Seekerville: The Journey Continues

by Jan Drexler

 
Coop’s character will only grow when he becomes broken – when he realizes that he is not strong enough, not smart enough, not brave enough to be the man God has called him to be.

My job as the author of this story is to break Coop. Bring him to the lowest point he can possibly reach so that he is forced to look outside himself for the answer to his problems. The way to do that is to tap into his internal conflict.

 
How do I convey that theme to my readers throughout the book?

This is a subtle process because we want our readers to discover the all-important truth of our theme through our telling of the story.

I start by brainstorming images that will illustrate my theme of “strength in weakness through relying on God.”

 
A delicate wild rose on a windswept prairie…

An abandoned mail-order bride standing up to her tormentors…

A preacher who is failing until he bends to God’s will…

And then I write those images into my story.

Hello, Seekerville! It's good to be here today!

I don't know if this subject is one you've thought about at all, but it's been on my mind for the past several months/years. 

The question, short and simple is: As a Christian author, should I write Christian fiction for Christian readers? Or is my call broader than that? Should I be trying to reach non-Christian readers with my stories?

Before we dive into this subject, let’s define a couple terms:

Christian fiction: Fiction that is written from a Christian worldview, includes a Christian spiritual thread, and leaves the reader with a sense of hope rather than doom.

Secular fiction: Fiction that is written from a non-Christian worldview, does not include a Christian spiritual thread (although it may include a spiritual thread from another religion,) and can leave the reader with either a sense of hope or a sense of doom and hopelessness.

Christian author: An author of any genre who is a Christian.

A bit of history

Back in the olden days (like fifty or sixty years ago) readers and authors didn't think too much about worldview. When I was growing up in the 1960's, almost every book that was available through our libraries and bookstores were written from a Christian worldview, whether the author was a Christian or not. Christianity was part of the culture of the United States, Canada, and Europe. 

When I went to the library as a child and teen, I could comfortably read any book on the shelves (and I did!) But our culture has changed. By the 1980's we were beginning to move into the post-Christian era that we're in now. 

One thing that happened during that shift is that Christian fiction books became a thing.

Do you understand how huge this was? Rather than Christian books being part of the mainstream fiction section in the library (Grace Livingston Hill was shelved with Joanna Lindsey, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers,) they were relegated to their own shelves.

For most readers, this was a good thing. A reader looking for Janette Oke or Beverly Lewis didn't have to sort through the hundreds of non-Christian titles to find them.

But I was, and continue to be bothered by it. Did we create a literary Christian ghetto for ourselves? Did we put up a fence that few non-Christians desired to cross?

Why would a Christian author write for non-Christian readers?

I have two thoughts about this question - -

1) A Christian writes Christian books.

Before I became a Christian, my thinking was upside down. I was an enemy of God and avoided anything that "reeked" of Christianity. Now, keep in mind that back then I thought I was a Christian, just not one of those Christians.

In college and for several years beyond school, I read some pretty awful secular trash - books that were considered to be the classics of the time. Authors you would probably recognize, but they were not Christians, and they didn't write from a Christian worldview.

When God started calling me to Himself, I searched for better books. Hawthorne, Dickens, Stevenson, Christie...I discovered a home in their stories. I reread the books of my childhood: Laura Ingalls Wilder, LM Montgomery, and Maud Hart Lovelace. I started developing a new worldview as I read these authors - a Christian worldview.

When God called me to be a writer, I knew that someday I wanted to write books that wouldn't be found in the Christian fiction section of the library - but that would resound with a Christian worldview.

2) The story needs to be told.

The gospel isn't only for Christians - it's for the world. The dirty, messy, sinful, cruel, lost world. 

And the gospel needs to be told in bold ways (I'm thankful for strong preachers!) and in winsome ways - through stories. Romance, mystery, science fiction and fantasy - through all genres.

Conclusion

Some Christian authors are called to write for the Church - to encourage believers and help to strengthen their faith. Other Christian authors are called to write for the World - to introduce them to a Christian worldview in a non-threatening manner, through stories.

Anything a Christian writes will have a Christian worldview – it can’t be any other way.

This is what I'm attempting in my cozy mystery series, The Sweetbrier Inn mysteries. My characters are Christians, they go to church, and they live normal lives (well, as normal as you can get in a cozy mystery.) Somewhere in each book I bring up a moral question and give the Christian answer to it - murder is wrong; vengeance belongs to God; etc. But I try to weave those moral lessons seamlessly into the story. Never preachy. Never obvious.

Books for Christian as well as secular readers.

What do you think?

As a Christian writer, what stories has God called you to write? Is your audience Christian or secular?

And what do you think about my ideas? Agree? Disagree?

Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for an e-copy of my latest release, The Case of the Artist's Mistake. US addresses only, please.

The Lingo of Storytelling

A few weeks ago, Mary Conealy brought us a post about the Lingo of Designed Pages – a brief vocabulary of the series of edits we authors enjoy as our stories travel from our computers to published books. You can read that post here: Designed Pages--the Lingo

Today, I’m bringing you a brief introduction to the vocabulary of writing stories. I’ve gleaned these often-used but seldom-defined words from questions posed by newbie writers. Some of these might be familiar to you, but some might not be.

