Timothy's Thoughts

Y esterday, I mentioned a discussion I had with someone about the color or Francine Rivers’ novel Redeeming Love . I also described For the Love of a Devil as being green and moving into the territory of forest green or even black at points. There is another book that I’ve been working on some and I think of it as a brown. Not a dark brown, but it had definite earth tones to it, with a tinge of yellow that brightens it. Why are we able to think of stories in terms of color? Some are a fiery red. Some are as black as night. Some are a cold blue. Some are a soothing green. Some a relaxing teal. Some are a cheery yellow. Some are soft and tender pastels. What is it that allows us to say that? Color moves us emotionally. So does music, but music is active. Color is more static. Color tells us the state of the environment. The gray of a cloudy sky gives us the impression that it is a dreary day. The black of night hints at dangers lurking in the darkness. Blue is a color of authority....

I love when people disagree with me, especially when they stick around long enough to have a good discussion. The other day, I got into a discussion with a woman about the color of a novel. It started with a literary agent asking me what kinds of books I thought were missing in Christian literature. I answered that it seems like most of what is out there is either pastel, as is the case with romance and other forms of women’s fiction, or it is the dark browns and black of stories about demonic forces taking over the world. There isn’t much in between. In another part of the discussion, another commenter said something about Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love . I said that I had read the book and I saw it as being primarily aimed at women and it is more pastel. The woman disagreed, so I thought she was disagreeing about Redeeming Love being aimed at women. I went into some detail about how Francine Rivers’ had fashioned Redeeming Love in such a way that the woman had the primary lead a...

H ow do you describe a woman’s beauty? In part, a woman’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A man in Africa is likely to see beauty where a man in Japan does not. If you were to ask the man in Japan to describe the beauty of a woman, he would probably describe something very different than a man in India. And look at what they say is beauty on television. Apparently, a woman isn’t beautiful unless she has nothing covering her long thin legs and her breast are the size of melons. If that is what you’re thinking of when you’re asking how to describe a woman’s beauty, that isn’t hard. Just talk about legs and breasts and cleavage and people will know what you’re talking about. But is that true beauty? A woman like that has made herself a slave to the men she is trying to impress. If you find that when you are trying to describe the beauty of a woman, your mind’s eye focuses on those things that are below the neckline, you aren’t focusing on the true beauty of a woman. There’s nothin...

A s you may know, I'm not married nor have I ever been, so I'm not the ideal person to offer marriage advice. But Christian novelist Colleen Coble recently celebrated forty years of marriage and one piece of advice she offered recently is "Appreciate all the things your spouse does for you. Verbalize it in front of others too." And then she said, "Focus on your spouse's good qualities." Good advice. When was the last time you said something in public about something you like that your spouse does? Some people are so quick to tear criticize their spouses in public. I'll probably get in trouble for this, but it seems to me that women are the worst offenders. If nothing else, you can hear it in the tone of their voice when their husband does something they think is childish or silly. You don't see many men who will say something like, "You'll never guess what my wife did this week. She went out and bought a purse to match her shoes. Then ...

O ne of the popular things for literary agents to do on their blogs is to post first pages (with the author’s permission) and then provide comments and/or allow their readers to provide comments about what works and doesn’t work with the piece. The concept is that since agents typically see nothing more than the first page before rejecting a novel, the first page is very important. I’ve participated in these and have enjoyed doing so, but there’s a point where it isn’t fun. The other day, an author submitted a first page and it was brutal. You can usually find something good to say, but this was a case that I felt like I was lying to the author by mentioning the good parts. There wasn’t much hope in saving it. All of the people who responded were nice about it, but I couldn’t help but thing that if I were the author reading those comments I would cry. But then I looked at the author’s website. This particular author has a few books out, is a public speaker, and she gives writing cl...

W riters are often admonished to Show, Don’t Tell . My roots are in the Show Me State, so I’m all for showing, but I think there’s enough confusion about the topic that some writers just don’t get it. I don’t know if it will help anyone else, but when I think about this topic I think in terms of revealing , rather than showing . That may be confusing also, since you can reveal something by simply telling someone, but I imagine that there is something hidden behind a curtain. While the curtain is closed, I can’t help but wonder what is back there. Someone pulls back the curtain a little ways and I can see something. There is a table back there and something is on it, but I’m still not sure what it is. Then they open the current all the way and I can see, that a magician’s top hat is on the table and he is about to pull a rabbit from the hat. In a story, it isn’t just about action versus narrative. Narrative has a way of slowing down the story because it stops the clock, but the real ...

R esearch isn’t always good thing. I’ve seen some authors talking about all the research they did when they wrote their books. You open up the book and there it all is. One author was talking about visiting a farm and talking to the owner about all the stuff he did in a day. She rattled off a list of stuff he told her. In the book, it was pretty much all there. The problem is that when you’ve never lived in that environment, you might place high importance on something that the person you are interviewing sees as unimportant. You might assume that something he mentions is common when he is actually telling you about it because it is rare. And the truly ordinary stuff—the stuff novels are made of—may go unmentioned because it is so ordinary that he didn’t think you would want to hear about it. One reason people like reading novels is because they give us a view of what other people consider ordinary. It isn’t ordinary to us, because we don’t live in that environment, but it is for ...