R.S.Sharkey

Welcome to my first guest blog post. This is a subject I’ve been thinking over for a while and Katie Daniels was kind enough to write something up about it. Allegories and fantasy… well, I’ll leave it up to Katie’s post to explain what I’m talking about. Please, enjoy! And I hope this post offers you something to think about.

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What is Christian Fantasy? The simple answer is that it is a branch of Christian Fiction that incorporates elements of the fantasy genre. The long answer is much more complex.

Christian Fiction is fiction in any genre that incorporates elements of the Christian Religion. These books usually focus on themes like faith, belief, submission and prayer. Usually most of the characters are Christians, but there tends to be at least one non-believer who is later converted. The characters deal with struggles believed to be common among real believers today – going to church, trusting God, bible reading, and dealing with crisis. They are realistic dramas set in a contemporary or historical setting.

Christian Fantasy seems an oxymoron by contrast. It is difficult to portray the Christian Religion in a fantasy setting. The very history upon which the tenants of Christianity depend cannot exist in an alternate and fantastical world. The elements of fantasy contradict with the Bible, which must be the unfailing guide by which Christian books are written.

There are two solutions to the conundrum this presents. The most commonly observed practice is the one we all observe in our childhood readings – The allegory. C.S. Lewis wrote God into his story be creating a parallel world with a parallel religion, and a parallel Christ figure to die and be resurrected to save us all.

There are many problems with this option. Everyone does it, and it quickly becomes very predictable and cliche. It’s also very hard to carry of theologically. Yet because of the prevalence many beginning writers tackle the problem from this angle. Their plots are quickly dragged down in the overall, global salvation plan, and the writers themselves get tangled up in a theological rat’s nest that even the best philosophers haven’t been able to untangle.

But what is the alternative? Those who reject the allegory approach have a much simpler viewpoint, one that can also be applied to other genres that may cause trouble for direct Christian references. The alternate definition of Christian Fantasy is simply – fantasy written by Christians.

Indeed, what further definition do we need? A fantasy novel written by a Christian reflects the moral tenants of the religion, without employing the actual details and facts. A novel written from a specific view point can be more spiritual then one with a conversion scene and a parallel savior. A book that’s not tied down by the historical sequence of events that took place in our own world 2,000 years ago can be more realistic and more innovative, without sacrificing religious principles. It is possible to portray good and evil from a biblical viewpoint without quoting verses. It is possible to write about faith and hope and love without referring directly to Christ. And it’s even possible to refer to God without creating parallel culturally relevant names for our fantasy universes.

Fantasy is not a naming exercise. Fantasy is the art of creating a world wholly unlike our own, that mirrors our life in ways a true reflection never could. Simply paralleling our own history robs us of this opportunity, and deprives our writing of its true potential.

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I am first and foremost a storyteller, so while I may not always make sense and occasionally may require spellchecking I will always be striving to perfect my craft. While I realize perfection is unobtainable I am too much of a dreamer to give up on something simply because of a little thing like impossibility.

I am a fairytale writer, and I love dystopian science fiction. I have five good years of writing behind me, none of them particularly brilliant, but none of them useless either.

image and about taken from http://katielynndaniels.com

Posted in Writing in General
Tags: Guest, Katie Daniels, story development, tips, writing

Today I’ve got two posts. The first one is about procrastination, who doesn’t like talking about that? This article is about avoiding it though, good yes? The second article talking about marketing opportunities: the ones that are right before us and we often forget.

How to Avoid Procrastinating when You Feel Overwhelmed

Feelings of overwhelm, perfectionism, lack of management and organizational skills can cause us to lose motivation and lead to procrastination. Procrastination is a phenomenon in which a person neglects to attend to a necessary responsibility, such as a task or decision, in a timely fashion, often despite their good intentions or inevitable negative and unpleasant.

Missed Marketing Opportunities — Word of Mouth

Marketing does NOT mean boasting, bragging and generally being obnoxious about your work or your successes. What it DOES mean however, is being ever ready to put your brand in front of others and seizing the opportunities for promotion that would otherwise be overlooked.

Posted in Articles
Tags: articles, marketing, Monday, publishing, story development, styles, systems, tips, writing

A band I fell in love with over the summer is today’s suggested music.

Blackmill

You can find his music on YouTube but also purchase it through iTunes.

I’d define this music as calm dubstep. For those of you who understand dubstep, you might find it difficult to think of dubstep in this way but trust me. I’d recommend listening to Blackmill’s music to really calm you down and get focused on being creative. A warning though! If you don’t watch out, you might just fall asleep, very relaxing music indeed.
Next week’s Wednesday post: Stop Writing Allegory! – A guest post by Katie Daniels

Posted in Music
Tags: Blackmill, music, tips, writing

Allow me to introduce to you a serial I’m about to start here on my blog. I’ve been edging my through The Writer’s Journey (Mythical Structure for Writers) by Christopher Vogler, taking it down section by section. Instead of an every-other-week book review I’m going to progressively work my way through reviewing Vogler’s book!

Before I get into all that other review stuff, let me say this simple review: GET THIS BOOK! (I wrote that in all-caps which means it’s important, right?). But in truth, if you’re a writer, you really should get this book. Seriously. Hopefully my drawn out review will help make that clearer.

