When I was thirteen, my parents gave me an iPad mini. Of all the apps I ever had on that iPad, the one I used most was a simple program by an indie developer. It was called ‘Scripture Memory’, and it did exactly one thing— helped memorize the Bible.
Specifically, this app let me type the first letter of each word of a passage. As I typed the verse I was memorizing, the words would appear on screen, flashing red whenever I made a mistake. That’s it. A simple, intuitive system that I used to memorize several large chunks of the Bible, including Paul’s entire letter to the Colossians. I have no idea who coded the app, but he must’ve had a busy life. At least, busy enough that he stopped updating the app to keep it compatible with iOS software updates. All I know is that by the time my old iPad wore down and I got a new one, ‘Scripture Memory’ was no longer on the app store. I tried using a flashy big-brand alternative, ‘Scripture Typer’. The basic premise was the same— but this app had dozens of bells and whistles that distracted me from actually memorizing the Bible. I had to wade through a swamp of notifications— “Share your memory progress with your friends!” and whatnot— before I could get to the passage I wanted to memorize. Worst of all, ‘Scripture Typer’ focuses on memorizing isolated verses without context. When I tried to memorize longer passages, it failed to format them correctly, and it kept asking me if I wanted to split them into individual verses— which meant I would have to type the reference after every single verse. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. Psalm 23:1. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. Psalm 23:2. (That got old fast). BUT I recently discovered new app on the app store— one that’s even cleaner and more efficient than the old ‘Scripture Memory’. It’s called ‘Verselocker’, and I’ve begun using it to memorize the book of Habakkuk. Every aspect of ‘Verselocker’ is free. It lets me type the first letter of every word, just like my old app. It has other features, too, like the ability to read passages out loud. But all its features appear in a quiet, unobtrusive way, so they don’t distract from your main goal. It’s a very straightforward, useful app, and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to memorize more of the Bible. Here’s a link to ‘Verselocker’ on the app store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bible-memory-verselocker/id1544933853 If you have a non-apple device, you can download it on google play or the android store. (Also… I have no affiliation with Verselocker or the company that developed it. This app could’ve been coded by polar bears for all I know. I just downloaded it from the app store and think it’s pretty awesome.)
1 Comment
Last week, I witnessed the biggest torrential downpour of my life. The sky broke open and vented the full force of its fury. At times, the world seemed to be at the bottom of a waterfall. At others, the rain stopped, but the gray clouds kept constant watch, ready for the next outburst. Lightning flashed from the east to the west. Thunder hearkened back to the Civil War, echoing the artillery shells that exploded on Franklin’s battlefields. Or, if you prefer a more peaceful analogy, think of it the way my friend Emily desired it: God was rearranging the furniture. And he broke the plumbing in the process. I’d seen rain before, but not like this. In California, the sky holds a grudge. Its rain comes slow but steady, drizzling for as long as a week straight. The world becomes grey and damp. The rain falls and falls, but almost never heavily, until the storm finally peters out. Not so in Tennessee. Here, the sky lets its anger out all at once. Clouds darken, thunder booms, and it pours. Great sheets of rainwater pelt the ground. Then just as quickly as it started, the storm relents, and the sun emerges once more. This storm came in fits and bursts. When I went out for my morning run on Saturday, I thought I’d be fine because it wasn’t raining. By the time I got back, I was so soaked you could’ve wrung me like a dishrag. But by the next day, the last of the clouds had cleared— and left behind a wondrous sight. So. Much. Water. This time, I had to alter my morning run because my typical route was flooded. But it was worth it. I loved seeing the park in a totally new way. I saw some very happy ducks This bench would form the perfect scene for two lovers— just sitting together, bare feet dangling in the water, enjoying the rich scent of a world reborn. Trees rising over the water like sentinels A new peninsula is formed. Imagine if the entire park were ruled by various nations of tiny people… how would the drastic changes in geography wrought by the flood force them to change? Sunlight gleaming off the water… it looks like fairies could live here. Perhaps the tiny people will have the seek the help of magical creatures to in order to learn the ship-craft they need to survive in this strange new world. Those two little tiny black dots sticking up out of the water are turtle-heads. I tried to get a picture of one closer to the shore but they always swam away when they saw me coming. I didn’t make it to church Sunday morning because the country issued a flash flood warning, advising against driving anywhere. I decided to stay home rather than risk getting stuck in something like this: Since I couldn’t attend church, I spent a couple hours in the park, praying and reflecting on God’s goodness. Then I went on a long walk and explored new parts of my neighborhood. It turned out to be incredibly refreshing. My social life is now more active than ever before, so it was good to spend some time alone. The biggest storm I’ve ever seen thus far has passed, and I ended up grateful for it, even though getting soaked was annoying. I’m thoroughly enjoying spring in Tennessee. The fresh air and longer days invigorate me like nothing else. -Zachary Holbrook Ideas abound in an author’s brain, but weaving them together into a coherent novel is taxing work. A novel is like a 3D puzzle with dozens of extraneous pieces. It’s not enough for an idea to be interesting by itself. Each piece of the story must tie into the others, advancing the plot, complicating character relationships, deepening theme.
