Your Questions: Answered

Have a question about writing? Email us at kingdompenmag@gmail.com, using the subject line, “Question For The Panel”. A panel of Kingdom Pen writers will then attempt to answer the questions you email to us in the quarterly issues. We’ll also be posting the questions and answers on our website (like in this post), so you’ll have a chance to comment with your own thoughts and solutions.

Here are the questions we answered in the last issue of Kingdom Pen:

 

Question:

I’ve been hearing a lot about subtext, how using it correctly can really help your story. But there seem to be a lot of conflicting ideas about subtext and what it is—can you guys clear up some of the confusion for me?”

Answer:

A lot of people view subtext as an “advanced writer’s tool” that can only be fully understood after having completed three novels, purchased a platinum membership on one of the more prestigious writing forums, and learned the top-top-secret Novelist’s Fistbump. I disagree. Subtext is an or­ganic element of storytelling that you’ve probably always known about to some extent, but that will take a lot of work and conscious thought to master.

At its most basic level, subtext is the meaning that lies underneath your character’s words and actions. Your character says one thing, but means another—and the sub­text peeps out from what he’s saying, revealing his true thoughts and motives. Sometimes this is on an unconscious level, and the reader doesn’t really understand what he’s really saying until later, when the story events suddenly make everything make sense. At other times, the subtext is a little less subtle and instantly discernible, but it’s still subtext.

A stellar (and not-so-subtle) example of this is in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life, where George Bailey violently denounces any intentions of having any kind of romantic feelings for Mary, who retorts that she really couldn’t care less, and that if he feels that way, why doesn’t he just leave town and travel like he’s always wanted to. Through the subtext, we as viewers get a much better feel for the char­acters’ true motives and emotions then if they just cheer­ily announced that they were crazy about each other and didn’t want to live life apart.

Subtext is too complex a topic to really talk about in-depth in this column—whole books have been written about it. But hopefully this will give you a place to get started from, and will dispel some of the confusion you’ve had on the subject. A full understanding and mastery of subtext will bring a whole new dimension to your charac­ters and their story.

– Braden Russell

 

Question:

How can I get rich quick through writing?

Answer:

Write a best-seller that becomes a series that becomes a movie. However, unless you have the luck of Stephanie Meyer, that isn’t likely to happen. If you want to get rich quick, don’t turn to writing. Go try something else. Mak­ing a living at writing means going into it for the long haul: countless rejections, thousands of hours and words spent in growing and refining your skills, tons of market­ing, building a reader platform, and a lot of patience. Some authors /do/ end up making a living by their craft and sell thousands of books. Dekker and Peretti are two such exam­ples. Others never get rich, still work a day job, and write only a handful of books. Author/forensics expert Bill Bass is a good example of that. If you are writing for the possible financial payoff, you might want to stop and think again. What inspires your /best/ writing? A handful of green pa­per or the undeniable urge to exercise your voice and say something worthwhile? Beautiful, artistic, important writ­ing shouldn’t be about the money, but about the things be­ing written.

– Hannah Mills

Question:

When writing stories about Bible charac­ters, do I have to adhere absolutely to the facts or can I use some imagination? It’s quite hard because the Bible does not con­tain many facts about a particular person.

Answer:

My short answer is, yes, you can use some imagination, be­cause you have to. Like you said, details are lacking. What facts there are, you must adhere to, but there is a lot that isn’t said, and allows for flexibility.

My long answer is that attempting to add facts or events to Biblical peoples’ lives is risky. You are straying from the truth, which could potentially confuse your readers as to what the truth really is. One example of this is in the famous book Paradise Lost by John Milton. Many commonplace ideas about Christianity come from that book, even though it is not scripture. Therefore, I probably would not even write a his­torical fiction novel using real Biblical people, as I would be too concerned about misrepresenting them, and thus, con­fusing others’ understanding of what they were really like. But if you’re set on using the events and characters record­ed in the Bible, why not just change the names and loca­tions? The Passages books by the creators of Adventures In Odyssey are a great example of this, and they made for very compelling books, even for a 12-year-old me who did not like reading at the time.

– Reagan Ramm