Category: Fiction Writers’ Advice

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Fiction Writers' Advice

Writing in the Dark

Writing takes a lot out of you. Writing a novel is no easy task, and makes huge demands on your time and energy. I wish there was a way to log the hours I spend just thinking through my story, without even getting into the time I spend with my head in a notebook or my hands on a keyboard. It’s definitely a full-time job.

When life itself becomes complicated, uncertain, heavy, and exhausting, it takes a toll on my writing life. In the midst of these troubled times, when many of us don’t have any idea what life will look like next week, somehow, we have to find ways to keep calm and carry on. But with all these new demands on our minds and emotions, we all know how easily writing can fall through the cracks.

But I know and you know we can’t stop writing. We can’t give up on what brings us joy and satisfaction just because it’s harder than usual. So, what should we do about it? I hope to offer a morale boost as well as share with you some practical tips on dealing with discouragement, overwhelm, and artistic frustration in your writing when life gets hard.

I want to ask you something. It’s kind of a personal question, but why are you writing at all? Answers will vary. Maybe you have a beautiful message of hope and courage the world needs to hear. Maybe you’ve created a fascinating world in your mind and you want to invite others to explore it. Maybe you have a cast of crazy characters partying in your brain who just can’t wait to get out and change society for the better. Never mind the specifics, what you must have as a writer is a passion that drives your work. Take some time to identify it. That’s your secret weapon.

You’re not just a writer. You’re a beacon of light. The world needs your story, and if you think about it, you know why. But even with that deeper reason to press on, sometimes your mind is just too exhausted to produce anything. I’ve recently had this go on for days at a time. But I’m learning how to cope with it.

 

One way is to switch to another project. Not just another writing project, but something else altogether. Writing shouldn’t be all you do. I’ve found that switching to drawing when I’m stuck in my writing can be refreshing and a good way to shake the doldrums that can set in when I’ve been staring at a blinking curser for too long. If you’re one of those people who claims they have only one talent, cut that out. You don’t either. Sure, you might not be as good at other things, but you could definitely improve and enjoy them if you tried. Find some hobbies. This is a great time to do that. Branch out and find other ways to let out your creativity and get in touch with your playful side. Believe me, you’ll surprise yourself.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve just kind of lost touch with a writing project. One of the best and simplest ways to get back into it is to read back over what you’ve written so far. Dive into your world with both feet, observe your characters, feel the rhythm of the plot. Give yourself permission to edit some of it, even. Don’t get carried away, but just restructuring a sentence here and there can give you the feeling of being in control of what you create again, and hope that you do, in fact, know how to improve it. Sometimes you can trick yourself into writing again if you do this enough.

Another tactic is to try writing about your project. Don’t write the book itself, open up a fresh document, or a notebook or journal and just start writing about it. You could write about where you think you’re stuck or what feelings are holding you back from going on, or you could do what I’ve found to be especially inspiring, which is to look at it more from the outside. Try writing an analysis of one of your favorite characters or subplots and talk about how you’ve woven in the themes and your imagery. This is how I convince myself that my story actually makes some sense or is genuinely interesting.

Maybe you feel like your writing is weak or missing something. First off, it probably isn’t as bad as you think, and second, you’re probably right. Improvement is always an option. Grab some writing books or find a YouTube channel for authors and learn something new. Take notes, and try to identify the areas where you think you could get better. I recently started watching Abbie Emmons’ channel and her emphasis on using inner conflict to drive the plot finally really clicked for me. Look out Nightstare. You’re going to be the strongest Dronefall book yet.

Finally, remember it’s okay to rest. You’re not an unbreakable machine in a word factory pumping out perfect novels seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. That’s not the goal of an author. You don’t have to beat out 10,000 words a day every day. Give yourself days off. Take time to enjoy life, even when you haven’t hit your writing goals for the week. Dream about your book, brainstorm, play around with wacky possibilities and unlikely alternatives for your plot as you chill out on your porch swing or play fetch with your dog. Sometimes things just take time. Life can be overwhelming. Don’t force the joy out of writing by having unrealistic expectations for yourself.

