Choices and Your Destiny

AuthorAppleton on August 31, 2015

You are the sum of your choices, not the victim of your circumstances. Some folks attribute the person they become to the way they were raised, the opportunities they had, who their role models were. But history is replete with people who came out of nothing, even out of bad circumstances, and  rose to greatness. The truth is more challenging than that and understanding it enlightens us as to how heroes come to be.

What separates the average person from an individual who stands out is the choices they make. This is key in writing. You cannot root for a character that wallows in self-pity, yet you can root for one that rises above the muck to follow conscience and vision.

When I was growing up I refused to let discouragements push me away from my dreams and my spiritual convictions. My parents always told me to dream big and to never stop believing that I could fulfill those dreams. I failed many times, of course, yet God would always put me back on track when I made the right choices again.

I hit a rough patch when I left home to join the work force. Starting when I was sixteen the people I spent hours with at work each day did not share my Christian values. Many of them were good people yet they did not understand my convictions. Constantly my convictions were challenged and I discovered that people really do try to pull you into fellowship with their sins. Otherwise you make them uncomfortable. Many times others offered to pay my way into a strip club or go and get drunk. “You don’t know unless you try,” they’d say.

I do not recall these things to build my esteem in your eyes, but rather to remind and warn. Choice governs our destiny. I made some poor choices during that time that set me back spiritually, but thank God I also made better choices that strengthened me to continue growing toward the type of man I wanted to be.

Many young Christians fall during that transition, even fall away from the faith. It is a time of testing to see if the convictions they voice are a conviction in their souls or merely a carry over from the way they were raised. They allow failings to strengthen discouragement until the pattern of their life is a spiritual defeat. I have seen many hearts turned wholly to the world instead of to seeking God.

The world defines someone as a hero if they “follow their heart.” If they stand out as different from the norm with strange, revolutionary thinking. This is especially true if they depart from tradition; historical and Christian values. Little do these folks realize that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. It can be led astray and must be guarded.

A true hero meets those moments when culture challenges them and they stand firm in conviction. In faith and action they demonstrate a desire to grow in favor with God, not with the world.

We are the sum of our choices. Our choices can be guided by wisdom or by the desires of our heart. It’s a hard battle, yet with each right choice we fashion our habits and our destiny in favor with God.

In some ways you could say that true heroes are made, not born. Or, rather, that true heroes are born of their choices. They live with a healthy fear of the God who made them.

Q: To what destiny are your choices guiding you?

How to preserve your story ideas

AuthorAppleton on August 24, 2015

It seems like I’ve been coming up with story ideas since I was a little kid, and I feel that it is true. Digging into my childhood memory box will reveal a small treasure trove of hand-drawn picture books I created for my siblings, as well as creature sketches, and lists of the numerous books I was reading. The box of story ideas began back then.

I remember working on a story about a mouse family. My brother drew pictures to go along with the story because he loved it so much. The concept was a family of mice in an abandoned house who get caught between warring factions of living toy soldiers. I still remember that story… Yet the material has been completely lost. The idea is there. Even some of the details stick in my memory, yet much of it will be a struggle for me to regain.

I wish I had had an idea file in a computer back then.

Nowadays those ideas are most often thrown into computer files. I like the security this affords. I can store the idea, then refer back to it at my leisure. The files have grown over the past twelve years. The idea behind them is that they are ideas that I do not have time to write, at this time, yet I intend to get to someday. There are new fantasy novels, science-fiction, mysteries, historical fiction, even a romance or two.

But I would be remiss if I did not mention my notebooks. Writing on paper has always given me my greatest story ideas. Much of the core material behind The Sword of the Dragon books was hand written. There’s nothing akin to sitting outside enjoying nature, the fresh air, with pad and pen in hand. No rush, simply enjoying the process. My preference has bounced between ruled paper and sketchbooks. Each offers a different feel that fuels creativity. Ruled paper allows me to feel more structured, especially for outlining ideas. Whereas sketchbooks feel like a clean slate I can fill with my tiny handwriting.

The writer’s imagination is always gathering ideas. It would be career suicide to throw those ideas out. Even if the raw idea is not ready for publication, its premise or an element of it may stick to create something memorable. A few times I have found I end up incorporating them into existing storylines. The Sword of the Dragon series has benefitted greatly from the use of ideas from these files.

