5 Points God Helps With Writing

The Bible is the most printed book in all of existence. And while lots of writers do not believe in God, they should look into why it's the most popular book and how. Supposedly there have been six billion Bibles printed, but nothing is exact. Still. Wow. It'd be a good idea to have a chat with the best-selling author of the world. Yes?

1. HOPE & LOVE

2. UNORIGINALITY

3. DISCOVERY

4. PACE

5. PURPOSE

= = = = = = =

1. Hope & Love

ROMANS 15:4 -- For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Readers look for specific things in stories. Let's look at the best-sellers to find out what they are. Take the Top 10. (I hate citing Wiki, but this isn't an official document, so go with it.) 

The Bible, ~5 to 6 billion

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong, 900 million

The Qur'an, 800 million

Xinhua Zidian, 400 million

Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer, unknown

Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, unknown

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, John Foxe, unknown

Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Jr., 120 million

Harry Potter Book 1, J.K. Rowling, 107 million

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie, 100 million

(http://www.justanswer.com/general/0nrjs-top-10-printed-books-time.html)

I'm not an expert in most of these books but I have read the Bible, the Qur'an, and definitely Harry Potter. These books contain instruction, hope, an escape, or a peace to accept ourselves as we are. Some have all, some have one. Of course there are lots of other factors that make these best sellers but to the people who actually WANT to read them, they seek hope; they seek love.

What you write should have something like this. Give your readers hope. An underdog is always a fan favorite. (David and Goliath. Katniss and Snow. Potter and Voldemort.) Give your readers love. (God the Father and the World. Lily and Severus.) Give your readers instruction. Give them a moral to a story. Give them mistakes the protagonist made and have the character and reader learn from them.

Faith, Hope, and Love are gifts from God. But the greatest is Love. Hold true to this when working on your story.

2. Unoriginality

ECCLESIASTES 1:9 -- What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

It's okay to be unoriginal. No matter what you write about, someone, or even God already created something similar. The key is to add at least one more attribute that makes it your own. Since I will never give Twilight the time of day, let's go to K. M. Weiland. She inspired me to write this blog, so I should promote her work. In her blog The 4 Tweaks to Writing Truly Original Stories and Characters she mentions her own designs for her genre. She researched the fantasy genre and updated her knowledge on it. She learned about the cliches and tweaked them for her own book. Her dragon became something else. Her races became something more. 

My own example is dragon-related. As Tolkien said, a book isn't worth reading unless there's a dragon, so I made my own race of them. Sort of. People love dragons. It's okay to have them in your work. People love vampires, zombies, and fairies. So does God. He loves the work you do and loves watching you use your borrowed talents. Like a parent smitten with scribbles on a page. God will put it up on a big, heavenly refrigerator, and boast about how awesome your work is. (Not that your work is a bunch of scribbles...)

One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is the Valley of Dry Bones. Anything that shows God being dark and creepy to others is absolutely beautiful to me. He wills the bones to come to life. They shake and mount into skeletons, then all the ooey gooey insides form, then the skin, then the breath. Such poetry in the image. When I read this I knew I wrote my first book for a reason bigger than my own. Though zombies and grim reapers are "nothing new under the sun" I made death my own theme. And I knew, just because it's creepy and dark, God loves it. I made it through His help. 

3. Discovery

MATTHEW 7:8 -- For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Our finished works are never what we thought they'd be in the beginning. You have your outline, your characters, your theme, and then you start to write. It's a journey all its own. A character's motivations take them in ways we didn't want them to, but they have to, because that's their way. God may have purpose for Jonah, but Jonah didn't listen. What happens when characters don't listen to the author? We give them trials, consequences of their actions that add more dynamics to the story. We somehow knew something would happen but not precisely what. 

Ever paint? You have an idea of what you're going to make, and you try to make it exactly what's in your head, but it turns out completely different. Yet it might be better than what you thought first. There's concept then production. Happens all the time. That's a good thing. It's fun. It breaks the system and adds vibrance from both sides: behind the keyboard and in the story.

God wants us to discover ourselves, more importantly, he wants us to discover life, and as the result, the beauty of his works. Nothing new under the sun? Cuz he made it. But that doesn't mean we've found everything he's made yet. So go out and find it. Go out and find him. Discovery is a relationship between creator and creation. In such a vast world of imagination, anything is possible except the possibility of nothing.