I hope something on this little list is helpful to you if you find yourself discouraged over your writing today. I’ll have to keep it around to remind myself sometimes. Stress and chaos can drag you down and depressing turns of events in the world really do have effect on creativity. But there are ways to keep your spirits up ad keep writing. So, remember why you write, and keep shining in the dark.

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Fiction Writers' Advice

On Breaking the Rules

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing:

  1. Never open a book with weather.
  2. Avoid prologues.


Okay, so I’ve seen this floating around the internet, and I get annoyed every time I read through it. I thought I would finally raise my objections here. First off, I’ll admit I had to google this Elmore chap. I had never heard of him. Apparently, he was writing crime thrillers and suspense in the 1950s. Cool. Probably why I never heard of him.

But anyway. I have nothing particularly against Mr. Leonard. Thriller writers are typically quite good at what they do. But I sometimes wish fewer writers would blindly follow “rules” set by pulp authors. In fact, in my opinion, anybody in a creative field who claims to have actual rules rather than guidelines is probably bluffing.

Okay, but before this post becomes a formless rant, let’s get to the main content, shall we? I want to take these “rules” and examine them one by one. Let’s take a closer look and see how much good advice we actually have here.

#1 Never open a book with weather.

This is a classic. Speaking of classics, you can probably name one or two that open with weather. As I find with most of these rules, there is a right and a wrong way to break it. Why are we so persistently cautioned against talking about the weather? Being a reader who loves atmosphere, I tend to have few complaints when an author sets the scene with a heavy summer rain, or a dark autumn day with a storm looming in the west. Also, don’t forget that weather effects characters’ moods and plans, so it can actually become a plot-mover in a lot of cases.

#2 Avoid prologues.

I know why people say this. Too often authors will use the prologue as a backstory-dump. It can also delay our meeting with the protagonist, since they often take place in a setting remote from that of the main plot. But a prologue doesn’t have to be dry and unrelated. I like to think of a prologue as the pre-credits scene in a movie. Keep it short, keep it intriguing. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with prologues. You just have to do them right.

#3 Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

I use “said” the vast majority of the time. I also use “asked” when appropriate. Sometimes it just sounds odd to use “said” for something that isn’t a statement. Also, if someone is whispering or screaming, I will mention that as well. You know those “Said is Dead” infographics you see hanging around the internet? I am with Leonard here, to a degree. Words like “wondered”, “warned”, or “mused” are usually redundant if the dialogue is written strongly enough to indicate that the character is, in fact “warning” another character, for example. I will, however, use words like this when I’m taking a slightly ironic or humorous tone now and then.

#4 Never use and adverb to modify the verb “said.”

So, I think the modern horror of adverbs is reactionary and slightly unreasonable. There are legitimate times and places for adverbs. But let’s talk about the reasonable side of this. People tell authors to avoid adverbs because it is sometimes a sign that the verb you’re using isn’t strong enough. As we just discussed, Leonard doesn’t want us using any verbs stronger than “said” here. So…I think what he’s getting at is, you must use the dialogue itself to convey how it was delivered. Not a bad goal. But what about cases when the words and the way they are delivered actually contradict each other? This is a place where I will often use an adverb. Once again, it depends on your voice. For me, adverbs help me write ironically.

#5 Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

I’m kind of hoping he’s excluding dialogue, here. I consider myself very stringy with my exclamation points. My WIP is around 112k words long. I did a quick search and found it to have 88 exclamation points—all in dialogue. So, you’ve got a 13-year old girl and her unruly Irish wolfhound. A storm is coming. The dog won’t come home. So, I guess she’s like, “Here boy. Come.” Okay. Why? A burning drone hurdles out of the sky. “Watch out.” “Run.” “Ow.” I think I might have made my point. You know when you can totally exclamation points? When someone makes an exclamation.

#6 Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

Never. Okay, so “suddenly” can be a crutch word. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its place. If something actually is happening suddenly—as in, the characters are jolted by it—you can say it happened suddenly. Just use discretion that you aren’t just using it as a quick transition. Don’t say the character suddenly went to make a sandwich. That probably wasn’t that sudden, actually. But if the sandwich suddenly explodes, you probably don’t have to delete “suddenly” in that case. “All hell broke loose” is a cliché. Yeah, avoid it in your narration, but remember clichés are perfectly fine in dialogue.

