Tag: inspire

Categories
Screenwriting

What’s the Point?

Recently my best friend and I met up for our first guys’ night out of the year, after eating dinner we decided to go see the latest Star Wars film, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER .

For us it was more than just an appropriate “guy movie,” it was a trip back through our childhood on a cinematic journey. How could we resist the nostalgia of spaceships, droids, the age-old battle of good versus evil and of course seeing Princess Leia one last time?

The real caveat has been the real message of hope, against all the odds. For over forty years this series has inspired viewers with the idea of hope, starting with Star Wars: A New Hope.

Two generations of fans have left theaters with the idea that hope is the answer. When I first began my training as a writer in 2011, the first term I learned about was takeaway. If we always think reader (audience) first, they will take something with them from our writing.

I learned that the takeaway is inspired by numerous factors:

  • Plot – the course of events that make up our story.
  • Theme – the underlying idea behind the events that take place.
  • Message – how the theme is acted out or upon.

Through these three fundamentals of a story, the takeaway inspires us to take action in life. And I believe deep inside of all writers we have a desire to change lives, and we attempt to change perspectives through our art. This is why takeaway is important to stories.

Takeaway?

Granted there are many forms of writing and each one has a different function: to entertain, to inform, persuade and my favorite, to enlighten.

Regardless of the function, a writer’s ultimate goal is to bring some form of change. We want to encourage our audiences to take action and that is why our prose needs takeaway value.

Even in fictional writing takeaway value is critical. It may be an inciting or motivating incident that gets our audience moving.

When I attended my first screenwriting conference in 2011, it included a speed pitch session. Similar to speed dating, writers were allowed to travel from one industry insider’s table to another for a short amount of time.

During that time we were to pitch our project to each prospective studio or producer. Regardless of the professional I pitched to, they all wanted to know what my screenplay’s takeaway was.

A studio or producer and even networks aren’t willing to invest their resources into a project unless there is a unique and marketable takeaway value in the project.

When writing has takeaway value, an audience or reader gains an understanding or perspective that can be incorporated into day-to-day life. As I learned in one of my classes through the former Christian writers Guild, “Editors look out for their readers—and they want to work with writers… who do the same. They publish articles that provide strong takeaway value.”[i]

They do this to meet a need in their readers’ lives. Once you decide on what you want to encourage your audience or readers to do or think, be sure to take steps to encourage them to take action. Below are a few steps you can take in your writing.

  1. Create an eye-catching title.
  2. Open with a real-life story.
  3. Anticipate the opposition.
  4. Evoke emotion.
  5. Keep readers interested.
  6. Write in the active voice.
  7. Invite readers to take action.[ii]

While these are intended for article or nonfiction writing, they easily apply to screenwriting:

  • Titles can imply a lot about a movie.
  • Most audiences can relate more to real-life stories.
  • Most moviegoers are movie critics and want an enjoyable experience.
  • Emotional stories touch audiences at a deeper level.
  • Be creative and keep the audience interested.
  • The age-old truth for screenwriting is to always write in the active voice as the story is unfolding before our eyes now.
  • Give your story a conclusion that will motivate your audience.

By the time the credits start to roll at the end of a movie, the audience should have followed the plot, understood the theme and have a clear message from your narrative. No one likes leaving a movie unsatisfied and wondering why they invested the time and money into it—what was the point?

What’s The Point?

Every writer has a story, message or point they want to share. If you’re human you have a perspective, personality, and a voice. Screenplays are a visual way of expressing each.

  • You can entertain.
  • You can educate.
  • You can inspire.

The best movies change us or something in us. Below are a few of my favorite, can you relate to their takeaway?

Shawshank Redemption: Redemption/change.

A Very Long Engagement : Real love never dies.

The Grace Card: We all need grace.

I’m sure you can think of many of your favorites that have impacted your life, character, and beliefs. Because if a story has no takeaway, then what’s the point?