Just for fun, see if you can come up with a definition before reading mine. Keep track of the times we agree, and then share your score in the comments!

1. Protagonist: As the main character in the story, the protagonist is the person that the story is about. Also called the Hero or the Heroine. A romance will have both.

2. Antagonist: The antagonist in the story is the character who is working against the protagonist. The bad guy. Of course, the antagonist doesn’t have to be a guy (think of Cruella D’Ville in 101 Dalmatians) or even a person. It can be a setting, the weather, or even the fallout from a bad decision the protagonist made in the past. The antagonist doesn’t even have to be “bad,” as long as he or she is working against the protagonist’s goals.

3. Secondary Character: This is any character who adds to the characters’ stories without insisting on telling their own. These are the parents, the neighbors, the sidekicks, the grandmotherly woman at church. Secondary characters round out your cast of characters and give your protagonist someone to talk to or to react to. They can also provide a much needed moment of comic relief in a tense scene.

4. Active Voice: This is a grammar term that means that the subject of the sentence is the one doing the action of the verb. Like this: “Sam ate the grasshopper.” The active voice is preferable for modern popular fiction since it tends to keep the reader involved in the action of the story.

5. Passive Voice: Another grammar term. In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is the one having the action done to him. Like this: “The grasshopper was eaten by Sam.” Quite often, a passive voice sentence will have an understood agent, as in: “The grasshopper was eaten.” The passive voice is out of favor in popular fiction right now, so learn to identify the passive voice and to turn those sentences into active ones.

By the way, does it help to know that Sam is a dog? He'll eat anything that stays still long enough to go into his mouth!

 
6. In media res: This is a Latin term that used to be taught in composition and writing classes. It means “in the middle of things.” We quite often refer to the concept without using the Latin phrase – we all know to start our stories in the middle of the action, right?

7. Three-Act Structure: This is one way to structure a plot. There are others, but this is the one you see most often. It’s intuitive to both the author and the reader and easy to use. What are the three acts? 

The basics: 1, 2, 3. Beginning, Middle, End. 

Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy. 

Until someone adds in a “2A” and a “2B.” Then, if you’re like me, you start thinking in four acts instead of three… 

But the main point is that there is a structure to your writing that readers can follow.

8. Plot Points: This subject is big enough for its own book – and many authors have written books about Plot Points! But we’re only talking about vocabulary today.

Plot points are the more-or-less evenly spaced turning points within the structure of your story. Depending on the writer, you might have three plot points, or as many as sixteen. I work with five major plot points and two or three minor ones. Every author develops their own method and names for plot points, and some of the names you might hear are “inciting incident,” “call to adventure,” “moment of grace,” “black moment,” “final battle,” etc.

9. Synopsis: This is a summary of the completed story that tells potential agents, editors, and publishers what your story is about. The length varies depending on the guidelines of the entity you’re sending it to, but one thing never varies: always tell the complete story, including the surprise ending.

10. Back Cover Copy: This is a different kind of summary of your story. This is what you write to entice readers to open the book and start reading the story. It should have a great hook and never, ever give away the ending of the story. 

This was just a beginning of the vocabulary we need to acquire during our steep learning curve of becoming an author. If you think of any that I missed, be sure to mention them in the comments!

Welcome to the last week before Christmas!!!

As a child, I counted down the days until Christmas...how could there be so many??? Could we survive the wait?

And then suddenly it arrived. Somewhere between visiting Santa at Rike's Department Store downtown, baking cookies with my mom, an evening of decorating those cookies with my brother (and maybe a few cousins,) and wrapping presents, Christmas came!

The Christmas Eve service, candles glowing, Silver Bells playing on the radio, the excitement of finally hanging our stockings, and reluctantly heading to bed...it was magic.

Do you remember that same magic? That same Christmas feeling?

But things changed when I became an adult. I realized that Christmas isn't just ribbons and bows and toys and Christmas cookies...Christmas came to mean A LOT MORE. 

That Christmas giddiness of my childhood was as sweet as sugar, and just as fragile. But as an adult, that sugary sweetness was slowly replaced by lasting, pure AWE.

This Jesus whose birth we celebrate at Christmas was born to glorify the Father, and born to wear the thorns for me...

Another thing that has changed in these grown-up Christmases is that I'm eating a LOT less sugar these days, and I've slowly been adjusting my favorite Christmas treats to sugar-free treats.

It isn't as horrible as it sounds!

My go-to fudge recipes these days come from a website called "My Montana Kitchen," and they are no-guilt delicious!

They all start with a basic recipe - Sugar-Free Sweetened Condensed Milk.

Yes, sugar-free condensed milk. The recipe uses cream, butter, and a stevia/erythritol sweetener blend (aka "Gentle Sweet" from Trim Healthy Mama, or you can use the recipe found on the My Montana Kitchen website.) The recipe takes time, but it's worth it. I have to keep myself from making it too often...it's that delicious!