#7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

If he’s talking about spelling out accents and dialect here, I actually really agree with this one. I really don’t like seeing accents spelled phonetically. It never sounds right in my brain when I’m reading it, and sometimes I really don’t know what the character was supposed to be saying. This also is going to make no sense if the POV character actually has the accent. In the character’s mind, that is how the words are pronounced when written correctly. You’re confusing everybody here. Sorry, this is one of my pet peeves.

#8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

 Oh boy. Here we go. I think this big ugly myth right here comes from the lie that everyone should imitate Hemmingway. Don’t try to be Hemmingway. There is literally no reason to imitate someone else’s style. I would argue that this lack of physical description of characters is actually making characters’ personalities flatter. I’m not talking about in Hemmingway here, I’m talking about in the multiple generations of non-descriptive underwritten characters that followed. Guys, description is your friend. Please describe your characters. You’re an artist. You paint images with words in other people’s minds. Paint your characters. Go beyond hair and eye color and approximate age. I want to see what you see when you write. All you have to do to avoid hurting your story with “too much” character description is make sure you don’t drop it all in one place. Make a first impression. Tell us what we would notice on first meeting your character. Then start weaving it into the action. You’re going to do fine. Don’t be afraid of description.

#9 Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

You guys have my permission to ignore this list. Leonard has basically told us now that it is not an author’s job to describe people places or things. Great. You know I think Van Gough would have been a lot better if he hadn’t used so many colors in his paintings. Probably why he did to poorly. I can’t help but wonder how good this guy really was at writing suspense, now. I don’t know how you write suspense without any visceral sensations. That’s what description is for. You use it to put your readers in this incredibly sharp-focus setting you’ve created. You use it to create a movie in your readers’ heads so they can literally see what’s happening on the page. Call me an upstart for challenging this. I’m just not a fan of underwritten novels, and I think people like this expert here really have pushed their opinions on newer writers and intimidated them with their elitism to the point where everyone is really skimping on artistry. Do what you want at the end of the day, but I really like descriptive writing. And I think if you can do it in this day and age you’ve got quite an edge on your competition.

#10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

 Let’s wrap this up on a positive note, shall we? This is solid advice. You’d be surprised what you can get away with just not including. Often, if you’re bored with what’s going on, your readers are going to be too. So, avoid the infodump, the dull backstory, the commute to work. Get to the good parts as fast as you can and look for ways to cut filler. Your readers will appreciate it. Good job Leonard. This was a good tip.

So, see how I feel about rules? I understand we have to have rules in certain parts of our lives. If you don’t follow the rules as a brain surgeon, people could die. But as an artist, you’re probably not going to kill anyone by experimenting. As an author, you have to find your own voice and your own style. You’re doing nobody a favor by trying to be the next Hemmingway. You have to be the first you.

Thanks anyway, Elmore Leonard.

