You didn’t just head off to someone’s house at someone’s house. You might get there and the guy wouldn’t be home. It might not be so bad for you, but your horse might not like you all that much, since she’d have to carry you all the way back. And telephones were scarce, so you couldn’t just call up your friend and discuss when you would show up. Instead, you’d send a short message by telegraph, “Arriving April 17 by rail.” It’s just enough to tell your friend you’re coming. What Telegraphing Is Telegraphing in writing is very similar. Instead of sending a message saying, “I’m coming,” we’re telling the reader what to expect. This goes beyond foreshadowing , although they are closely related and what one person calls telegraphing another might call foreshadowing . If we look at the extremes, foreshadowing is only ...

C haracters are supposed to stay in those nice little boxes we create for them. At the very least, they ought to stay in their books. They aren’t supposed to be able to escape Fantasia, but somehow one did. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. If there was ever a character of mine who could do such a thing, it would be Sara. Last week, I sat down with a couple of other protagonist s and we had a discussion, but Sara wasn’t very happy when I left, but I pushed that aside. That is, until Sara showed up in my office to talk to me. ”We’ve got to talk,” she said. I pushed back my chair and looked at her. It isn’t often that a figment of my imagination shows up like that. ”Talk away,” I said. ”I want to know about you trying to kill me off.” I didn’t try to kill you off,” I said. “Not exactly.” ”But you said…” ”Let me explain,” I said. “I didn’t know you very well when I was considering that. I was still looking at the stor...

A question came up the other day about Flashback and Backstory . Backstory , as you know, is considered a bad thing to include in a story—or at least in the opening pages—and yet many writers use flashbacks .  If you look at Where the Red Fern Grows , which is always a great example to use when talking about how to write a novel , the vast majority of the book is flashback . We, obviously, can’t be talking about the same thing with these two terms, but where do we draw the line and what’s the difference. A Couple of Definitions Before we talk about the differences, we need a couple of definitions. Some people define backstory as narrative interjected into a story that tells what happened before the current action. That definition makes it sound an awful lot like flashback . That isn’t very helpful for our purposes. I prefer the Merriam-Webster definitions: backstory a story that tells what led up to the main story or plot (as of a film) flashback interruption of chronologic...