4. Pace

JAMES 1:3 -- For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

You attend your first date. You sit down with him or her and you say, "Hi," then they say "Hi, my name is blah-blah-blah, I've lived for blah-blah in blah-blah, I do this, this, this, this, and that, that, that, and a little of that, but lots of this. I used to be a murderer/dealer/detective/king/hitman/insert crazy occupation here, until this one other crazy thing happened, so I took up this other thing, and fought with this person crazier than me, but I'm really excited to meet you because I've done all these background checks on you, and you just seem like such an amazing person, and I want to protect you and love you for the rest of our lives, and maybe have children. And a dog. I like dogs." And he or she keeps talking and you run. You run far. That's the sane thing to do, right?

The Bible is layers upon layers of information and we only read one piece and somehow we don't see the same verse we read in a different light until months, maybe years down the road, when we read it again, and it means something else. Or we're first learning about God and only read the nice, happy parts, like the miracles.

"Hi. I'm Jesus. I do miracles."

Then you warm up to him, thinking this is an all right guy. Until he gets angry. He flips merchant tables in the air and yells at people to leave the church. 

What just happened? He's such a chill dude! Why is he acting that way?

You read more. You find out why. One character trait is revealed, and then another, and then another.

Then you want to read the history of this world. This Jesus was planned long before his birth. What? Yeah. How is that possible?

So you read. And the layers keep getting read until you're so involved with the book you can't leave. 

God teaches you pace. He teaches you not to make your readers run away by overloading them with information. He shows you, he doesn't tell you. He shows you active and passive voice. I'm certain God invented the term "info-dump." And even though the Bible is dense with information, he understands that we will become overwhelmed with some pages, so those verses you read years before that made no sense might make sense now. You never know. But that's a faith thing. Not a pace thing. Another topic for another blogger.

5. Purpose

You want to dream big but you have little faith in yourself let alone God. We have to believe there is something more to us than mediocrity. Through hope, love, and discovery, we find our own greatness within what we find already great. It does not mean any of us are the same. It does not mean by others' greatness we are washed out. We are a gallery and the artist. We just need to try and with trying, we find purpose.

ROMANS 5:3-4 -- More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope...

2 TIMOTHY 3:16 -- All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

God used many people throughout many time periods to create the Bible. And crazy as it is, all the books put together check out. Things that are said in the Old Testament about an angel coming to Earth to save people is written in the New Testament as Jesus. Writers for Old Testament had no clue about Jesus. Never saw him, never existed when He was born. Yet it's there, connecting chapter after chapter with this prophecy that a symbol of unconditional love will arrive to save the people God loves. God used all these writers for a greater purpose that they could not see, but God could. God, the master writer. These writers are one page in a book; one thread in the tapestry. What writers do is very important. Writers spread messages through the painting of words. Know that what you choose to write is important. You have a purpose. You are inspired for a reason and those reasons may be selfish, selfless, or all over the place. But there is always one master writer guiding those reasons for his ultimate reason. 

= = = = = = =

I am in no way an expert of the Bible. I struggled with this because how do I talk about something that's perfectly made? I can't do it justice. I can only hope as I did my best. Some of the verses have nothing to do with the context I've posted. 

(1 JOHN 4:1-3 -- Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.)

But if this post made you read the descriptive text of each verse, then that means you don't take my words at face value, and that's a double win for God and myself. I know you will do anything to seek the truth and God gets some one-on-one time with you. If you're just here for the inspiration that you are something special, and what you're doing is greater than yourself, that's what this post intends.

You are unique.

You have purpose.

You can do anything.

So...

DREAM BIG.

He is not finished with you yet.

PHILIPPIANS 1:6.

6 Eyesores to Chop in Writing

I edit my photos like I write. I want clarity and subject. I want to know exactly what I'm looking at. I want all the distractions out of the way so I can admire the view. If anything hinders that, I toss it. First rule: dump the blurry photos. Doesn't matter if it's a great shot; it's not a great shot if it's blurry. There are some I keep just for myself, like if it was a once-in-a-lifetime catch of my kid, but just for me. I don't post it for anyone else. Blurry makes the entire subject an eyesore. If people treated writing like I do photos, there would be more intriguing things for me to read. Like I toss my photos, I toss my books. If I see excessive use of narrating (someone telling me about something, and not letting me experience the moment through the character), I close that book. Especially first couple pages. I'm super picky because my time is valuable. I don't want to waste my day reading a book that could be good. I want to know it's good. (The Shack is still the crappiest book in existence. I don't care how many Christians try to tell me otherwise. I tried three times. I threw it three times.)