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Fiction Writers' Advice

The #1 Mistake Christian Authors Make

Set aside your author identity and think about your reading life for a minute. I have a question for you. How many times have you been frustrated, unsatisfied, or downright bored by Christian fiction?
Let me say something right now: Christians do not have an inherent disability when it comes to creative pursuits. There isn’t something wrong with us spiritually that should hinder our ability to create, neither is there something wrong with our worldview that makes it destroy art whenever it is at its foundation. In fact, God gave Christian artists the opportunity to create things of eternal beauty and value. So, why is it that so much Christian fiction is glaringly sub-par?
I see one mistake at the root of the problem. One. That should be good news. The solution is a simple shift in mindset and a re-evaluation of your mission. So, here’s what I think it is. It might sound a little off at first, but hear me out.
You’re over-spiritualizing your work.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I definitely view my art as a mission and a ministry. I try to involve God in everything I do, and I want what I do to make an eternal difference. But what am I doing exactly? I’m writing stories. Making things up. Playing with imaginary friends and dreaming up imaginary worlds for them to interact with. When it’s time to write, it’s time to throw my agenda out the window, forget who’s going to read it and how it might change their lives, and focus on some serious goofing off.
As a Christian fiction writer, you can be a lot of things. You may be a healer, a teacher, a prophet, or a warrior poet. But first and foremost, there’s one thing you’ve got to be to write great fiction. Are you ready? This is going to be hard to swallow.
You need to be an entertainer.
That sounds really profane. To Christian ears “entertainment” can have negative connotations. This culture worships entertainment. Entertainment is an idol, a drug, a distraction. It leads us away from what’s important in the pursuit of mindless or even godless pleasure. Here’s one of the lies that builds the foundation of Christian fiction’s problem.
Entertainment is not always evil. It can actually be good. It would be, more often, if Christian authors could realize this. Entertainment is a powerful and beautiful medium for truth. Through entertainment, truth can penetrate and blossom in ways it never could in a cold dry textbook. Entertainment captures the reader’s imagination and immerses them in a new world. If you’re a Christian, and a writer, that world will naturally and organically be permeated and undergirded by the ultimate truth and love of God. 
I have a practical step for you, if you think you could improve your writing with this kind of mindset-shift. Think about how you decide to write a story. What’s your process? Do you sit down to plot and say to yourself, “I’m going to write a story about (insert moral, value, or message)?” Please don’t do that! Do everyone a favor. Don’t start with your moral or theme. Start with your character, your setting, your situation, maybe even just your atmosphere. Don’t even think about what you want to teach your audience until you’re halfway into the story. I’m serious.
Christian authors, by and large, need to lighten up and allow God to work through them in his own good time, in his own way. There’s a very good chance, if you put your story first, the message is going to change a few times. That’s not a bad thing. That’s proof that your story is alive, not just a machine that does one thing stiffly and mechanically. A person picking up a novel, no matter how spiritual their interest in it is, really hopes it’s going to entertain them. They want to enjoy watching your characters, explore a fascinating setting, freak out over your plot-twists—they might even want to laugh now and then.
If this doesn’t really sound like what you want to do with your writing, I have some advice for you: don’t write fiction. You could write sermons, devotionals, bible-studies, Christian lifestyle blog-posts…but if you don’t think entertainment is a worthy occupation, you shouldn’t be writing fiction. Fiction can be instructive, thought-provoking, and awareness-raising, but it won’t get a snowball’s chance if it isn’t entertaining.

So, Christian fiction-writers, and Christians who want to be fiction-writers, dive in and write a fun story, or a thrilling story, or a humorous story, or a story that stirs emotions and makes you fall in love with your own characters. Trust God to write a deep meaningful story that springs from your love for him. He will. 

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Fiction Writers' Advice

How to Write Immersive Scenes

Good immersive writing is nothing short of pure magic. To be able to conjure up bold tactile images and surround your reader with your story in stereo—that’s what takes good writing to an unforgettable level.

But how do you do it?

Details, Details.

I know you get a lot of modern writing gurus warning against too many details. We have a lot of sparse, un-atmospheric, writing out there as a result of people taking them a little too literally. For the most part, you actually do want details in your writing. Details are important for characterization, building a setting, creating suspense, evoking emotions, foreshadowing and hinting, etc. Just be careful with your timing and try to incorporate them into your beats. Don’t be afraid of them. If they really do slow you down your story, you’ll probably be able to tell when you read through it. Only cut what actually needs cut.   

Remember who you are.

That is, stay in your chosen point of view character’s mind. Staying focused with your point of view is a major help in keeping your reader in the scene. If you limit yourself to showing the things that your point of view character sees, feels, hears, and thinks, you’ll have a good start to knowing what details will actually help rather than harm the immersive quality of your story.

Keep moving.

One thing to be aware of is long exchanges of dialogue without any action beats. I’ve found it’s a good general rule to not let your characters sit around and converse—that is, avoid the Counsel of Elrond. Even if you have a dialogue-based scene, try giving your characters something physical to do, even if it’s just walking down a street. I don’t really know why this works so well, but it does. My dialogue becomes much more natural and interesting if my characters are doing something—anything—besides just talking to each other’s faces.

Stay grounded.

