For the first six years of my writing life, I didn’t know how to find the exact spot where a story sinks into a bottomless pit of darkness. Nobody around me could agree on which kinds of content deserved an R rating, and I wasn’t sure what my own stance should...
In cheap secular entertainment, the value of faith is chronically underestimated and mischaracterized as either irrational belief without evidence or arbitrary adherence to a set of dogmas. On the other side of the spectrum, Christian novels and films sometimes flaunt a cleaned-up, Sunday-best version of faith that, to be fair, is not much of an improvement on mainstream media’s interpretation—which only exacerbates the problem.
A book that’s the clone of hundreds of others won’t capture or keep a reader’s attention. Every sentence—the flesh and muscle of a story—must glisten. The most legendary writers, like Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf, are memorable because they honed their own idiosyncrasies into pleasing forms of expression. If you hope to write evocatively, you need to learn how to capitalize on any sentence length.
Strong women, as they’re portrayed in a lot of fiction and films, have a problem. They act like men (albeit hot men with curvy bodies and perfect hair, teeth, and nails). This bothers me, and it should bother you too, because we’re being fed a lie. Male and female perspectives each possess great worth, and both genders are vital aspects of the human experience. Neglecting one or the other in a story guts the truth’s potency.
You can’t avoid running into mythology, not when it plays a role in so many beloved stories—a few of which are probably on your favorites list. But does your faith give you a reason to feel guilty for enjoying or creating that kind of entertainment? Can writers who believe in the one true God justify the depiction of multiple deities, magical creatures, and mystical rituals? Or will those elements mock Him?
I recently signed a contract for a young adult novel, and my publisher set up a meeting with a literary agency to strategize the promotion of my book. The savvy ladies I spoke with offered a smorgasbord of suggestions, many of which I was familiar with. After all, if you hang around the writing community snack bar long enough, you’re bound to pick up a morsel or two about marketing.
Many of us sit down at our desks with a list of criteria we believe we must meet before we can be confident that we’re honoring God with our writing. Our stories need to be thought-provoking, spiritual, and compelling, to name a few expectations I’ve heard or held myself to. The commission to impact others weighs heavily on our hearts because we know that our writing is an outflow of our Christian witness—and we long to capture our Creator’s magnificence in our own small sphere of creativity. But when we ask how our faith should influence and set us apart as writers, the answers vary as widely as all of humanity.
A powerful ending doesn’t stay sealed inside a book once you close the cover. The surprise, challenge, curiosity, or inspiration in the final words becomes part of you. You’ve lived an experience through the characters, watched them resolve an issue, explore an idea, or pursue a goal. And now their feelings have melded with your own. How a story ends is as important as how it hooks readers in the beginning. One captures readers’ interest for a few hundred pages while the other captures their hearts forever. You can approach an ending from any number of directions, but I’m going to outline three of my favorites that can help you brainstorm a memorable one.
When you think of Christmas shopping, visions of toys, jewelry, clothes, and candy probably dance in your head. That’s if you’re a normal human being. If you’re a little weird and a lot nerdy, you get starry-eyed over Lord of the Rings mugs, graphic T-shirts with famous literary quotes, and stacks of books as tall as skyscrapers. I’m guessing that everyone reading this falls into the latter category. Am I right?
I started writing as a ten-year-old, inspired by my favorite authors who, in my mind, were the epitome of success. I longed to capture the hearts and imaginations of readers as powerfully as they captured mine. Yet, as I’ve matured as a writer, a bad habit has forced me to reconsider my outlook on success.
