The Destiny of One: 2011

10 things

Christmas Lights in San Antonio

6:57 AM

Multitudes on Mondays

Multitudes on Mondays; Family Movie Fun

9:36 AM

Authors I Love

Multitudes on Mondays; Christmas Time

8:07 AM

my books

The Destiny of a Few is here!!!

8:23 AM

Adventure Between the Pages

Book Review; For Life and for Eternity

3:00 AM

Adventure Between the Pages

Adventure Between the Pages: No Matter What

6:00 AM

my books

The Destiny of a Few Blog tour!!!

8:07 AM

faith

Multitudes on Mondays; Through The Bad Times

10:19 AM

faith

Multitudes on Mondays; Parents

7:32 AM

learning

Writing Saturday; Weaving Life Lessons Part 2

8:27 AM

Sermons and Soap Boxes

We can all give sermons. We all have lists of the social ills that we would like to fix. We all have causes we are passionate about, but should they be in your book? The key to not only having good lessons but lessons that people will listen to and learn from it to write from your heart, not your soap box and weaving them through the story, not dumping them into sermons.

Attitude

Are you going into a story with an axe to grind or chip on your shoulder? That will produced a story written you of frustration and anger that will more likely push people away then convict them of their sins. Examine you attitude toward the lessons you are trying to teach and make sure you are always writing out of love.

Audience

I cannot tell you how many times I have opened a book marketed to conservative Christians and/or home-schoolers and found that the book had lessons that can best be described at preaching to the choir. When you write a book, make sure you keep in mind your target audience. If you are writing to home-schoolers, they probably already know the down sides to public schools. If you are writing to girls who are planning on doing courtship, they don’t need a lecture on the issues with dating.

Sermons

In one of my favorite series of books, Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall by Michael Philips; one of the characters is a pastor and gives several sermons, which I skipped. Sermons are rarely well received in a fiction book. If people wanted to read a sermon, they would have gotten a theology book, not a fiction book. Even if you have a character who is a pastor, sermons are not wanted most of the time.

Sermons can work though. In one of my new favorite series, Charity’s Dairy by Elisabeth Allen, she has a few sermons. She makes them work by not writing out the whole sermon. You either hear the beginning or the end and it always gets Charity thinking. This is a wonderful example of sermons that work.

Moral of the Story

Let’s all get off our soap boxes and out of the pulpits when trying to conveys our lessons. We might be surprised how much more the reader listens.

Join me next week as we explore writing from the heart…

Misc.

Cold

8:20 AM

family

Multitudes on Mondays; Siblings

3:00 AM

writing Saturday

Writing Saturday; Weaving Life Lessons Part 1

8:37 AM

One Lesson at a Time

We all want our books to be more than just a good story; we want our books to touch people’s hearts and lives. We want it to not only grab their attention; we want it to make them stop and think. We don’t just want to tug at their emotions; we want to pull at their minds. We don’t just want to have amazing characters; we want to compel our readers to examine their own lives.

This week, we are starting a new series for Writing Saturday on weaving life lessons into our story. We will start today talking about only having one lesson at a time. In the following weeks we will talk about teaching vs. preaching, showing vs. telling, relevant messages, and more, so stay tuned.

Unlike in real life, where God may be teaching us sometimes several lessons at once, our books should focus on one lesson. Although this may not be life like if you try to put too many lessons, none of them will make a big impact.

For example in the film The Widows Might, the makers tried to tackle many different issues. Although the film was well done, the point of the film was buried by all the other issues the makers tried to tackle. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a central theme or that the movie was bad, but there were so many issues that the main one was in danger of being lost.

Think of you book as having two levels. The first is the action or surface level. On the level, you see bad guy against good guy, girl likes guy, sword clashing against sword and all that other action. On the second level, you have the emotional and internal struggles. This is where the good guy wonders if he is strong enough to take on the bad guy, the girl wonders if the guy will ever love her and the swordsman is sure this battle will be his last because of his great sin. If you try to add to many struggles, your second level will overwhelm your first level, upsetting the balance of your story.

With that said, it is possible to have more than one struggle in a book. However, if you have a second one, you need to make sure that it doesn’t detract from the most important struggle. like it did originally in my book, The Destiny of One. In the first draft, Maria Morris was struggling all the time with the fact that there wasn’t a “special someone” in her life, and what she was supposed to do with her life. In the end I realized that that the lessons were detracting from each other.

Keep your focus when it comes to lessons. Don’t try to tackle everything in one book.

