True to the story, or true to the reader? by Robin Patchen

I’ll be honest: I’ve had complaints. And more than a couple of people have asked me why I wrote my latest story in three parts.

I can’t blame them. I never thought I’d write a book with a cliffhanger ending, much less two. That’s definitely not what I set out to do when I started this book last spring.

But the story went where it went. I had set out to write a shorter story than normal and ended up with a story so complex, I couldn’t figure out how to fit it into a single book. It wasn’t just the length, either, though that was an issue. It finished at about 525 pages, far too long for a book in the romantic suspense genre. But the bigger issue was the story itself.

I agonized over what to do with Harper’s story. Should I cut the first part, make it backstory? I considered that option, but the beginning of her story set up the rest. Not only that, but it showed the character growing through some very difficult trials. Here was a woman who’d been in prison, a woman who felt the guilt and shame of all her choices, a woman who could very easily have run away from the trials she was suddenly facing. I needed to show how love—not romantic love but love for an old man in her care—changed her, opened her heart to the true love of the Father.

So I contemplated cutting the middle part, but how could I shortchange the romance, the growing friendships, and the personal growth? Not only that, but the reader needed the middle part of the story to witness the villain growing more desperate.

And the ending… I couldn’t possibly hack away at the last part, where the story came together.

I sought counsel from wise friends and prayed for guidance. I know it’s a just story, but it is my story, and the story needed to be told the way it needed to be told. It’s a good story, one filled with danger and hope and Truth. At least, that’s how I see it. Sometimes, when we writers are faced with the choice between satisfying genre rules or telling the story to the best of our abilities, we must choose the story. Sometimes, the story is worth breaking the rules.
Don’t misunderstand me: genre rules are very important. It’s vital to know your readers’ expectations. When you meet and exceed those expectations, you will be rewarded with super-fans. That’s always my goal.

In my previous books, I tried to remain faithful to those genre rules, and I think readers have rewarded me for that
.
But in the case of Beauty in Flight, I felt like I could either meet audience expectations for the story or I could meet their expectations for the length and price of the book. I couldn’t do both, so I chose to stay true to the story and release three books in order to manage pricing and length expectations.
Like I said, there’ve been some complaints. A handful of people have emailed me to share their frustrations. One reader suggested I was manipulative and questioned my salvation.

At the same time, I’ve received many, many emails from people thanking me for the stories and encouraging me to write more. The first book in the series, Beauty in Flight, has a 4.4-star rating on Amazon. It’s not as good as the ratings for my earlier books—or the ratings for the later books in the series—but it’s still respectable. The bad reviews are from people who don’t like cliffhanger endings.
The final book in the series, Beauty in Battle, released last week and is already collecting positive reviews.

In the end, I’m glad I stayed true to the story, even if it might have cost me a few readers. I am, after all, a storyteller at heart. The experience of releasing a linked series has made me even more thankful to my loyal readers, many of whom encourage me and inspire me to write the best books I can.
Have you ever felt like you had to choose between writing your best story and meeting reader expectations? How did you manage it?

Amazon Buy Link

Beauty in Flight

Her beauty once opened doors, but the felony conviction slams them shut.

Harper Cloud used to love the gilded glamour of Las Vegas, but on the far side of prison, she sees the cracks in the veneer. These days, she keeps her head down and focuses on the elderly patients in her care. Even her new wealthy east-coast boyfriend, Derrick, can't entice her away. She's trusted men before, and look where that got her.

She tries to brush off the feeling that she's being watched. But when she's followed home one night and her pursuer gets within a hair's breadth of grabbing her, she knows it's time to get away from Las Vegas.

Maybe Derrick can be trusted. Maybe his job offer—to care for his aging grandfather in Maryland—will be the second chance she needs.

But Derrick has secrets of his own, secrets that could take him down--and take Harper with him.

Can there be a second chance for someone like her?

Buy Beauty in Flight today, Book 1 in a 3-book-series that’ll keep you guessing until the very end.

Series page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MWC4GVS/
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beauty-in-flight-robin-patchen/1129942040
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/beauty-in-flight
AppleBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/beauty-in-flight/id1444665084?mt=11
GooglePlay: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3Nl7DwAAQBAJ

Chat with Robin Patchen on staying true to your story! @RobinPatchen @TerriWeldon

About Robin Patchen:
Aside from her family and her Savior, Robin Patchen has two loves—writing and traveling. If she could combine them, she’d spend a lot of time sitting in front of her laptop at sidewalk cafes and ski lodges and beachside burger joints. She’d visit every place in the entire world—twice, if possible—and craft stories and tell people about her Savior. Alas, time is too short and money is too scarce for Robin to traipse all over the globe, even if her husband and kids wanted to go with her. So she stays in Oklahoma, shares the Good News when she can, and writes to illustrate the unending grace of God through the power and magic of story.