Here's the link to that recipe: Sugar-Free Keto Sweetened Condensed Milk

Once you have that basic recipe, you can use the sweetened condensed milk in all sort of recipes, and my favorite is chocolate fudge. Here's the link to the fudge recipes: 5 Sugar-Free Fudge Recipes

Eating mostly sugar-free has been an easy transition with recipes like these. I still make the regular fudge for family and friends...but that's okay. I get the sugar-free version all to myself!

Wishing you a blessed Christmas from our family to yours!

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.

by Jan Drexler 

Of all the holidays we celebrate, Thanksgiving is one of my top three! I love everything about the day - food, fellowship, PIE! - but most of all,                                                           I love the REASON for this SEASON. 

We might think that the celebration of Thanksgiving started with the Pilgrims, but actually, believers have been setting aside days of Thanksgiving since Old Testament times.

The Pilgrims carried this tradition with them to the Plymouth colony in 1620, celebrating the first Thanksgiving in America in 1621 or 1622.

(For those of you with a calendar, that was 400 years ago!)

Here's one participant's description of that first Thanksgiving feast:

Far from being the joyless, dour folks that some people often portray the Puritans, their lives were full of joy and thanksgiving. Not only one day a year, but every day was filled with thanksgiving. 

The tradition continued with George Washington in 1789:

And with Abraham Lincoln in 1863:

One thing that I noticed about all three of these times of Thanksgiving is that they took place during or just after times of great hardship - the horribly difficult time of starvation and death during the first year after the Pilgrims landed, the war for independence that Americans fought against the British, and the American Civil War. Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation was given during the third wearying year of that bloody war.

How could they even think to give thanks during times like those? 

How can we even think to give thanks during times like these?

The secret is joy.

Several years ago I read Ann Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts. I was thinking about it recently and was reminded of the year I spent following her advice to find joy.

The exercise was simple. Every day, I was to write down three things that brought me joy. I started in 2014. I created a little diary and I was faithful - through January, February, March...

...and then March 30th came. The day my mother passed away.

This was a challenge - how could I find joy in this circumstance of my life?

The habit to find joy had been ingrained through the previous three months of that year, and I found joy in my thankfulness for the mother God had given me. Day after day I poured out my grief in counting the endless moments of joy I had known with her.

Moments I captured in Thanksgiving and Praise.

Hi, everyone!

We call today a "Blue Moon Monday" - the fifth Monday, when none of the Seekers are scheduled to post! Ruthy often hosts on these "Blue Moon" days, but she's been super busy with her other job.

You DO know Ruthy's family has a pumpkin farm, right? She's been super busy with that for the past couple months!

So today I'm sharing a post I wrote a year ago...and it's just as appropriate this year as it was last year.

Enjoy!

What Will Spill Onto Your Page?

 

Hey, y'all. Jan here with a thinking-type post.

(Yes, I can talk Southern. My years in West Texas and in Kentucky taught me how!)

I've been convicted of something lately, and I'd like to share my thoughts with you.

Let's start here - 

I'm teaching school-age children at Bible Study Fellowship this year, and we're studying Matthew. The immersion into this study (not only my own study, but in preparing to teach) reminds me that what we put into our hearts is what is going to come out.

In this section of Matthew, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. You know, those religious leaders who were all about religion...but not so much about God. Like many of us, they thought they knew God. They thought they were obeying God with all their laws to "help" people follow God's Law.

But Jesus had a special name for them: brood of vipers. He uses that term more than once! Like I told the students in my BSF class, that means that He considered them to be a nest of venomous snakes.

I don't know about you, but I don't want the Lord of the Universe to consider me to be no better than a venomous snake.

I don't want my heart to spew out poison - untruths, slander, and even "mistakes" when I'm trying communicate to my readers about Jesus and His world...which covers 100% of what I write about.

But as writers, we are constantly filling our heads and hearts with knowledge - research for our latest novel. Sales statistics. The best price points. Reading blogs and listening to podcasts about writing and marketing.

As we watch the news or read the newspapers, we fill our minds and hearts with the noise of the World.

As we go about our non-writerly lives, we deal with family issues, church issues, and what in the world to fix for dinner.

When our heads and hearts become filled with the things of this world, what will overflow into our writing? 

"For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."

What's the answer?

We must balance all of that - over-balance all of that - with God's Word.

Not just reading scripture, but delving deep into it.

Not just reading someone else's teaching on scripture, but studying it for ourselves.

Even if my daily word count suffers...

The time spent in God's Word - just me, my Bible, and the Holy Spirit - is never wasted. That's treasure to fill our hearts.

My prayer for all of us is that our heads and our hearts will overflow with Jesus, and that is who our readers will encounter in our books.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

When I told her my dad had recently given me my own hidden treasure, she urged me insisted that I share it on my Seekerville post this month. "Sure!" I said. "That would be fun." (That may not be an exact quote.)