Don’t forget your setting at any point. Every scene happens in a very specific physical environment. It’s a certain time of day, in a particular place, with particular lighting and conditions. Keep your characters interacting with it. If it’s a hot day, this will affect what your characters do—how long they can keep running, how many times they pick up their water bottle, probably their tolerance for frustrating tasks. If it’s dark, remember they won’t be able to read subtle facial expressions. (I’ve definitely made this mistake.) These considerations will help your reader remember where they are, and stay there in their minds.

Those are my tips. Writing immersive scenes takes practice, and I’m still learning. But I hope you can improve your own writing by applying some of the tricks I’ve listed here.

Writing Challenge:

Find a scene in your current WIP that feels boring and flat. Take everything out but the basic action and the dialogue and re-write it. If there’s hardly any action, give your readers something to do. You could also experiment placing the same action in a completely different setting. Don’t hold back on details. You can trim them when you’re finished writing the scene. Compare the two scenes. Did it help?

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Fiction Writers' Advice

Christian Speculative Writers: Your Mission Matters

Don’t underestimate the power of this genre group. You probably do. I did. I have to admit that even though I am a diehard speculative lover not to mention an almost strictly speculative author, I only recently realized why it was so important.

Fantasy, science fiction, and futuristic genres are still somewhat neglected in the Christian market. The vast majority of modern Christian fiction still falls under “women’s fiction.” I feel like I probably rant about this all the time, so I won’t go into it again. All I’m going to say is that God created us with vast imaginative powers, and they were never meant to be limited to creating the love-interests of our dreams and stopping there. We’re made for so much more.

I don’t think it’s any accident that some of the most powerful and popular books and series of all time have been speculative fiction. The stories that draw masses of people tend to be the ones that expand our world to new horizons. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia…there is a reason those fandoms are huge. People are magnetized by the idea of worlds beyond what we know.

I think there may be a little resistance in some Christian writers and readers toward getting too creative with our fictional worlds. This is natural. It can be uncomfortable mixing the deepest truth in the universe with our own imagined realities. And yes, this is a unique challenge of Christian speculative fiction. But it certainly isn’t an insurmountable one. It is possible to create an entirely different world from what we know that doesn’t contradict any element of truth. But it takes and author with God-given wisdom and creative stamina to accomplish it.

If you think you’ve got what it takes, maybe you’d better start writing. Because Christian spec-fic is important. Here’s why:

Society has a lot of lies it’s really fond of, if you haven’t noticed. Once of these is the idea that God is small. They want to make him like all the other gods. One of many. There’s one here, one there, a different one on this island, another in that village. But the Judeo-Christian God was never and is not a local deity. They also keep saying that we’re going to grow out of him. They’ve been asserting that for a rather long time. But he’s not a god of the past. No matter how drastically the world evolves—flying cars, laser weapons, interstellar travel, nuclear war, come what may—he’ll still be the same God as he was when he hovered over the waters.

So, what does this have to do with spec-fic? Everything. This is the underlying implication in all Christian speculative fiction. You may be in a galaxy far, far away. He’d be there, and he’d be the same. You could be in another world, where reality only vaguely paralleled ours, where society was unrecognizable, where fantastic beasts roamed free under any number of moons or suns and the truth of Christianity would still be the truth. Everything can change, but God remains the same. He has no reason to adapt.

We know this for a fact. Christianity can be perfectly compatible with realities beyond your wildest imagination. A hundred years ago, our daily life would have been science-fiction. A thousand years ago, it would have been fantasy. Rome thought Christianity was a passing craze. Rome fell, and here we are, fifty years after landing on the moon.

Society thinks surely if the world as we knew it was turned upside-down, the illusion of Christian truth would dissolve. But looking at history, we know better. Our God is not just god of the mountain, or god of the temple—he’s god of the universe. He’s God of all possibility. If there turned out to be a multiverse, he’d be God of that, too.

And that’s what we, as Christian speculative writers, acknowledge. So, use that fantastic imagination of yours. Explore the far reaches of possibility. God is not small and truth is not fragile. Your sweeping speculative epics can proclaim just that. That’s the amazing mission of Christian speculative fiction. 

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Fiction Writers' Advice writing for Christ

Writing for Christ: Avoiding the Instant Conversion

Welcome to the first post of this series on writing Christian fiction. Brew a cup of tea, open the window to hear the birds outside, and we can get started on today’s subject: how to avoid forcing a character to go from nonbeliever to believer in an abrupt unnatural way. If you’re like me, you want to make a conversion into a strong satisfying character arc, not a quick fix that no one will believe.

