Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

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The Nature of Story

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The Nature of Story

It’s the fall of 1985. I’m sitting in a classroom at Washington University in St. Louis, participating in a seminar for my master’s degree. This particular seminar is simply entitled “The Nature of Story.”

Of all the novels on the syllabus, the only one I’ve previously read is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The syllabus includes The Sound of the Fury by William Faulkner, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, and about eight other novels. As it so happens, the first novel we’re reading for the course is One Hundred Years of Solitude. I first read it in college when it was relatively new and all the rage, about the same time as The Lord of the Rings. I’ve dutifully read it again, and it’s a completely different experience from my first reading. This time, it almost seems like personal history.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

What I Learn from Readers of My Books – Part 1

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I can’t speak for other authors, but I’m always surprised – nicely surprised – at what readers have found in my books. I’ve learned that sometimes it takes a reader to show you what you done.

The writing of Dancing Priest happened over a period of years, but it followed a fairly standard trajectory. The idea for the story incubated for quite some time, and then the story line was envisioned in my head long before the first word was actually typed. I knew the story I wanted to tell; I knew who the characters were; and I knew all of the side stories that would be pulled along with the main story.

During the editing and publishing process, the draft actually changed very little from what I’d submitted, at least in terms of the story line. There was a considerable amount of editing, but the story line remained unchanged.

Once the book was published, my expectation was that readers would find that story line – they would find the story I wrote. And they did. But they also found more. In fact, they found more than what I had thought I’d written.

Dancing PriestAbout three weeks after publication, I received a note from a reader. This is what it said: “Just finished Dancing Priest – one of the most compelling stories I’ve read. I kept thinking I want God to use me like this.”

I did a double take.

Wait, I wanted to say, I was just telling a story. I wasn’t trying to tell people how they should live, or what they should want for their lives. Where could that have come from?

And so, I went back and reread Dancing Priest, with the specific thought in mind of what the reader had written to me. I looked for examples or themes of how God uses people.

I found the examples. I found a lot of examples. The examples were so obvious it was almost embarrassing that I had missed them.

The story of Ian and Iris McLaren accepting guardianship of a child at less than an hour’s notice. The story of how Sarah Hughes comes to paint again. The stories of Michael holding his hand to the side of an injured young cyclist’s head, or treating a prostitute no differently than he treated anyone else, or accepting responsibilities far beyond what he thought he was capable of. Or repeating what he had learned first-hand from his guardians and accepting a child.

It was all rather unsettling. How had I missed this in my own book?

It took me some time to find the answer, and it was another email that helped explain it.

Next: Part 2 – A Pastor Buys a Bunch of Books

Top photograph by Ben White via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Are You Called to Write?

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Are You Called to Write

I follow quite a few writers on Facebook and Twitter, and I read their blog posts and articles. If a consistent theme exists in all of what writers, and especially Christian writers, say about themselves, it’s that they’re called to write. Christians writers say they’re called by God; others might refer to a muse, an urge, a belief, a feeling.

That theme of calling leaves writers like me in something of a quandary, much like the Christians who accepted faith as a child and can’t remember the exact day, time, and circumstance. I remember the exact time and place of my acceptance of faith – Jan. 26, 1973, about 8:30 p.m. in the basement of a lecture hall building at LSU. But to identify when I became a writer, or why, is not possible for me – it’s buried so far back in the mists of childhood as to be unknowable.

I read early and read often. The first book I remember buying on my own was Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion, spending 59 cents at the local dime store. I was 7. My reading habit was reinforced by the Scholastic Book Club at school and indulged by parents who encouraged reading. One of the earliest memories of my mother was her reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales to me when I as two or three; I still have the book.

But many children and adults enjoy reading without becoming writers. Reading alone can’t explain it.

To continue reading, please see my post at Christian Poets & Writers.

Top photograph by Ben White via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Royal Security, Life, and Fiction

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Queen security Dancing King

Scotland Yard has been making some changes in how it provides security for the British royal family and government ministers, and reportedly the Queen is not appreciative. The palace declines comment on the report, as it usually does on matters like this one. The change is likely driven by a cost reduction plan.

Early on in my third novel Dancing King, there’s a conflict over security at the palace, and Michael dismisses the security chief, who leaves with almost all of his people. A stopgap plan is put in place, using the Guardsmen, and then Michael opts for a private security firm. It doesn’t seem like that major a deal, just like the Real Scotland Yard changes noted in the news report, but in the novel, it becomes a small step that will eventually lead to bigger changes.

Photograph by Steve Bryant via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Best Choice New Book Release

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Dancing King Best Choice New Book ReleaseDancing King has been named “Best Choice New Book Release” for December 2017 by Christians Poets and Writers. The mission of the group is “to help Christian Poets and Writers write for the glory of God, upbuild the church Body of Christ, and improve their God-given gifts of writing.” It’s an honor for the book to be named. Thank you!

“Dancing King:” A narrative orphan becomes a favorite child

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Dancing King Victoria Memorial

I’ve been writing a fiction series. Two books have been published, and publication of the thid, Dancing King, is imminent. The fourth has been sitting in manuscript form, some 70,000 words, for quite some time. There was too big of a story gap between No. 2 and No. 4, so I couldn’t simply skip the third manuscript and cover it with some narrative filler or explanation in the fourth. The gap demanded a complete novel.

Ideas weren’t the problem; my brain was seething with them. Neither were plot developments, new characters, and new conflicts. Perhaps I had too many possibilities.

The problem was how to tie it all together.

I tried several approaches, and not one worked, or worked well. The more I floundered with manuscript No. 3, the louder the No. 4 manuscript became, like a siren song enticing me into its pages.

I was getting nowhere. It wasn’t writer’s block as much as it was narrative frustration. I’d stare at the computer screen, try writing some words, and sometimes write more than 1,000 words before I’d throw up my hands in disgust. This isn’t working, I thought. Over and over again.

Dancing KingI knew what my frustration was – that fourth manuscript. It would be so easy, with it just sitting there and waiting, for me to turn my back on No. 3. But a voice inside my head told me that would be a mistake, because I would be spending an enormous amount of effort combining No. 3 into No. 4, or fixing No. 4 to account for No. 3. Too much would have to be explained. No. 4 made sense only because there was No. 3.

Then I went for a long walk. It was a cold, sunny day in early spring. I left my house and walked my usual twice-a-week walk of about three miles. Somewhere in that first mile, I heard one of the characters speak, and his heart was almost breaking.

At the very beginning of the story, this character is watching the hero leave his home. He’s leaving with him because he’s working with him. The hero’s family is leaving as well. Life has profoundly changed. And this character begins to tell the story.

I had my way out of my writing morass. An unexpected narrator.

For the next two miles of my walk, the pieces began to click into place. I couldn’t believe how I had been missing what was now so obvious.

When I got home, I began to write, or actually, rewrite, everything I had up to that point. I turned the manuscript on its head. A villain emerged. So did new characters and sub-plots. A couple of other narrators, including the villain, began to speak. New scenes arose, scenes that took the hero into new directions that fit the story arc. While the story still went from the A to the Z I had originally envisioned, just about everything from B to Y changed, and changed dramatically.

Novel No. 3 was no longer a transition book, almost my narrative orphan. It had become its own story, and could stand on its own if it had to.

And it had become my personal favorite book in the series.

Top photograph: Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace by Thomas Kelley via Unsplash.