Download a free copy of Convenient Lies, book 1 in the Hidden Truth series, when you visit Robin's website, robinpatchen.com.

Little Pitchers Have Hungry Eyes

by Peter Leavell @peterleavell

Peter sits at his desk in seventh grade.

Teacher: “Does anyone know what fuel is used to propel the shuttle into space?”

Peter’s imagination immediately kicks in, and he sees one million scenarios unfold in his mind regarding space travel.

Teacher: “No one?”

Peter wakes enough to know the teacher might start calling on one of eight students. The odds are not in little Peter’s favor, so he slips lower in his chair. His imagination kicks into pragmatist mode: don’t make eye contact.

Teacher: “Fine. I’ll call on someone.”

Peter is now horizontal under his desk.

Teacher: “Peter, I see you. Tell me. What fuels are used in the booster rockets?”

The world moves to slow motion as his blood is replaced with adrenaline.

His brain skips through ideas—Tuck into fetal position. Run into the nearby fields and live off the land for the rest of his life. Pretend to be deaf.

Teacher: “It won’t do to pretend you’re deaf again. I need an answer this time.”

Tongue cut out by brigands won’t work again either.

Flashback—two years. Peter’s only diet of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and television has been stories of Jules Verne. So consuming is his passion for any of Verne’s stories, the sacred possession in his cash box under his bed is rumored to be a slender bone fragment—spine—of Jules Verne. While everyone believes the soft tissue is a splinter of a book stolen from the local school library, Peter has stronger faith.

Teacher and students wait as Peter, dry-mouthed and pale, pleads for answers.

Ask and you shall receive. He’d read this. In Jules Verne.

He takes a breath of confidence and relief that only a man who has faced a firing squad and is given a last second reprieve can feel. Chin up now, shoulders back, sitting high in his desk’s seat, he offers the answer:

“A cannon is drilled into the earth through great human effort, and thousands of tons of explosives are stuffed at the bottom, and a bullet with human inside is lowered. And then, BOOM,” he hits his desk, “glory and honor and fortune for the explorer.”

Let’s make an important point now—

What goes into the mind comes out of the mind.

You don’t see this, but what you read comes out in your writing, in your life. Now, I read a lot of Christian fiction, and frankly, while the literature is fine, you don’t want to make a steady diet of the romances.

I’m seeing little girls handed Christian romance novels as the only safe reads, their only literary diets, and they’re walking, talking, longing little things as pathetic as little Peter was.

So writers,

—are you working novels with characters who have well-rounded desires?

—are you including cool little nuances that teach science, art, history, math, music, etc, etc, etc?

—is romantic love the greatest good? Or do you reach higher?

—do you make your reader laugh? Or only cry?

—are the interpersonal problems coming only from inside the relationship? Or can you test the relationship from outside forces?

—can you coax them to be curious and unafraid of learning? That would mean creating characters that are more than the sum of their relationships.

Christian fiction is fantastic stuff. But if it’s the only reading diet, which, for many, it is, writers are going to need to step up the game a bit by keeping those tips in mind.

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Peter Leavell, a 2007 graduate of Boise State University with a degree in history, was the 2011 winner of Christian Writers Guild's Operation First Novel contest, and 2013 Christian Retailing's Best award for First-Time Author. Peter and his family live in Boise, Idaho. Learn more about Peter's books, research, and family adventures at www.peterleavell.com.

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How to Save Christian Fiction by Kathryn Bain

In January, literary agent Chip McGregor stunned Christian writers with his predictions for 2017. You can read his blog post at http://www.macgregorliterary.com/blog/publishing-predictions-will-happen-2017/. Pay particularly close attention to number 10 titled “Christian fiction as we know it is going to almost completely go away.” He blames a couple of things on this trend, one of which is readers of the Amish disappearing.

A lot of other problems exist within the Christian fiction realm. When authors of the genre don’t even read the books, how do you expect any reader to?

In order to save Christian fiction, we have to know why people are not purchasing the books. Below are five main reasons consistently given.

Unbelievable Characters. The bad guys are always atheist and the good guys are Christian. In addition, Christian characters are too perfect, always thinking about God and scripture. I don’t know about you, but when I get cut off in traffic, scripture isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind. Characters need to be human and realistic if we’re to get readers to read our books.

No One Has Sex. Okay, let me state that I know you’re not supposed to have sexual content in Christian books. However, a study was done in 2010 by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion “revealed that less than five percent of singles between the ages of 25 and 59 have sex two-to-three times a week, while a quarter of married people do—five times the rate.” [i] You wouldn’t know it from any romance books out there, including Christian fiction. Very few Christian books show married couples enjoying a satisfying sex life.