I think it’s important to note a conversion to Christianity, finding Jesus, seeing the Light, is going to be a major element of your character’s arc. It really can just be a quick footnote or a twist to quickly solve problems you might have to use your brain to solve otherwise. Please don’t be tempted to use it as a shortcut. In real life, we know it’s anything but a shortcut.

Now compared to real life, novels are highly concentrated. Characters are expected to change somehow over the course of the story. We love dramatic character arcs. In Christian fiction, character change is often even more emphasized. Back in the day, Christian novels almost always had a conversion scene. It was about as expected as the kiss on the last page of a romance novel. (Do you ever just start flipping to the last pages of a bunch of romance novels in succession? So gross.)

Coming to Christ is a lot like falling in love. We all hate the insta-love trope. We hate it because it feels rushed and fake. Because it basically never happens that way in real life. Falling in love is a massively life-changing process—coming to Christ, even more so. Please don’t rush these things.

What are some ways to make the transition realistic and satisfying in fiction?

  • Character was raised Christian but drifted. In this case, the character actually already has some foundation on which to build their relationship. Admittedly, something was a bit off about the relationship in the past. The character probably let a lie come between them and Christ. They need to overcome that lie over the course of the story to come back to Him. And look! You’re already getting set up with a character arc. This makes a strong believable storyline if you can get a good backstory in place.

 

  • Character is a seeker who’s been on the edge of Christianity for a long time. Once again, in this case, your character is at a starting point. They’ve already started learning the truth even if they don’t fully accept it yet. They might not realize it, but a character in this position is already in the process of reevaluating their worldview and is ready for a paradigm-shift.
  • Character becomes desperate for divine intervention. This makes for a much more dramatic story than the first two and should be handled carefully to keep it from being too melodramatic. Under these circumstances, your character is in dire straits and they’re hoping for a miracle. This miracle can come in many forms, according to the theme of your story and the specifics of the situation, but in any case, God shows up in an intense and earth-shattering way. Beware that there’s probably going to be a lot of moral and emotional mopping-up to do in this wake of this, and don’t end the book too fast with “happily ever after.”

 

  • Character has some ulterior motive, but later realizes it’s real. I don’t know why I keep having to equate this topic with romance, but this is basically the fake dating trope. For whatever reason, your character is going along with a religious façade, trying to look like a good person, please somebody, whatever. Maybe they’re an organ virtuoso down on their luck. But they find themselves drawn to Christ in ways they don’t want to acknowledge at first. Eventually they find themselves in a situation where they have to ask themselves if it’s real. (Please use this one more often, people! It’s a really wholesome antithesis of the Christian-in-name-only thing.)
  • Series! Obviously, if there’s the danger of rushing a character arc, considering stretching it out over a series is always an option. This opens up plenty of opportunity to get into the details of a complete change of world-view. Now you have time to explore the struggles of being a new Christian. That’s an important topic that the world needs to see, so if you feel called this way, go for it. Writing a series can be great fun. (If you’re up for it. I should know.) You’ll learn so much about your characters that you never would have known otherwise.

You may or may not want to include a conversion in you book. Think about the story you want to tell, and the theme you want to highlight. We live in a different age of Christian art—one with more freedom to think outside the box and tackle new issues. If your story feels too rushed or unrealistic, try experimenting with the above variations. If your story feels stale and predictable, maybe God wants you to tell a different one. There are many deep and thematically rich events in the Christian life besides conversion. Don’t feel pressured to build your story around that if your creative energy doesn’t naturally take you there.

Coming up next, in a similar vein, we’ll be talking about if and how to lay out the whole plan of salvation in your novel. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, thoughts on any of this? Can you think of any examples of books or movies that show conversion well? What are your own tendencies when writing redemption character arcs?

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Fiction Writers' Advice writing for Christ

Introducing Writing for Christ

 
Okay, guys. I’ve got a blog series in store for you. I’ve outlined five posts on topics I think every Christian fiction writer will find useful. All the topics respond to issues I commonly find in Christian fiction—and hear other readers complaining about. I’d be delighted if you would join me for the next however many weeks this ends up taking us, to get a fresh look at our call as Christian fiction writers.
 