The huge turn-offs in reading are found in six eyesores of writing. Want your reader to keep turning the page? Dump the blurry photos.

The 6 (6?) Eyesores:

1. Passive Voice
2. Distracting Prose
3. Said Synonyms
4. Type Usage
5. Telling
6. Cliches


#1 Passive Voice

Active: Sam stabbed Tallis in the face.
Passive: Tallis' face was stabbed by Sam's knife.

Active: I ate the cookies.
Passive: The cookies were eaten by me.

Active: Active is aggressive and hits the point.
Passive: The point which Active hits is aggressive.

Nobody likes beating around passive entrails except politicians, so keep your voice active. In Active, the subject makes the action. Have you ever heard someone talk indirectly? I'd hate to bring up politics again (passive-sounding, did you catch that?), but they're so good at beating the dead Passivity that it's eye-rolling. During the Benghazi hearings, Clinton couldn't come up with a single Yes or No answer. "That could be correct." "That is possible." And so on. Besides making my military blood boil, she makes every use of INDIRECT voice, aka passive. She can't own up to the responsibility of the subject's actions.

Your job is to own up. In dialogue, you need your characters to get to the point because that's what your reader wants. Unless you have that conflicting character who's making life hard for everyone, or is trying to keep a secret. In which case, Clintonify the crap out of that dialogue. Annoy your other characters and annoy the reader. Then at the end of the book, make someone punch that character in the face, because that's what the majority of your readers will want to do.

#2 Distracting Prose

Those over-elaborate details of setting, the character's description (even though the character may not even be noticing these things about themselves), the long sentences with too many adjectives...

...stop it. Read some Stephen King. They're "scary" books. So what? Know what's scary? An angry reader with a tome in their hand waiting to chuck it across the room.

Here's an example page: Declutter Your Prose

When you're writing journalism, you do not use filler words, especially in the first paragraph. News is news, not excessive poetry. In this age, people are fast-paced. Make it so the fast-paced people want something to read in the short amount of time they have between checking Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and calling Mom before lunch break is over.

In fiction writing, don't overstep the "crisp, clear blue water cascading the mountainside, splishing with plumes of mist that cast a veil over the--"

I threw the book away at "crisp" and "clear". I used to write like that. I still might. If I do, and I notice, I growl at myself. Grrr... Yep. You're not the only one I'm hard on. *snorts* Difficult with. That's better. I spend enough time catching myself in my own errors, I really don't need others to do it for me. Color Code Personality: Blue. That's me. Honesty and Rules. I love them. I love rules. I know when to bend them but in distracting prose? No bendy! No breaky! Get to the point!

If you're going into descriptions of setting, make it a short paragraph. Practice journalism and realize what's really important for setting. What is it that your character notices? If it's a male character, do you think they'd notice what shade of pink some girl's lips are? What type of tree they're leaning against? If you leave out detailed descriptions, you give freedom to your artistic fans. You know...the ones that like to draw fan art. Yes. Make them happy. Give them freedom. Make them imagine for themselves what kind of tree he's leaning against. Unless he's an arborist. Then go nuts. But guys don't care about shades of color.

#3 Said Synonyms

One of the best poems I listened to used said over and over again. It didn't matter because it was about the dialogue.

If you keep the "saids" monotonous, it won't distract the reader from what's being said. Fuss over synonyms because you think you said "said" too many times and you're overthinking it. There's a post going around on Pinterest, talking about different ways to say "say"......do not like this. It's for amateur writers who aren't ready for the big books yet. If you're worried about using "said" then you're going to slow yourself down.

I use said even when I know my character is screaming. I use an exclamation point when a character shouts. The exclamation does the shouting for me because I don't use it often. And you don't need to make fence posts out of it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

#4 Type Usage

Italics. Underlines. Fence posts. They're distractions and the reader will come out of your world because they'll notice they've been reading. You don't want them to notice they're reading. You want their eyes to move over words, vessels into your character's eyes. Make them become the character. Type usage goes into deep perspective, or deep point of view.