Q: Do you have a system to file your story ideas?

Creative Conflict (an author’s meditation)

AuthorAppleton on August 17, 2015

Stories running deep as an ocean,
Ideas warring within the mind.
Where one thought arises another follows,
As a story solidifying, it raises new questions.

Conflict at the heart of a good story,
The force beginning to strengthen it.
One thought seen as an opportunity,
A moment in which to explore possibilities.

Story creation is full of conflict,
Some ideas falling to ruin.
Each idea discarded allows growth,
The best ideas remaining and growing.

Allowing the conflict to rage inside the mind,
Allowing it to eliminate the weaker ideas.
Favoring ideas with the greatest promise,
Conflict always exists in the writer’s mind.

The writer is at the heart of the conflict,
Sifting through the ideas,
Knowing that nothing great is created easily,
The writer embraces the conflict.

Why print books are here to stay

AuthorAppleton on August 10, 2015

Several years ago the success of digital books, mostly related to the wide reception of the Kindle reading device, spawned a big debate amongst readers, editors, authors, and publishers. The question: would digital books kill the sales of print books? At the time most experts agreed the print book had seen its day and the vast majority of readers would shift over to digital. Back then I was one of the few, at least on the web, who took the other position. Print books are here to stay.

Print books are here to stay. It is interesting to note that most of my peers in the publishing industry postulated that the death of print books would be, in large part, a generational thing. It was postulated that younger readers prefer their devices. They prefer their technology.

Truth is, I have traveled through many states and spoken with thousands of students. In public schools a decent portion of the readers did later purchase my books on their iPads and their Kindle readers. Yet still the vast majority purchased the print copy. Some readers bought both. In the homeschool crowd I found many readers like myself, and for the most part they preferred print copies. Print copies can be signed by the author and lifted to your face for that comforting book smell. Ah! Ink on paper.

My personal library contains books dating back to the mid-1800’s. Those books have been handled by people long dead. The scent of the people and of the world they lived in contributes to the book experience in a way digital books never can. Physical books have memory in their pages and in their cover.

I have nothing against digital books. They have been a marvelous medium through which to expand my readership and my own reading material. Also, I have read a fair number of books on my own iPad and have greatly enjoyed it. But they are not an artifact. Nor can they be. A print book can stand on a shelf as a discussion piece. A print book retains an element of each person that touched it.

The publishing industry should not have been so swift to judge print books as artifacts. They are here to stay. Most readers of my books are middle graders, high schoolers, and college students… and they prefer paperbacks.

Question: What advantage do you see with paperback books?

How to avoid cookie-cutter characters

AuthorAppleton on August 3, 2015

Cookie-cutter characters kill fiction. Weak villains and weak heroes, characters that we can easily forget. How do we avoid this to strengthen the books we write?

Remember that childhood tale of the Gingerbread Man? Oh yes, he was cut out of cookie dough and ran away from the little old woman, shouting, “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” He ran until he came to a river and there the sly fox fooled him and at the last ate him.

The story is simple by design, yet it gives readers and incredibly memorable impression of the gingerbread man. Why? Because in a short time you understand the gingerbread man’s primary traits. Namely, he is over-confident and brainless. He is so consumed by his desire to escape everyone that wants to eat him that he jumps into bed with the devil himself.

Create memorable characters by focusing on the traits that make them themselves. What makes them tick? What makes them different from their peers, or do they follow the crowd? What strengths can they use to rise above their circumstances… or what failings will we see bring them to a miserable end?

It was said of J.K. Rowling that she created 3rd dimensional characters in her Harry Potter series, and I quite agree. The characters had personality. They had depth. We could feel what they were feeling, or at the least understand the motivations behind their actions.

All great fiction stories are like this, even if they are plot-driven rather than character-driven. Weak characters will kill any good story. If you mold them in the image of known characters the readers will resent it, or at the least find it forgettable. But if you fashion a new individual with their own set of traits and deep-rooted motivations for the actions they take, you will create a story worth re-reading. One that one generation will treasure for the next.

Q: What stories have you felt use too many “cookie-cutter” characters?