I’ve designed each post to minimize musing and fluff and maximize new material and practical advice to think outside the box and actually improve your fiction over the course of the series. There will be bullet-points, I promise.
 
The topics we’ll cover range from the usual things like the challenges of keeping content clean and making your book a story, not a sermon, to things we discuss less often like how to fairly and accurately represent non-Christian characters and remembering the pastors and clerical figures can be complete acting characters too. We’ll talk about showing conversion and character-change realistically and if and how the full Gospel should be spelled out in the book. I’ve done a lot of exploring on these topics and am eager to share my findings with you.
 
So, you might want to subscribe if you haven’t yet. And also, I would love to get some feedback and discussion going during this series. I’m sure these are topics you’ve considered and have plenty of insight of your own to share. Your questions and comments would add a great deal of value to the whole experience for everybody. Feel free to talk back.
 
Who’s in?
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Fiction Writers' Advice Poetry Writing

Why Write Poetry?

If you normally write fiction, poetry may or may not be something you think much about. Maybe you’re so absorbed in mapping out your story-world, developing your characters, and fine-tuning your plot that you feel like writing poetry would be a distraction. After all, novel-writing is hard work, and takes focus. Why should you divert your creative energy into trying poetry?

I’ll admit now that I’ve written poetry for longer than I’ve written fiction. I don’t get absorbed in poetry-writing like I do with my novels. In fact, though I do consider myself a poet, I really don’t write poetry as often as I would like. The inspiration comes randomly and typically out of nowhere. But every time I find myself writing a poem, I can feel that I’m doing something constructive—not only for my growth as a poet, but for my fiction-writing as well.

Writing and reading poetry changes how you handle writing prose. I’m confident about that. Poetry stretches your descriptive power, and makes you search for a way to put a twist on everyday thoughts. When I write poetry my awareness of clichés and tired metaphors skyrockets.  Practicing these skills definitely crosses over into my prose-writing.

Goals for poetry are going to vary according to the poet—and according to the poem. A lot of the time, the poems I write are simply capturing a mood. I’m fairly abstract, and I don’t often write about specific situations or issues. A lot of the time I can’t really explain what a given poem is about, because it’s more about creating an emotional atmosphere than anything else. If I use what I’ve learned from writing poetry and apply it to my prose, I can create a vivid atmosphere for scenes in my novels.

You might have a more literal style. Supposing you write in plainer speech about definite subjects. You’re still improving artistically if you put thought into your work. You’re still playing creatively with words, learning to see things from unexpected perspectives and through new metaphors. This will force you to see situations in your fiction from new angles—which can do nothing but good for your prose and overall creativity.

So, even if you think you don’t have a talent for poetry and that your creative writing skill is limited to fiction, I would encourage you to try your hand at poetry even if it’s just as an exercise. And you might find you like it enough to continue composing poems for their own sake.

On a quick final note, I have an announcement to make. I really haven’t hyped this much, but I’ve just released a small book of my own poetry on Amazon. If you read poetry at all, check it out. I’m excited to finally share it with my readership.
Categories
Creating Characters Fiction Writers' Advice

20 Prying Questions for Your Characters

If you’ve done a lot of character questionnaires before, you probably know where your main character was born, the names and ages of their siblings, their favorite food, their favorite color…those things you timidly ask your new pen-pal in the first letter. But here’s the thing: there’s absolutely no reason to be shy with your characters. All those highly personal questions you would never ask a real person in an interview—those are the things you really need to know.

You could think up a lot of these prying questions, and I would advise you to think of some that would be particularly relevant to your character in their particular story. But to start you off, here’s a list of twenty deep questions to flesh out your characters.