But what about those rejected ideas, the ones you love but just can’t find a place for in your longer stories? Many of my own ideas have found homes in flash fiction— focused stories in 1000 words or less. Over the past two years, I’ve had twenty pieces of flash fiction published through the ezine Havok. My third, One Shot, was chosen for publication in Havok’s first print anthology. Flash fiction is the ideal medium through which to hone a single idea into a complete story. Writing good flash fiction, however, requires more than simply tossing a cool premise or engaging character on a sheet of paper. Although three-act structure doesn’t apply to such brief tales, considering how plot, character and theme manifest in flash fiction can greatly improve your writing. Introduce emotional stakes with compelling character relationships. Intrigue your readers with creative premises and clever plot twists. And finally, use change to communicate theme and give your story lasting significance. Characters The heart of your story lies in your characters: specifically, the relationships between them. Whether between a mother and daughter, a romantic couple, or a man and his own conscience, compelling flash fiction contains at least one relationship. True, you could a write a story about, say, a lone detective solving a mystery and rely on the cleverness of your plot to make your story entertaining, but complicating your protagonist’s crime-busting quest with a messy relationship would make it much more so. The best stories appeal to both heart and mind. So, how do you craft compelling relationships? First, keep your cast small. In general, flash fiction should have no more than three characters, or one for every 350 words. I sometimes use the following blueprint for picking my characters: a protagonist (who wants to achieve a goal), a relationship character (the reason he wants to achieve it) and an antagonist (who’s stopping him from achieving it). For example, in One Shot, my protagonist wants to kill a vampire. His friend and partner in vampire-hunting, Kray, makes his quest more personal: if he fails, the vampire will kill Kray. My antagonist, of course, is the vampire, Lord Dreadsower. These three characters are all I need to tell an engaging story. Of course, the above blueprint is a general guideline rather than an absolute rule. A character’s inner struggle, for example, could substitute for an external relationship. Whatever you do, don’t make it easy! Real relationships are never simple, and an additional layer of conflict ratchets up your story’s stakes and helps suck readers in. For example, in One Shot, the friendship between the two vampire hunters is threatened by a dangerous secret kept by the protagonist. Your protagonist needs a clear and relatable goal. In flash fiction, he should pursue that goal from the very first word. You don’t have time to introduce him in his ordinary life and then hit him with a plot event that forces him to act. Ideally, the goal should connect to a relationship character. Either he needs the other character in order to achieve his goal, or he pursues his goal because of that character. Alternatively, his goal could bring him into conflict with someone he loves, and he’s torn between the two of them— in this case the relationship character and antagonist could one and the same. Plot Say you have a dynamic duo for your story— a father and son on a quest to slay a dragon. They want to slay the dragon to prevent it from eating all their cows and causing their family to starve to death in the winter. Relatable, right? Now, you could simply write the story as one big fight scene, ending with the dragon’s death. However, such a straightforward plot is boring. While relatable characters help engage reader’s emotions, a creative plot engages the intellect. Most readers have heard tales of heroes slaying monsters before. Give them something more complex. Maybe both the son and the dragon are seriously injured, and the father must choose between saving his son or finishing his foe. Or maybe a seemingly insignificant piece of information from the first few paragraphs turns out to the key to defeating the dragon. Foreshadow plot twists early. An unexplained reference in the first or second paragraph will raise questions in your readers’ minds and make them want to read more. If your plot twist is that water dissolves the dragon’s armor, weave a subtle hint into the narrative. Perhaps your protagonist notices that none of the villages by the lakeside have been ravaged and sends his family to take refuge there. Keep it simple. Typically, flash fiction only has room for one major plot twist. If you want to reveal that the dragon dies to water and your hero’s long-lost brother is alive and have