Weak, Stupid Females.Christian fiction is full of women who cry at the drop of a hat, and who can’t seem to live without a man. Very few Christian heroines have non-traditional careers, especially in romantic suspense. And these female characters refuse to call anyone for help. Would a teacher really leave the safety of police protection to take on a serial killer just to keep her new DEA boyfriend safe? Highly unlikely, yet it occurs all the time in Christian fiction. In my KT Morgan Series, KT is a former Marine. She’s smart and strong physically. Yet, she will get the authorities involved if need be.

Ridiculous Story Lines. Nothing Christian characters do are truly that bad. I can’t tell you the number of books I’ve read where the husband, instead of an affair, just kisses another woman. Instantly, he regrets his actions and the other woman understands completely. When his wife finds out, she’s devastated to the point of walking out on the marriage. Christians have not only cheated, but they’ve stolen and even murdered. Yet, for some reason, Christian authors are afraid to show it.

Where Are The Real Issues? Christian fiction is notorious for skirting around the issues of today. Very seldom will you read about a Christian hooked on pornography or drugs. We need to focus on lost souls who are dealing with real subject matters, including Christians. Instead, we get silly women who are confused about whether they should allow that wonderful hunk of a man into their lives. In my Lincolnville Mystery series, I’ve dealt with stalking, child trafficking, pregnant, unmarried women, and more. Real issues that people deal with every day. 

If we want to prove Mr. McGregor wrong, we have to change the way we write Christian fiction. Story lines and characters have to become more realistic. God has given us this gift of writing, yet we’re failing to reach people. It’s almost like we’re afraid to offend our readers. Instead, we’re losing them.

John 15:13 tells us that Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. And greater is no Christian author than he that can reach a non-believer and bring him to God. That’s the Christian author we should all attain to be.

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[1] 6 Reasons why Married People Should have Better Sex Lives, Linda and Charles Bloom, September 26, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201509/6-reasons-why-married-people-should-have-better-sex-lives

Southern Literary Fiction in Three Easy Steps (Yeah, right…) by Eva Marie Everson

In a recent blogpost, Chip MacGregor predicted that Christian fiction as we now know it will cease to exist. Namely, he stated, because the readers who demanded 100,000 copies of the latest Amish romance had “aged out.”

Chip (who knows this industry, folks), stated further that the few Christian houses still publishing fiction will now look for “high-quality literary or women’s stories for a broader people of faith … rather than clearly religious stories aimed only at the faithful.”

I’ll admit, I’m doing a happy dance over here.

Authors of Southern fiction have known for a while that our work is either about poking fun at our people (think Mary Kay Andrews (Hissy Fit)) or we dig into the darkest elements of who we are (Pat Conroy (South of Broad).

Southerners are a complex bunch of people. We can praise God from one side of our mouth while quoting superstitions from the other. We are white verandahs and dark shadows in the cluster of live oaks dripping with moss.

But how do we differentiate between “fiction” and “literary fiction”? And what makes literary fiction “southern”?

Fiction is literature with madeup stories and characters. Literary fiction is symbolic or thematic fiction and should comment on something significant (such as the human condition). Literary fiction isn’t meant simply to entertain—such as genre fiction, which is meant to help you escape your reality. Rather, literary fiction sparks discussion—arguments even—around the dinner table, the water cooler, and on social media because it comments on the realities of life.

Literary fiction usually has complex/complicated characters (which is why Southern Fiction can so easily fit right in). Complex/complicated characters are multi-layered and, when brought together between the bindings of one book, form an onion-like story filled with sub-plots told without any sense of rushing.

Who better to fit the proverbial example than Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind? Southern literary fiction at its finest. Not because it is set in the South, but because its complex characters embody the Southern experience.

Writing literary fiction is as simple as one-two-three. (Okay, we all know there is nothing simple about it.) But if I had to give you three steps to writing in the literary style, they would be:

 

1.  Create characters who are complex. This means spending time working out the details of characters who are by nature one thing, but who have been shaped to something else by experience. Then, allow your characters to tell you a story that is bigger than you could have possibly imagined. Listen long. Listen hard. This won’t come in one sitting.

 

2.  Concentrate as much on your tone and voice as you do the theme of the story. Take your time with word choice and don’t let anything sway you from those that come from your gut. That doesn’t mean you’ll use three adjectives to describe one noun and three adverbs to describe one verb, but more that the nouns and verbs pop on their own. (Not to say you can’t use adjectives and adverbs … just be careful.)

 

3.  Take all the time you need. None of this will come overnight nor will it be written in a day. Or a week. And maybe not in a year. But when you are done—deliciously exhausted from the process—you’ll have something you’re proud of. You’ll say, “This is it. This is it.”

 

Eva Marie Everson is the bestselling, multi-award winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her latest work of fiction, The One True Love of Alice-Ann, is set in the south during World War II. Eva Marie is the president of Word Weavers International and the director of Florida Christian Writers Conference. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother.