The thing is, I’m not really going to be tackling this from a reviewing sense. I’ll be approaching it in more of a; here are somethings Vogler mentions, here are some things I’ve learned because of that, and here are some of my ideas. I’ll start things off with character archetypes and those should get us through the end of the year and a little bit beyond that.

Vogler lists eight different common and useful archetypes: Hero, Mentor, Ally, Herald, Shadow, Trickster, Threshold Guardian, and Shapeshifter. I’ll be working my way down this list so Hero is up first. But I’m not starting quite yet. First, I’d like to offer some explanation over archetypes.

Archetypes

Def: An archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.

Archetypes are the people within your story. Whether you know it or not, every one of your characters are based on one or more archetypes. One or more? Yes, one or more and in best cases: more. Vogler uses the idea of masks to explain archetypes. They “are worn by the characters temporarily as they are needed to advance the story.”

This is something important to understand. Your hero doesn’t always have to play the role of the hero. He can play the role of a mentor, a herald or even a trickster while still being the story’s hero. Allowing yourself to vary a character’s role also allows you to make them less stiff.

Keep this in mind when reading through my “reviews” on archetypes over the next few weeks. A varied character is much more interesting than one that sticks to a single archetype.

Posted in Books, Review
Tags: book, character development, review, story development, styles, systems, tips, Vogler, Writers' Journey, writing

Two articles today. A post on book pricing and some things to know about the competition…

Should Books be Priced According to their Length?

When I was in the publishing business, the sales staff often wanted to correlate a book’s length with it’s value. They believed that books with more pages should be priced higher. Books with fewer pages should be priced lower. But is this true?

11 Key Questions Every Author must know about the Competition

I’m sure your approach and spin on your book’s subject is trailblazing, but there are certain steps that bestselling authors take BEFORE  their book is published. The number one secret of bestselling authors: knowing what’s already in the market.

Posted in Articles
Tags: articles, Monday, writing

Last week Thursday I had the chance to attend a typography event in the Twin Cities. Amist fun exploring the MIA and eventually finding the room where the event was held, I got to hang out with some great co-students from my college. At the event we got to make a letter out of play-dough! You got to pick your own letter, make it and later it might make it into a typeface. Chank Diesel was the man at the center of the event, a creative typographer from the Twin Cities, and he’s done this sort of creating-typefaces-at-an-event thing before. At the end of the night (after we’d left the event) there was quite the collection of letters:

Next week’s Wednesday post: The Writer’s Journey: Intro

Posted in Art
Tags: Chank Diesel, design, event, letters, typography

One of my most recent projects in school was formatting the layout of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The teacher said he had two reasons for choosing this document for the assignment. The first reason was simply because of the typographic content: headers, sub-headers, bullet-points, amount of text. His second reason was linked to the this question: When was the last time you actually read the UDHR? He wanted to get us to think about what it was that the United Nations had agreed upon and to consider how well it is being followed today. 

Continue reading ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’

Posted in Art, Uncategorized
Tags: formatting, Human Rights, typography, UNHR, United Nations

I’ve got an interesting fact about Mars and some blogging tips today. The blogging articles are on increasing readership and promotion.

Mars Snow Falls Like Dry Ice Fog

A snazzy, interesting article on how snow falls on Mars!

But when temperatures drop in winter to -193 degrees Fahrenheit (-125 degrees Celsius), it gets cold enough for carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere to freeze, creating clouds of dry ice that can reach from the poles to halfway to the equator.

How to Build a Readership for Your Blog and Books

The steps to growing your readership.

Even though we’d like an escalator to whisk us to the top, the truth is that we have to take the stairs, one step at a time.

How to use Tumblr to Grow an Author Platform

Reasons to add micro-blogging to your regime.

Microblogging is exactly what it sounds like…it’s a smaller, more condensed form of blogging. Images are usually the focus of such microblogs, but they can also be text-based.

Posted in Writing in General
Tags: articles, Monday, writing

How do you name a world?

So many people choose to name their worlds after the most important country, others have a name that everyone uses no matter their nationality or language. My craze’d, RE-development mind is currently getting nit-picky over this idea of world names. No one uses the same word for earth, do they? Sure, as English or Japanese speakers we have one word we use within our collective group of language speakers. But there is no singular word for our world. So why should there be one for mine? Well… for one thing it’d be nice to have a way to refer to my world… beyond just calling it “my world” of course. But, I’m still stuck on the question.

How do you name a world?

Next week’s Wednesday post: The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Posted in Story Development, Writing in General
Tags: stories, story development, world, writing

Makilien can’t take it anymore: there must be more to life than the monotony of the town she grew up in. Something is missing. The arrival of a stranger gives Makilien the push she needs to actually leave and discover what is out there. Strangers become friends and open her eyes to the evil she’s been blind to for years. Her warrior heart aroused, Makilien joins the fight against Zirtan’s forces. All the while searching for what’s always been missing from her life.

Truth is the tale of a girl’s search for God, though she doesn’t realize He is what’s missing. Molly Evangeline leads us in a journey across Dolennar to discover what the truth is and where it can be found. Along the way we meet a cast of characters who willingly accept Makilien and are ready and willing to show her the way.

Continue reading ‘Review – Truth’

Posted in Books, Review
Tags: book, fantasy, Molly Evangeline, review, Truth