Enough is Enough!

Ok enough of my little *hide in the real world* pity party. :p

Time to climb back on the keyboard and pretend like I know what I'm doing again.

Anyway Now that I've driven off what few reader's I've had I can feel free to re-pickup my blathering about theme in my writing that I was doing before I went into hermit mode.

So if you happen to trip over this... please don't blame the dog.

More "soon"!

Focus on Christian Fantasy Blog Tour

Sorry for my absence over the last week.

This week there is a blog tour starting looking at the Focus on Christian Fantasy section over at www.christianfictionreview.com

I'll be sharing my thoughts on his section, as well as the genre of Christian fantasy as a whole over this week.

Be sure to swing by Beth Goddard's Blog for a listing of other's who are participating in the blog tour.

A Firm Foundation Pt. 2

So I had come down to two basic ideas for how to handle salvation in my mythos.

1)Have an Earth Centric method. Where the Christ died once for the entire galaxy and all other worlds had a "revelation" given to them that pointed to some distant sacrifice.

2) Follow in the tradition of Narnia and have the Son of God gave himself in sacrifice for each fallen world.

There were pitfalls and bright spots for both of these options, but in the end I decided to go with #2.

My main reasoning was because I didn't want Earth to be a focal point of the stories, but rather to be on equal footing with the rest of the galaxy. Also this allows me to give as an authentic "Christian" experience and lifestyle as possible on any planet, no matter at what point in the timeline they are visited.

Obviously the language and exact details of each world would differ, but the core essence and truths would remain the same. Which in turn helped me define what the spiritual rules of the mythos would be.

What does all this have to do with the Theme of crafting my theme?

Just wait and see.

A Firm Foundation - Pt. 1

It may look like I have drifted away from the Theme topic, but I haven't. Sink your claws in and hold on, eventually it'll all make sense (I hope).

I was in college, studying communications and reading R.A. Salvatore, Dennis L. Mckiernan, Weis & Hickman, Robert Jordan, Stephen Lawhead and Randy Alcorn (to name a few) and some Star Wars novels, while playing games like StarCraft, HalfLife and EverQuest, that I finally decided that what I really wanted to do was write science fiction and fantasy from a Christian worldview, and got mostly serious about it.

I already had a world in construction ever since Jr. High, and had ideas to write stories about it for a while. I had even written a few short stories set on Sauria (and had a few aborted attempts at starting a novel). But one thing was tripping me up. I knew that if I was going to write in my worlds from a Christian worldview, I needed to figure out how that would work.

There was one catch though. I couldn't go all wonky and willy nilly with the allegory or playing fast and loose with the way God and Salvation worked. Not because I didn't think one could do that and still display God's truth. But because of one little detail.

Those of you who absolutely hate story spoilers, run away now! (If you could scream like a little girl while fleeing I'd appreciate it.)

You see, there was the little problem of Earth. Yep there it is. You are all at the mercy of my wacked out whim!

With Earth being a part of my major mythos I had to decide how I was going to handle the whole Salvation thing on all the other planets out there. Especially since interaction between them wasn't going to be limited to a few individuals (like say in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, or Roger Elwood's "The Wandering").

No, there was going to be galactic interaction on a massive scale.

After much thought I figured I had two basic ways that I could go.

Jumping On the Themewagon!

*note to self, don't end a post with "More thoughts tomorrow" unless those thoughts are already written.* :p

Spent a distracted weekend trying to finish saving Arcadia from an evil Valuian admiral. Didn't quite make it due to also finishing off a short story for the DKA Magazine short story contest. Glad to have that thing behind me. With around 30 entries it will take them a while to sort out the winners. But should hear back by the end of the month I think.

So one of the big themes out there these days is Theme. OK so that's one of the many ways to come about it. Becky has been mulling over the whole issue of theme over at her blog for the last 27 days. Lots of deep thought going on there.

So here's my thoughts on how I go about finding and crafting "Theme" within my stories.

First off the importance of a clear and didactic theme depends on the type of book that you're wanting to write. If you're aiming for a world changing, lasting two hundred years type of story, then yeah theme is going to be very important. I'd say right up there on an equal level to the actual story.

If all you want to write is a fun novel that can maybe help a person through a tough day, or just provide a few hours of enertainment. Then having a huge and deep theme isn't necessarily as important. Though it still needs to be there.

Personally I fall somewhere between the two.

I also firmly believe that readers, bringing their own life experience with them, will discover their own themes and symbols within a book. Things that you as an author never paid much mind to will jump out and speak volumes to the reader. Especially if they are actively looking for symbolism or a theme.

So how do I go about crafting the theme? I'll talk about that in the next post.