Leaving out italics kept the words moving. It's Svetlana's perspective, so all words will be hers. The reader is in her head, so any use of italics to show she's thinking is irrelevant. Any underlines for a word she may strongly pronounce isn't necessary if the sentence structure is written well. The reader will get which words are emphasized. They're smart. Let them show you how smart they are. Svetlana wouldn't have an impact on the situation with Caelum if the reader had to read this:

Svetlana looked down at her hands.

If it were that simple then she could just turn her skin to ice.

Her hands frosted over into an amethyst hue.

Now I'm just telling you what she thought with type usage. You're not actually feeling it.

#5 Telling

Will Smith's character in Men in Black brought the viewers along for the ride in the world of sci-fi. If he was just sitting at Kay's desk, being told all the happenings of his new job, there wouldn't be a movie.

Show don't Tell.

We mean it. Get rid of the She thought, he thought; he realized, she saw. It'll look like the story is told to the reader, not the character going through the story. Telling is narrating. Narrating is bad, mmmkay? A character's thoughts are the words. Let them go.

Example:

“Holy spades on a rainy day. Did you quad-shot this?” Darlana asked.

“Only for you, my dear.”

Darlana plugged the port into the register; it beeped, and she placed it back in her pocket.

“You are a blessing,” Darlana said, walking away.

The straw never left her lips from the stand to outside. She even maneuvered herself onto the bike without having to drop the cup in her custom holder. How long was she at work for? In all the gloomy, rainy days, today turned out to be clear, and glistening. As Darlana pedaled (one hand on the handlebar), the chilly air nipped her face; she took in the scene, eyes glancing at the array of flowers and bushes about the parking lot, and the birds singing in the trees.

What a perfect day—away from the curse of monotony, away from judgement, away from the hassles of survivalism. She had a credit port to unleash on the sinking ship of capitalism. What a better place to go than where a girl can drown in a sea of fashion: the shopping center.

* * *

Getting coffee is a favorite pasttime, even for characters. Makes people happy. Makes them do things. Splurge, even. A fantastic example (not of coffee) is in The Shining, where Stephen King pulls us into Jack's mind, and uses deep perspective to make us feel Jack's experience. The movie isn't as personal as the book; recommend reading it to gain insight.

#6 Cliches

One of my problems as a writer is coming up with ways to twist a cliche into something original. Watching shows and hearing the characters talk and know exactly what they're going to say--. Hello, eye roll. I went to a writer's workshop where Brad Bell and Jane Espenson discussed several topics, including this one. They showed us a screenplay Bell did with Husbands (?), and how the character said "elephant in the room" without saying it. It was brilliant. They said, "Wow, how'd that elephant get in here" or something like that. I have the screenplay somewhere in my folders. If you catch your characters saying cliche things, maybe because you're just spitting out dialogue, and those words are the first things that pop into your head, then go back, and re-direct the phrases.

In the earlier text, I wrote "beating around the bush" without saying so, but you got the idea. "...beating around the passive entrails..."

It's time we get creative with cliches because there truly is nothing new under the sun...oh look at that...a bible verse. I wouldn't redirect anything from the Bible...but if it needs to be changed in your book, do so. I'm won't leave God out of anything, though. Bad things happen. O_o (<---oh look! distracting type usage!)

Cliches don't have to be about dialogue, either. Characters and genres play into it. I used cliches in my first book to make a point, that not everything is entirely cliche.

A mad scientist is one layer, a bad German accent is another layer, but add everything else into the story--like how he's not so mad, and he's actually a bio-engineer, and he really is German but only his accent comes out when he's stressed, and some other things I can't say cuz it would spoil the story of my first book...

But everyone loves a mad scientist. And everyone makes them their own style. In order for your audience to care about them, there has to be more than mwahahas and crazy hair.

Practice twisting the cliches. Watch what you say and see how people react. Watch a cheesy show. Once Upon A Time is good. Most of what they say on there is total cliche. Sorry, Espenson. I don't know what the writing team was thinking. Riding old characters for several seasons is a Hollywood cliche in itself. Make something new. Stop reliving old ideas. It was nice at first. Now?

Now I'm ranting. I gotta get outta here!

One week until NaNoWriMo. Are you doing it?

I am. Blogs will be shortened for November, if they exist at all. Maybe I'll post crazy somethings to inspire you, or terrify you, into doing NaNoWriMo next year. XD Fun times.