 

The Great Danger of Exposition by Sandie Bricker

EXPOSITION [ek-spuh-zish-uhn]

noun: the act of expounding, setting forth, or explaining; the exposition of a point of view; one of a writer’s greatest known dangers.

The exposition of a story is that information that, while not part of the current timeline of the story you’re telling, is necessary to explain some of those events. It’s that back story about your character’s past, those things that make him/her the person they are and explains why they react or feel a certain way in specific situations. Even though we’re all a product of our life experiences, it’s not necessary to lay it all out there right up front in order for someone to understand us.

In my film school days, my screenwriting instructor beat the following into us from Day One: SHOW IT, DON’T TELL IT. These days, as an editor and mentor to aspiring novelists, I couldn’t possibly count the times I’ve had to tell an author that they need to cut the whole first chapter, that the book actually starts in the middle of Chapter Two. As many times as that has happened, I’d guess in 90% of those instances, the writer has come back with an argument. And it usually starts with, “But in order to understand the main character…”

If your writing is strong and focused, if you take the reader on the journey with your lead character, they’ll come to understand him/her on their own. You don’t need to hold their hand or write down to them. You can allow them to experience the build, trust them to sense the subtle nuances you’ve painstakingly developed, and set them free to enjoy the ride.

I know it’s controversial in some circles, but personally, I enjoy a good Prologue … if it’s powerful and drives the tone and direction of the story. But how many times have we started reading a book, only to discover the prologue and entire first chapter are told in back story? I think this kind of thing does a mighty disservice to the reader. It deprives them of the complete experience.

When I first started dating as a teen, my mom gave me some really stellar advice. “Don’t put everything on the table on the first couple of dates,” she said. “Leave a little to the imagination. Be like an onion and reveal everything you have to offer in gradual layers.” It was great counsel. I know this because, in those times when I ignored it and allowed myself to be carried away too quickly, told all my stories on the first date, and cleared everything else on my calendar in order to be available, I regretted it every single time.

Let me be your “Writer Mom” for a moment and tell you this: 

Remember: Layers.

Here are a few tips that might serve as good reminders:

• Keep your first chapter clean. However you decide to handle the overall sprinkling in of back story, resolve to keep the first chapter free and clear of it. Give your readers a chance to step into a fresh situation and experience it along with your characters. Allow the opening of your novel to serve one primary purpose: To hook the reader.
• Decide what’s important in the bigger picture. Think of your story as a meal, and choose those points of information that will season the story rather than pouring a heavy topcoat of gravy that takes over the whole meal. 
• Choose your modes of transportation thoughtfully. There are various vehicles available to transport expository information. They include:  
• Dialogue

“I have to get back to the city in time to pick up my mother at the airport.”

“Oh? Is she coming into town for a visit?”

“She is. I haven’t seen her for several years because … Well, our relationship has been pretty complicated over the last couple of decades.”

“You don’t get along then?”

“Describe getting along.”

•  Snippets of thought

David checked his watch and took off at a full run out of the parking lot. Plenty of tension already hung over this visit with his mother, what with this being his inaugural effort to mend the broken-down fences between them. They certainly didn’t need to add another in his long line of irresponsible behaviors to the mix.

• Flashback

“You couldn’t arrive on time?” Betty chided. “Some things never change.”

David bit his tongue to keep from snapping at her in the first five minutes of their reunion. What had he been thinking? Hadn’t he learned this lesson several times over already? A montage of countless failed attempts at similar reparation missions sprang to mind, opening with the Christmas of his senior year at college when she refused to speak to him for two straight days … and dissolving into Thanksgiving weekend at his Aunt Sarah’s three years back. His mother had created such a drama out of his not telling her he’d be in attendance that all twelve of his aunt’s guests wore the familial expression of dismay and regret.

As a writer grows in their craft, other new and unique vehicles will become part of the tools in your storytelling box. The most important thing to remember, however, is to utilize exposition with a light, deft hand. Too much of it placed in the wrong spots of your story will take the whole thing down. Let your readers indulge in your story on a need-to-know basis.

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SANDRA D. BRICKER was an entertainment publicist in Los Angeles for 15+ years where she attended school to learn screenwriting and eventually taught the craft for several semesters. When she put Hollywood in the rear view mirror and headed across the country to take care of her mom until she passed away, she traded her scripts for books . . . and a best-selling, award-winning author of Live-Out-Loud fiction for the inspirational market was born. Sandie is best known for her Another Emma Rae Creation and Jessie Stanton series for Abingdon Press, and she was also named ACFW’s 2015 Editor of the Year for her work as managing editor of Bling! Romance, an edgy romance imprint for Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. As an ovarian cancer survivor, Sandie also gears time and effort toward raising awareness and funds for research, diagnostics and a cure.

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