Join me next week as we discuss sermons and soap boxes (this should be fun)

friends

Wonderful Day

5:18 PM

Multitudes on Mondays

Multitudes on Mondays; The Gift of Music

3:00 AM

writing Saturday

Writing Saturday; 5 Words and their meanings

3:00 AM

My Reviews

Movie Review; A Walk in My Shoes

3:00 AM

Rated; Unrated

My Rating; (On a scale of 1-10) 8

Age recommendation; All ages

Plot; (from back cover) Ever judge someone just by looking at them? We've all made snap judgments about people. But what if we really got to know them? Would our opinions change? And what if we actually became them ... how would the shoes fit? Stressed-out high school teacher Trish Fahey can't understand her students' lack of effort and why their parents don't seem to care. This is especially true of Justin, a basketball star who is underperforming in her class. All of this changes when Trish wrecks her car and wakes to find herself living in the shoes of Justin's mom, a woman she has personally judged and criticized. With the help of a mysterious stranger, Trish discovers the real reason behind her struggles, teaching her a whole new meaning of compassion. No one is left unchanged.

I really liked this Wal-Mart movie! Although this movie is not as light-hearted as the others, it is deeply moving. The story was very touching, with a lesson that God has been trying to teach me for years; that we shouldn’t judge others – we have no idea what is really going on.

The only thing that kept this movie from being a 10 was two things. One – you are actually following two stories, though one not as close as the other. The guy who they follow just doesn’t seem to really fit into things much until the middle of the story. The last three minutes of the film with this guy don’t fit at all; it is obvious a set up for a sequel. The second thing that wasn’t great was Molly, who you get the feeling is an angel. She was a little strange, but nothing real bad or scary.

Now for some of the great things. As I said before, the message is powerful. It isn’t just about judging others, but also helping others, forgiveness, and living your life without regret. It is a great film to watch and get a family conversation started.

Find it at Wal-Mart for only $13.00.

See my reviews of other Wal-Mart movies like Who is Simon Miller?, The Jensen Project, and Secrets of the Mountain

Multitudes on Mondays

8:44 AM

2011

9/11 2011; Ten years later

3:00 AM

I have been thinking a lot about September 11, 2001 lately. Some it has to do with the fact that it has been all over the news, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I can hardly believe it has been ten years.

I can still remember sitting on the couch watching the story starting as a horrible accident, and then in horror watching as a second plane came on the screen. Before any of us had time to react, it went into the building. The day the world changed for so many of us, is now ten years behind us.

Many of my readers were young at the time, like me. We soon knew words that none of us had ever heard before; Terrorist, collapse, World Trade Center, Afghanistan, Jihad, and many others. We went from living in a world that the day before felt so safe, to wondering if a building near us was the next target. Planes were no longer something you ran out to see, they were weapons to run from in fear.

Yet, even in those dark days of fear, there were glimmers of hope and goodness. Flags were everywhere, neighbors pulled together, and churches filled with people looking for answers. There was a massive flag on the pentagon, the president on a mound of rubble giving us hope, a steel cross in the mist of debris, and candle vigils everywhere. For a few weeks, we were a people united.

It was hard to imagine in those few weeks that we would ever get back to normal life, yet we have. We are flying, we are living our lives, we are rebuilding, and we are overcoming. Those terrorists failed in the one thing they wanted the most. They wanted to cripple this nation in fear, but they haven’t. A memorial will be opened today to remember those who died. The new One World Trade Center is moving ever higher in the sky, higher than the old buildings. And we have tracked down the leader that instigated the attacks and punished him, just like we said we would.

May we NEVER forget those people who lost their lives, or the day that changed our nation.

stories

Writing Saturday; The End

3:00 AM

Writing endings is hard for me. Not the last chapter ending, but the last paragraph that says good-bye to the beloved characters forever.

I recently finished the rough draft of the third and final book in the Destiny Trilogy. When I knew I was nearing the end, I thought about the feelings I wanted to leave the reader with. I think that thinking about the feelings you want to leave your reader with is the key to making your ending all you want it to be. Do you want readers to feel excited and ready for another adventure? Do you want them to be pensive and think back on the story? Do you want them to be sad?

As I was getting to the end of the Destiny Trilogy, I was feeling sad at saying good-bye to Maria and the rest. They had become like friends to me. I wanted the reader to have a fulfilling ending but one that captured the idea that Maria continued, even though we weren’t going to be reading about it. She may have found her purpose, but she had a lot of life ahead of her. We may be saying good-bye, but it wasn’t the end for Maria.

Whatever emotions you want to leave the reader with, here are a few things you might want to keep in mind.

First, make sure that the reader is satisfied. No one wants to come to the very end of the book and feel let down. It may not be the climax of your book, but it should tie up any loose ends, unless of course you are setting up for a sequel.

Second, there shouldn’t be any surprises. The end is not the time to put plot twists; it is the time to finish untwisting the plot. Even if you are setting up for a sequel, major plot twists should not, in my opinion, happen in the last chapter. It makes the reader mad.

Another thing you want to keep in mind is to end on a high note. This does not mean it has to be a happy ending. If the main character dies, a high note would be showing that he/she did not die in vain.

Lastly, choose your words with care. How you say things is as important as what you say in the writing world. Nowhere is that truer than in the last words in your book. You want to be creative in your word choice but not use words that will send you reader looking for their dictionary.

On that note I will say good-bye until next week, when I will share five fun words and their meaning.