Martin Johnson survived a severe car accident with a (T.B.I.) Traumatic brain injury which left him legally blind and partially paralyzed on the left side. He is an award-winning Christian screenwriter who has recently finished his first Christian nonfiction book. Martin has spent the last nine years volunteering as an ambassador and promoter for Promise Keepers ministries. While speaking to local men’s ministries he shares his testimony. He explains The Jesus Paradigm and how following Jesus changes what matters most in our lives. Martin lives in a Georgia and connects with readers at Spiritual Perspectives of Da Single Guy and on Twitter at mtjohnson51.

[i] Jenkins (2010) Apprentice Course CWG publishing Colorado Springs, CO p 87.

[ii] Jenkins (2010) Apprentice Course CWG publishing Colorado Springs, CO p 93.

Categories
Devotions for Writers

Allegiance to the Call

devotions

“I have done as you have commanded.”

Ezekiel 9:11 (NIV)

In our passage, the man with the writing kit at his side returns to the Lord with his mission accomplished. He knew his assignment and the terms to complete it.

Have you ever felt convicted to write a piece that an editor didn’t feel convicted to publish? You worked and reworked to make sure it was ready. But, what you submitted wasn’t what the editor needed.

Maybe success is not measured by reward, but by faithfulness to what God has called you to do.

How does inspiration strike you? Whether an idea niggles at you for weeks, or pops up instantaneously, it can take you by surprise when fleshed out. What an awesome opportunity to watch an idea form. It has the power to inspire, intrigue, and inspect your audience. Best of all, work done for the Lord may impact someone for eternity.

I remember reading an article about doorways that convinced me that they are welcoming agents and first impressions. Now, I notice doorways when in unfamiliar neighborhoods. Who would have thought writing about a doorway would be important? But that author found an angle to made it compelling, and it did affect me!

Let’s link arms in obedience to write for God! He put writers on earth for a purpose, and as we fulfill that design, we too will experience the satisfaction of telling the Lord, “I have done as You have commanded!”

Exercise:

You have been writing. You have been mailing in work to editors. You are learning to discipline yourself to keep office hours. You are seeing the efforts of your hard work adding up to a nice list of queries.

But, what if it’s been months with no response from your query? General response time is six to eight weeks! Your mission today, should you choose to accept it, is to follow up on that long-lost piece. It could be buried on an editor’s desk. It could have fallen through the gap when the publication changed hands. But you need to politely inquire as to the status of that piece!

Go in obedience to God, to follow up on something He inspired. You obeyed Him by writing it in the first place, now obey Him by following up on what He orchestrated. 

Refresh the memory of your editor and sell the advantage to printing your piece. You can do it!

Over 140 of Sally Ferguson’s devotionals have been published in Pathways to God (Warner Press). She’s also written for Light From The Word, Chautauqua Mirror, Just Between Us, Adult Span Curriculum, Thriving Family, Upgrade with Dawn and ezinearticles.com. Prose Contest Winner at 2017 Greater Philly Christian Writers Conference.

Sally loves organizing retreats and seeing relationships blossom in time away from the daily routine. Her ebook, How to Plan a Women’s Retreat is available on Amazon. 

Sally Ferguson lives in the beautiful countryside of Jamestown, NY with her husband and her dad.

Visit Sally’s blog at www.sallyferguson.net

Categories
Magazine and Freelance

Write to Inspire-Terry Whalin

When we consider various markets for our magazine writing, often we neglect the market right before our eyes—the inspirational, religious marketplace. Maybe we avoid it because it’s the most personal part of our life and experiences.  In reality, this niche market is a wide-open opportunity to write about our personal experiences, lessons we’ve learned from life and the Bible or short stories or the range of articles from the broader marketplace—yet with a spiritual twist.

Years ago, I studied journalism at Indiana University.  I thought I was a hotshot writer who could hit any market.  As a new Christian, I naturally tried the religious marketplace. My writing efforts were last minute, lacked market research and 100% unsuccessful.  Because I failed to take the time to understand the market needs, I ended up writing strange untargeted articles that never appeared in print.