1. How is your relationship with God?

2. Have you ever been in love?

3. Did you have a good childhood?

4. How is your relationship with your parents?

5. What makes you angry?

6. Are you comfortable with emotions?

7. What about you do you feel the world won’t accept?

8. What is your worst fear?

9. What’s something you feel completely incapable of?

10. Who would you die for?

11. What do you dream about?

12. What always makes you laugh?

13. What do you look for in a friend?

14. What are you most ashamed of?

15. What is your earliest memory?

16. What do you miss the most about your past?

17. Who do you owe the most to?

18. What would you change about yourself?

19. Have you ever come close to dying?

20. What do you hope for the most?

For best results, I would suggest writing the answers first-person in your character’s voice. You can use as many or as few of these questions as you want, and feel free to think up your own. I think you’ll find it gives you a lot of inspiration for character-arcs and even plot twists for your story.
Categories
Fiction Writers' Advice

5 Elements of a Fandom-Enabled Story

 

 
 
 
We all want to be the author of a story that triggers the explosion of a new fandom. We want our readers to be as excited to read our story as we are to write it. We want to inspire fan-artists to bring our scenes to life in their art. We want to inspire fan-fiction writers to use our characters and settings to sharpen their own skills. There’s nothing quite like seeing a truly satisfied fan-base spring up around a great story.
But what makes that happen? Okay, I’m not going to pretend I understand the magic and mystery of fandoms. I have no idea why fangirls and fanboys do what they do– OTP’s and headcanons and AU’s and all that—but when I look at the stories that spark these great fandoms, there are elements they all have.
I’ve isolated five for the sake of this post. I’m sure there are other things, but let’s look at these five for now:
1. Vivid Characters
Often really vivid. In fact, I would almost recommend pushing it a little. Lean into your characters’ unique qualities. If you find that magnifying your characters makes them feel flat or fake, deepen them rather than mellowing them out.
Your readers want characters that are so clear in their minds that they can survive outside the context of the book. This is the concept behind the alternative universe thing. If a character is self-contained enough, we can imagine what kind of a high-school student they would be. Think about your characters now. What would be constant if you changed up their situation. That’s what you need to emphasize to make them real. Put them in a completely different role. What doesn’t change? That’s who they actually are. Play it up.
2. Humor
I just wrote a whole post about how essential this is. The ability to amuse people with your writing is a super-power. Don’t overlook it. People remember the humorous parts of stories. They’re going to re-read the funny scenes in your book. Your characters’ quips and clever lines might even enter your readers’ repertoire of in-jokes.
Though fiction can accomplish a great deal more than simple entertainment, readers greatly appreciate being entertained. If a story makes me laugh, that’s a solid sign that the author is succeeding in entertaining me in the way many of us crave the most.
3. A “Wow” Element
I couldn’t think of anything more technical to call this. The “Wow” element is something that sparks a reader’s imagination. It can manifest itself in countless ways—a fascinating culture or event in historical fiction, an amazing species of dragon or a magical object in fantasy—a unique alien race or impressive use of technology in sci-fi. Readers want to be captivated by something interesting. I doubt that I’m the only one who is often attracted to stories initially by something about them that is simply cool.
4. Emotions
All of them. If there’s one thing that’s obvious about fandoms it’s that they want “all the feels.” But don’t get hung up on one emotion. Tragedy is great, we love sobbing. But nobody really wants to cry for the entire book—in fact, I doubt that it would be physically possible. We want to feel rage, jealousy, delight, terror, embarrassment, wonder, curiosity, satisfaction…on and on it goes. If we don’t get the whole ride, we feel kind of cheated.
I’m not that great with this one sometimes, I’ll admit. I get pretty caught up in the intricate workings of my plot and sometimes forget that, though a complex sound plot is a good thing, nothing can beat a story that makes you feel things. All these emotional ups and downs connect a reader with a character and make them care about what happens next.
5. Originality
Originality is so sought-after and so elusive. It’s hard to measure and define—and probably impossible to teach. I suppose there’s really nothing original under the sun, and yet everyone knows a rip-off when they see one. Some new authors obsess so much over originality that they paralyze themselves for fear of doing something that’s been done before. Still others seem to make no attempt and cut and paste nearly to the point of plagiarism.
I think the key to originality is a well-exercised imagination. Don’t be afraid to play with an idea in your head. Keep your possibilities open. Try putting that spin or this twist on what you’ve got. Mix, match and crossbreed those wild ideas in your head. After all, isn’t that the fun part?   

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