Timothy's Thoughts

I have a love/hate relationship with starting a new novel. I love doing the outline and writing the synopsis. That’s were all the truly memorable stuff happens. After a reader reads a book and someone asks him what the book is about, he is going to relay portions of they outline or synopsis. He won’t remember most of the details of conversations in the book. He may remember a few select scenes, but mostly he will remember the story at a high level. What I hate about starting a new novel is the low word count. When I turned off my computer and went to bed the other day, I had 1,600 words and I hadn’t yet completed chapter one. There’s a lot of words between now and the end. If you look at the outline and synopsis, what you see are some of the high points. Things like “woman doesn’t have much to say about why she is there, but Sara discovers that the girl is the daughter of someone involved with the movie.” Those twenty-six words could turn into 2,600 words by the time I flesh out the s...

A couple of years ago I wrote about How to Describe Beauty and basically said that the best thing to do is to not try to describe it. I still think there’s a lot of truth in that, but today I want to look at some examples, both from the Bible, one of not describing beauty and the other of a more direct approach. The first example comes from Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In Genesis 12:4 it says, “Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.” Then in Genesis 12:11, 12 it says, “And it came to pass, when [Abram] had come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, ‘Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon. Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, they they shall say, “This is his wife”; and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.’” Abraham and Sarah were ten years apart, so she was 65 at the time. I’ve seen some attractive women who are about 65, but Abraham tries this stunt again when ...

L ast Friday I sat down with Sara and discussed my next book in that series. She was quit persuasive and through the magic of blogging, this week I am posting the first chapter of that book. Please feel free to leave any thoughts, good or bad, in the comment section, but keep in mind that this is the first draft and I haven’t edited it at all. The story for the novel is that Sara helps an out of work waitress find the evidence she needs to prove that David, the grandson of the owner of a movie studio, is the father of her child and to convince him to provide for his daughter. Chapter One Blood covered one side of the man’s face. No one could expect anyone with such a terrible wound to live for long if medical help didn’t arrive soon, but as Sara watched, he tore open a small packet of sweetener, dumped it in his coffee cup and stirred it with a spoon. He took a sip of his coffee and looked down at his watch. “Do you mind taking this to that man over there?” Sara heard Carla say fr...

I occasionally check my stats to see how people are finding my blog or websites. In the case of this blog, I get several hits a month that are somehow related to the question “what would Jesus do?” I suppose I asked for it, since I posted about the question “ What would Jesus do in an unhappy marriage? ” At the time, I thought it was appropriate because it is related to the theme of For the Love of a Devil , but this month someone found this blog by typing in “what would jesus do if his baby mama left.” You know, I really appreciate what Charles M. Sheldon wrote in In His Steps and I’m glad that a few years ago people started asking “What would Jesus do?” even if they didn’t read the book, but good grief. What would Jesus do if his baby mama left? Nothing. The question doesn’t make sense. The fact is that Jesus wouldn’t be in that situation. In the little over thirty years that Jesus walked this earth, he never married. The only reference to his bride in the bible is a future referen...

T he picture above may not look like much, but it is my attempt at determining where each of the various elements of a three plot structure go. What I found interesting is that some of the structure elements seemed to line up and others seemed to be ofset. Plot A and C run together some at the beginning and the end. I think that is because Sara and Neal are both involved in these scenes. It makes scene that we would keep moving along our structure, as we move along. Plot B doesn't really get going until we get to about page 90. But plot C has a similar gap in comparison to Plot B. Near the middle, things seem to run together more for A and B. But keep in mind that we aren't necessarily talking about them having the same scenes here, just that the midpoints occur close together in time. Anyway, the process wasn't very helpful, so maybe the best thing to do at this point is to start writing these scenes for each plot, with priority given to the A plot and try to work the othe...

O utlining a story is largely a problem of representation. When I outline, I begin with a generic structure and I fill in the gaps. In the end, what I have is a snapshot of the story and the beginnings of a synopsis. I focus on the A-Story because that is the most important part. That is where the primary action takes place. But in my latest outline I have a problem. Some of the subplots are rather healthy stories on their own. They tie back into the main plot, since part of what is happening in them is creating the antagonism for the A-story, but the outline for the A-story becomes very cluttered if we try to include much more than a reference to the subplots. What I have considered doing is outlining each plot separately, using the same generic structure. That isn’t hard to do, but it becomes a question of timing. In the novel , the various plots will all be taking place in and around each other, but how to tie the plot lines back together. In the ou...

W hen it comes to selling books, the most important thing is reader awareness. We can talk about craft a lot and that is important, but the fact is that if the author has put in the effort and enjoys reading the book he has written (if he’s honest with himself) there are other people out there who will enjoy reading it as well. My books have been well received by those who have purchased them. That says nothing about the people who looked at them and decided they weren’t interested. So let’s say that every book, no matter how well or poorly written has an audience that will enjoy reading it. The question that publishers are forced to ask isn’t whether there are people who will enjoy the book but whether the cost of production plus the cost of making those people aware of the book is low enough that the income from book sales will cover the cost. But there’s no need for me to restate the obvious. One of the things I was better about doing when my first book came out was to compare what ...