In contrast, years later after college, I gave the energy to research this market and understand it. I’ve written articles for more than 50 of these publications.  I’ve written devotionals, how-to articles, fiction stories, personality profiles, round-ups (a feature on a particular type of book like financial books or devotional books), book reviews and much more.

The motivation for writing about spiritual matters is more than the simple desire to be published.  Often the deeper motivation is to capture some experience, spiritual thought or how-to which motivates the reader into a deeper relationship with God.  The range of possible articles and age groups is a broad as your imagination.  Almost 700 inspirational magazines provide infinite possibilities for your writing.

This market requires a certain commitment to studying the publication, carefully reading the guidelines, then writing your article with a particular market in mind.  Often because the motivation for a particular article is beyond simply getting into print or being paid, the editors are more approachable and responsive to working with new authors.  While my last statement is true, it’s not always the case.  Often these publications are overwhelmed with poorly written, unfocused submissions.

If you study these religious publications, then appeal to their particular niche in the market with well-crafted storytelling, then I almost guarantee that your material will be carefully read, considered, then possibly published.

You can find these markets in your local Christian bookstore or publications, which you read weekly at your church.  Also your church library is a good source of various publications.  What type of religious material do you read on a regular basis? If you read a devotional guide like Quiet Hour  or The Upper Room, then through your life experiences, you have been gaining the background to write similar types of material.  Do you enjoy reading about the lives of other people, then you can write spiritually-based, personality profiles.  I’ve written about people like Disney Animator, Glen Keane (who created Beast in Beauty and the Beast) or best-selling author Janette Oke.

The stories don’t have to be complicated or involve interviewing someone famous.  The source material can come from your personal life.   When I lost a son years ago, we taught his older brother about death.  I wrote down the anecdotes from the experience and weaved it into an article called “Schooled In Death.”  Or I captured the story of my own spiritual journey through another personal experience article called “Two Words That Changed My Life.”

Every article is different and the publications are distinct. You can learn the skills to put together an excellent magazine article and write to inspire others. It’s important to write for their guidelines, then send in your material for consideration. You can write these magazine articles but it will involve learning then putting it into practice.

Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing, lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor, Whalin has written for more than 50 publications including Christianity Today and Writer’s Digest. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. His latest book is Billy Graham, A Biography of America’s Greatest Evangelist and the book website is at: http://BillyGrahamBio.com Watch the short book trailer for Billy Graham at: http://bit.ly/BillyGrahamBT His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/terrywhalin

Categories
Create. Motivate. Inspire.

The Wonder of it All

The Light of the World. The Chronicles of Narnia.

The Chick-Fil-A Cow.

Believe it or not, the aforementioned have a common thread that should fill us with the wonder of it all. They are examples of great works of—wait for it—creativity.

The Light of the World (1851-1853) is a painting by William Holman Hunt depicting Jesus preparing to knock on a long-neglected door. The door with no outside handle was painted to illustrate the scripture of Revelation 3:20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me”

C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia have thrilled children and adults for decades with magical descriptions of strange animals and beasts that talk. Children from the real world enter an enchanted land called Narnia, meet and pledge loyalty to a lion named Aslan, and together work to fight evil to restore the rightful heirs to the throne.

Then there’s the Chick-Fil-A Cow. In 1995, The Richards Group, an advertising agency based out of Dallas, Texas, put their heads together to come up with a slogan to help S. Truett Cathy sell a few chicken sandwiches. I don’t know exactly how it went down, but at some point, a mastermind said, “I know…let’s use a cow to sell chicken. And the cow can tell everyone to Eat Mor Chikin’.”

Brilliant.

I am fascinated by the creativity of others as they showcase the broad spectrum of vision and imagination in mankind. What makes someone look at a glob of paint and see Jesus raising a hand to knock on a door? Who gazes at a wardrobe and imagines children climbing in and discovering another world? And who, pray tell, ponders how to sell chicken and thinks of a cow?

It all comes down to the Person whose image we bear.

