Timothy J. Pruitt's Blog, page 139

iPainting Lions Light

The Story Serves The Reader Part 1

I believe the story should serve the reader, and I’ll tell you why. First, let’s look at a real life account. In these cases I believe the story should serve the reader by informing, bringing interest which is different than entertainment, sometimes also bring entertainment when appropriate, allowing the reader to form their own opinion.

This doesn’t mean the writer doesn’t have an opinion, or even that they can’t express it, but the line between fact and opinion should be clear. If a journalistic work, then it should be as completely void of opinion, as much as humanly possible. I lean to the old journalistic school on this matter personally. If not a journalistic work, share your opinion but I would recommend to be clear as to where the facts stop and opinion begins.

If the story if fictional, it should also serve the reader. It too should inform, bring interest and entertainment, which as I said are different, and in some cases depending on the subject matter also provide a moral. To clarify, a moral is not an opinion, but a moral lesson such as the tortoise and the hare. People from all walks of life, religions, and backgrounds can agree on consistency.

There are tools a writer can use to help the story serve the reader. As an example, in a mystery the clues are presented for the reader, even if the writer is allowed a little slight of hand in the process. What a mystery writer should not do is to write in such a way that even Agatha Christie herself couldn’t solve it by reading it.

One important way of the story serving the reader is by never talking down to them. That, in writing is one of the most serious literary offenses that can be made. No one, at any age, wants to be talked down too. They can be taught, informed, and critiqued, but being talked down to will typically not be tolerated by most readers. Let’s touch on some more ways tomorrow because serving others is one of the most important things you can do as a writer, or as a person.

iPainting Gorilla Gray

He Sees And We See

It’s the same verse in Psalms 11:7, they both start out the same. Each says The Lord is righteous, and that He loves righteousness or righteous deeds. The interesting thing is how the two translations interpret the Hebrew for the last section.

One says the upright shall behold His face, and the other says His countenance beholds the upright. With Hebrew, I know enough to know both are accurate linguistically, but also that they agree Theologically. He saw us before we ever saw Him. Because He pursued us, we can behold Him.

It’s what this season is really all about. Thanksgiving was about a people coming to a new world to worship freely. Spiritually they recognized that when we come to Jesus, we enter a new world, and we worship in His presence. We get to see what only He could reveal, and that is Himself, and one day soon we shall see Him face to face.

The word face in this verse, not only means His face, it also means a number of other things. One meaning in particular is the word battle. As a Christian this excites me, because that means that we have a very present help in time of trouble. We serve a God Who is not only looking on from a throne, but Who is leading the charge.

In Acts 2:25 Simon Peter quoting David said it this way, I saw The Lord alway before my face. The Warrior King knew His God as The Lord Of Hosts. The One Who doesn’t merely send you into battle, but fights the battle. When we are in His presence, we cannot help but be victorious, as long as we keep our eyes on Jesus.

It’s interesting that it’s David and Simon who mention this. They both knew the order of events. David knew before he slew a giant, God had chosen Him. Before David wondered at God, He had a plan for David’s life. Simon followed Jesus from the shore of Galilee to the cross, once Jesus had chosen Simon.

The key to it all is because He chose to save us, we can choose to seek Him. Had The Lord Jesus not pursued us from Heaven to Earth, we’d have no hope of lifting our eyes to see Him, much less pondering Heaven. Because He did, we have a Heavenly destiny that only a God Who smiled on us first, could make a reality.

Sketch Lincoln For The Defense

iPainting Hippo In Water

Taken from a beautiful photograph, the orange hue of the horizon and the water accentuated the hippo so well I thought.

Writing Character Crafting

In both fiction and nonfiction, character crafting is important. By crafting I mean, how you present a written person to readers, whether real or fictional. If a real person, then you want to be careful not to allow your interpretation of their actions to slip into the retelling of the account. While you are not a journalist, you also want to present an unbiased view of everyone.

