Archive | Uncategorized RSS feed for this section

I watched We are Marshall last night. Great movie – loved it, and even down to the outright frightening 1970’s styles. It a nutshell, it’s the story of Marshall University and their fight to find hope again after the death of their entire football team in a terrible plane crash. The movie is narrated by a cheerleader who loses her fiancé in the crash. Usually a football movie is about the coach, or one of the players (think: Friday Night Lights, or Rudy). In this movie, however, the main character is the TOWN. Yes, it features two coaches – Matthew Fox and Matthew McConaughey (two very good reasons to watch this movie), and a football player named Nate, but really, it’s about how a town moved from grief to hope. […]

Here’s a question that’s come to My Book Therapy: “What is the difference between Chick LIt and WF, and how can I decide what genre to use for my book?” What a great question. In fact, I answered this during my Lit Continuing Session at the ACFW Conference. Lits, especially Chick Lit, was birthed in 1996 with Helen Fielding’s “Bridget Jones Diary.” Wilkipedia defines Chick Lit as: the genre covers the breadth of the female experience which deals unconventionally with traditional romantic themes of love and courtship. Lit books usually features hip, stylish female protagonists, usually in their twenties and thirties, in urban settings (usually London or Manhattan), and follows their love lives and struggles for professional success (often in the publishing, advertising, public relations or fashion industry). The books […]

Welcome back! I hope you and your character and still talking to each other, now that you know his deepest fears, greatest dreams, and know how to hurt him! Because today, we’re going to talk about how to put all that knowledge together to create THE BLACK MOMENT. What is The Black Moment? The Black Moment is that place in the book where everything hits a crisis – both internally and externally. It’s the point of change in a book and can be the most powerful scene if done right. How do we find that black Moment for your Character? It’s easy…and Hint #3: Find their hiding place. Where do you derive your security? Hopefully, for all of us, it’s in the strength of God and trusting in His love […]

My bad — as I was getting into my cab yesterday on my way home from Dallas, I hollered at my Book Therapy cohort, Rachel, to blog about Dr. Notes, forgetting that Tuesday was Drs. Notes day– and yesterday was Ask the Doc — so, sorry for that switcharoo! I taught four workshops at last weeks American Christian Fiction Writer’s conference, and then spent all day Sunday brainstorming with my crit partners. One of the most common questions that surfaced had to do with keeping tension tight on every page. Someone said, “I have a main plot, with lots of tension, but the story seems to slow in the middle to almost a standstill. How do I keep that tension increasing on each page? Great question. And one solution: Create […]