We have the desire to create because we are made in the image of the ultimate Creator—Jesus—the One who was with God in the beginning. The One who spoke all things into existence. The One who moves in us to act according to His will and gives us the desire to reflect His glory.

As writers, when we are driven to shape thoughts and ideas on paper, our hearts should thrill with what is happening. The Creator of all things is moving in us to accomplish His purposes. How affirming!

Over the next months, I pray that CREATE. MOTIVATE. INSPIRE. will be nourishment to your writer’s soul and that it will be a reminder of the Reason behind it all.

We are image-bearers.

May we bear it well.

[bctt tweet=”We are image-bearers. #inspiration #write” via=”no”]

[bctt tweet=”It all comes down to the Person whose image we bear. #write #writer” via=”no”]

Categories
Storyworld

Acquiring Things of Value

ThingsOfValue
Acquiring Things of Value

When writing a speculative fiction novel, determine what the things of value are in your world. Water, food, shelter-building resources, fuel: these are essential to survival and can create primal conflicts in a story. Sometimes wars are fought over precious metals and rare elements with powerful properties either for magic or technology. Maybe your characters aren’t directly involved in your storyworld’s economy, but they’ll definitely feel its effects somehow.

goldbars

If precious commodities have anything in common, it’s that they are rare. Additionally, there are only five ways to acquire them: force, theft, trade, harvesting, or begging. The things of valuable in your novel, as well as the manner in which your characters (and their authorities) acquire them, will shape your fictitious world. Here are a handful of examples from various works of fiction.

Frank Herbert’s Dune portrays the relative need of two different substances, one native to the desert planet of Arrakis, the other quite rare. The rare commodity, water, was used as a form of currency, despite also being a necessary consumable. On the flip side, Arrakis’s primary export was its spice, an addictive drug used for its life-extending and prescience-granting purposes. Interstellar trades (and wars) were made to ensure the exchange of these two commodities, and such is the socio-economic and political stage for the epic saga in Dune.

The TV show Firefly also showed an interesting perspective on things of value. In the opening scene of the first episode, a crew of space pirates scavenge what looks to be a crate of precious metals from a derelict vessel. The entire episode leads you to believe that what Mal and his crew have stolen is something of incredible value. But by the show’s end, you discover the blocks of gold are essentially just foil-wrapped Powerbars. This causes some confusion until you realize just how desperate the border worlds are for food. Nevertheless, we get a glimpse of how the border folk survive – namely by trade and theft.

moonSimilarly, Robert Heinlein’s book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, briefly alludes to the commodity of air and the complicated manner in which colonists pay for that utility on a lunar base. Certainly not something we think of here on earth, where the air is free.

In these three examples, water, food, and air are all valuable commodities, despite each being common on earth. On the other hand, the fictional resource in the preceding examples, Dune’s “spice,” is unique and fundamental to Herbert’s amazing world – it literally wouldn’t function without it. If you’re writing a speculative fiction novel, what sort of unique resource needs exist in your storyworld? If you’ve read something with some interesting things of value or ways of obtaining them, consider leaving a comment below so you can pique the imaginations of fellow authors.

Categories
A Lighter Look at the Writer's Life

Writers Conferences: The Main Thing

I’ve been to many writers conferences and even serve on the planning committee of one event, and I always tell conference “newbies” about the main thing.

Most first-time conference attendees think the main thing is their work. Their manuscript. Their baby. I thought that, too. I was wrong.

Ten years ago I came to my first conference, Kentucky Christian Writers Conference, very “green.” I had my manuscript, my baby, in a big blue binder, and I expected to meet an editor, sign a contract at dinner, and return the next year with a shiny published book with my name on it and a gig as the keynote speaker.

Why not dream big?

One of the first people I met at the conference “Meet-and-Greet” was an editor with a MAJOR Christian publishing house. We chatted easily and found ourselves “bumping into each other” all weekend. We even got together at the hotel, and he met my family. At the end of the conference, he miraculously agreed to take my manuscript home!