With a fictional character, crafting is more hands on. When crafting a character, strive to keep them from being one dimensional. This does not mean that you have to make the villain sentimental, but you do need to make every character interesting. Some will get more attention than others, but they all should serve the story.

Some characters will engage the reader into the story, others will engage the reader to know more about the character. This can be overdone, for example, the messenger on page 5 that we will never see again, needs to engage the reader into the story. We don’t need to know his family history, but the character who pops up in chapters 4, 5, and 6, should be more fleshed out.

Strong characters deserve a strong plot, and vice versa, but this is relative to the length of the story. In a short story, the details can be a shorter list, but in a novel, they need to be more substantial. Details can be a writer’s friend, or a trap door. If used correctly they further the story and deepen interest. If used incorrectly, they will cause readers to lose interest, trail off the page, and out of the book.

A good character should have a motive if not an agenda, there is a difference, some will have both. They should be interesting, not one dimensional, and their story should always be second to the story itself. Tomorrow let’s talk about how the story should serve the reader, but for today remember that the character should serve the story.

Skipping Writing

You may have noticed that, while I wrote yesterday, I didn’t write a writing post. It was Adoption Day, when we celebrate our son Nicholas, so I missed the writing post. I mention this because of this question. What do you do when you’ve missed a day writing?

The answer is a two part answer, the first part being easy, you write today. The second part is don’t worry about the day you missed, it’s going to happen. The good news is that, if you continue writing, no one will ever know.

When people read your book, they won’t say he missed a day, they’ll enjoy the story. I would suggest you do the same, enjoy the journey. There have been important days where I didn’t write anything, and there have just been missed days, and that’s okay as long as it doesn’t become a pattern.

The only way a skipped day can hurt you, is when a day turns into a week and so on. Writing daily will not only build writing muscles, it’s locks in a routine. Habit is a tremendous tool for a writer. Let’s talk more about writing habits in the days ahead that will help reduce skipping writing.

Sketch Lion Majestic

I miss Inktober already, but you don’t have to wait for a challenge to draw. Here’s a Lion I sketched with a Micron pen.

Adoption Day 2021

Today is Adoption Day, the day we celebrate the official date we became a family. It’s a day Nicholas gets toys, learns about Adoption, and a day of fun. It’s the anniversary of us standing before the Judge, and him making it all official.

He was such a nice man, and he knew what we did, that it was an official ceremony for something that had already happened. We were blessed to be there the day he was born, to spend the days in the hospital with him, and to bring him home via Arizona to Texas to Nashville.

It was an adventure that we will never forget, and one that we are thankful for everyday. We were a family though, before the ceremony, and before his birth. We were a family before the phone call, and before the trip there.

God had given us a very special gift, we we’re going to be Nicholas’ parents. For me, I had always dreamed of being a Dad. For my Wife, her journey began with health complications at eleven years old. She will tell you now, every pain was worth the process, because otherwise we would not have been positioned for our Nicholas.

To Pastor Denny Livingston, the man who said, “Lord let him be a Pruitt from the moment he was born.”, before anyone even knew it was a boy, was the same man who had prophesied we would be given a child, even when the doctor’s report said no. We’ll never forget the text that changed our lives the night before what could have been a very dark time the next day.

To the people, Angels really, that God used to make our journey possible, thank you is never enough. You are His hands and feet, and you placed our son in our arms. Every time we hear Mommy and Daddy, is because you said yes to your Heavenly Father’s voice. Thank you for making every day as a parent possible.

To all those who cried with us in sorrow, and rejoiced with us in overwhelming joy, thank you! We are a family because of this beautiful word Adoption. I learned something about it today that leads me back to when we become a family.

In the Greek it’s a compound word, one means son or child, the other essentially means place, but it also means a whole lot more. It means conceive, and it means to ordain. God conceived a plan when we were unable to, He ordained a very special future for us that only He could.

The Lord made us a family whenever we did not understand the journey. We would not change one moment of our story, for it’s the story of our family. We are proud Adoption parents, and so grateful for the gift of God named Nicholas!