By Lana Christian How many languages do you speak? I speak English and German. English is my dominant (first) language, but sometimes German pops into my thoughts, dreams, and writing without my bidding. That can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. My handwritten notes combine English, German, and a personal shorthand—whichever is shorter …
Worthy Words: Creative and Compelling Characters
By Christine Sunderland As I reflect on my next novel, The Music of the Mountain, I return to the importance of creative and compelling characters. In some way my characters must change in the timeline of the plot, and this arc is determined by their own ability to change, their creative ability to learn, turn, confess, repent, and be reborn …
Writer Beware
By Tracy Morgan I counted the days until Christmas break by placing bright red numbered index cards on my bulletin board in my study. In five days, I would be free of all my teaching responsibilities. My mind focused on one mission of finishing my book. I planned the two weeks with charts of writing schedules and what day to …
Embrace the Messy
By E.V. Sparrow It’s easy to suppose as Christian fiction writers we’ve all studied and memorized Bible verses, right? I developed Scripture knowledge later. Therefore, I intentionally create people of fragile faith. Where is God in their mess? It’s delightful weaving in redemption, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, and mercy into fictional plots. Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, my belief was …
Real Places: Do Them Right or Don’t Do Them
By Gordon Saunders I got kicked out of a novel the other day. Here’s how it happened. I was reading along okay, suspending disbelief and all, sort of getting into the head of the protagonist. She and her friends were ‘vansters,’ that is, they lived in vans and traveled all over the place, the place mostly being southeast England as …
Starting from the Middle
By Cathleen Armstrong And we turn the calendar page, and suddenly it’s July 14 and summer is half over. How’s that to-do list you started in the cold of last winter coming along? Perhaps it wasn’t quite a list but more like little vignettes that floated through your mind as you bundled up against the icy wind: You sitting outside …
How to Become an Overnight Success
By Ginny L. Yttrup When my debut novel, Words, won the Christy Award for Best First Novel, my agent joked that I’d become an “overnight success.” Before the award, few had read my writing. After the award, Words sold well, and the novel consistently sells well eleven years later. But an overnight success? Not exactly. The road that led to the publication of that first …
Whose Words
By Angela D. Shelton Well Done! I’ve heard it said many times. It’s even crossed my own lips. Perhaps these words have slipped off your tongue as well. If I can help only one person with my writing, it will be worth it. There it is—the ultimate selfless act. We struggle through the outline, the muddle in the middle, the …
Things I Would Tell My Younger Writer Self
By Darlene L. Turner Time travel stories have always fascinated me. Back to the Future, Star Trek’s The Voyage Home, and Kate & Leopold are a few movies that come to mind. There are lots more. I loved seeing how people reacted in times not their own. I realize these are scripted movies, but it makes me wonder how I …
Learning from Reading a Master Novelist
By Carol Buchanan, PhD The best thing fiction writers can do for ourselves is to read fiction. Read any novel you can get your eyeballs on. Read popular novels, novels you wouldn’t write on a bet, novels of all sorts and in as many genres as you can without saying “Yuck” and throwing the book away. (Because we want to …