My dream was coming true! An editor from a MAJOR house was willing to look at my work! Keynote, here I come!

A few months later, he got laid off from the MAJOR publishing house.

So much for my big dream.

However, through the years, a deep friendship developed as we exchanged emails, Facebook messages, and phone calls. We have shared the highs and lows of life, watched each other’s children grow up, commiserated over writing rejections, celebrated publications, and more.

Today, ten years after that first meeting at KCWC, this friend traveled many miles out of his way (over mountainous roads—I live in the middle of nowhere) to visit me. We had a great day touring the area, sharing a meal, and catching up after too many years. We even prayed for each other before he left.

He never published my book . . . but he became one of my dearest friends.

Relationship. That, my friends, is the main thing you’ll take away from a writers conference.

Categories
Storyworld

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Alien Nature

Atheists believe all creatures evolved over countless millennia of bloodshed, allowing only the fittest members of a species to breed. They therefore imagine all sentient life with the same violent nature as humanity, and the same basic need for governance.

But the writer of Christian science fiction and fantasy has a unique perspective on mankind, and therefore also a unique way to imagine inhuman races. That comes from a biblical understanding of the nature of man.

But the first question the Christian needs to ask when writing a work of Christian science fiction or fantasy is this: Does your world even take place in our universe? If so, you have to take certain things into account. Specifically …

[bctt tweet=”Does your world even take place in our universe? #storyworld #scifi #fantasy” via=”no”]

God is in charge and has a purpose

If the God we know from the Bible exists in your fiction, then we know certain things are true. Specifically: God created man intentionally (not accidentally) to have a relationship with him, man rebelled against God, and God allows man to be forgiven.

Understanding these fundamental aspects of humanity will guide you when writing about non-humans in a biblical universe. Why? Because although God gave all creatures a purpose, an alien’s purpose may be very different from our own. Maybe God didn’t create the space-fairies to worship him, but to punish humanity. Scary thought, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented based on the way He used Cyrus in Isaiah’s prophecies.

God so loved [humans] that he gave his only begotten son

Sin and redemption are so intrinsic to humanity that we forget that mankind may be unique in this regard. But have aliens even rebelled against God like humans? Perhaps they had a test like the one in Eden but passed. Obviously their relationship with the Lord would look very different. A great pair of novels that deal with this theoretical issue are Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, both Christian science fiction novels by C.S. Lewis.

[bctt tweet=”have aliens even rebelled against God like humans? #storyworld #scifi” via=”no”]

Even if aliens did fall from grace, redemption may look different. God chose a very awesome way to reconcile man to himself, but a different method could be employed to bring otherworldly people to himself. For example, Ted Dekker’s Circle series (Quadrilogy?) had an unusual redemption story for the characters in his alternate reality/ future/ past/ whatever it was.

A sad possibility is that there is no hope for redemption for an alien race. It sounds cruel, but we know of one sentient alien species in our own reality that has fallen members with no hope for salvation. No, not the Rock People from the Noah Movie. Sigh. Angels and Demons. Angels were created for purposes similar to man’s (worshipping God), but somewhere along the line, a third of the angels rebelled against God (just like Adam rebelled). To our knowledge though, their species has not been offered forgiveness. The mercy He grants humanity gives us a unique and humbling position.

 

Before I completely overwhelm you, not all sci-fi and fantasy needs to have aliens or other species. Examples: The Battletech series by Michael A. Stackpole and others, Joss Whedon’s Firefly (ok it’s a TV show, not a book), and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. But if you’re writing Christian science fiction in our biblical universe and describing fictitious species , you’ll need to consider which aspects of man’s story are unique and which aren’t. Maybe heaven in your book will contain many different species, or maybe not. You don’t have to describe this heavenly display, but you should keep it in mind as an end-goal for your protagonists. At any rate, God’s eternal plan is of supreme importance in human lives, so it at least bears consideration for nonhumans. And a better understanding of humanity’s own (possibly) unique story will help you craft your own.