his son be mortally wounded by the dragon’s talons, you’re looking at seeds of a short story or novella. A unique plot makes your story stand out. If you combine one with a compelling character relationship, you have the core components for a powerful piece of flash fiction. Theme Just because you spend relatively little time with the characters and setting of flash fiction doesn’t mean they should stay the same. Change is the engine through which your story’s theme plays out. Through change, you elevate your story from mere entertainment to something that makes a lasting impact in the lives of your readers. In flash fiction, you don’t have time to carry out a whole character arc, so choose a moment of crisis for your story. Introduce your protagonist in a situation where he will be forced to make an irreversible decision. Whether a father sacrificing his life for his children, or a lover revealing a secret he fears will jeopardize his relationship, these moments of intense transformation sear themselves into our minds, not only when we experience them personally, but when we vicariously experience them through fiction. Your character doesn’t have to undergo a major change in his beliefs every time, but if he doesn’t, his beliefs should change his circumstances. Maybe he resists a corrupt government— and receives a death sentence. Or maybe he witnesses the heroism of a martyr and is inspired to also resist tyranny. A general rule for all storytelling, not just flash fiction, is this: If your characters are virtuous, make them suffer. If not, make them change— either by embracing goodness and abandoning their old lifestyle, or by spiraling deeper into corruption and reaping the consequences. Not every flash fiction needs dramatic decisions and huge personal stakes. You could write a lighthearted tale and do just fine. In general, however, stories with greater tension will leave a stronger impression on your readers. Humor strengthens any story. Melding it with a serious crisis can produce in just 1000 words is difficult, but if done well, results in an immensely memorable story. I’ve found an excellent example in an early Havok story, A.R Hildebrand’s Of Life and Breakfast, which uses an absentminded Grim Reaper to drive home the importance of using our limited time well— and too make us laugh. Without change, the theme of any story will fall flat. With flash fiction, you can distill a theme into one choice and the consequences of that choice. Show how either your protagonist changes, or how his decisions change the world around him. In doing so you have an opportunity to exhort your readers to joy and virtue and warn them away from wickedness, and in doing so change your own world for the better. Conclusion A couple of relatable characters. A clever plot twist or creative premise. An irreversible decision and its fallout. With these, you have the bones of an evocative piece of flash fiction. True, staying concise while including enough details to entice readers is a tricky art to master. However, with flash fiction even more so than other mediums, failure is an option. A entire story can be written in a day, and each failed draft only contributes to your overall skill. So I encourage you, the next time you have a good idea that just don’t fit into any of your longer projects, don’t throw it away. Instead, see if you can meld those outcast characters and discarded plot devices into something new, and perhaps you’ll end up with a piece of flash fiction you can be proud of. Today snow fell upon my home for the first time ever.
I grew up in the desert, but this afternoon I realized that my new home in Franklin, Tennessee is one of those places with frozen atmosphere water falling from the sky. The white specks dotted the air around my school, blown sideways by the wind and vanishing as soon as they hit the ground. I've seen snow before, of course. Idaho and my cousins' mountain abode in Northern California both have copious amounts of it. But in those places I was a guest who would soon return to a hometown seldom afflicted by anything more than a thin layer of frost that vanished by midmorning. Now I have to figure out how to live with this stuff. Even as I write these words, my skyporch bears a blanket of snow. It's actually quite idyllic, viewed from my heated apartment. The idyll comes with a cost, though. Walking outside has grown complicated. No longer can I simply step out my own front door. No-- I must prepare myself with many layers of soft armor to ward off the piercing cold. I visited Hillsdale College in Michigan last February. Now I am very glad I did not end up there; I would freeze to death. My fellow writer in the Iron Project, Marybeth Davis, will probably laugh when she reads this. Because of her I am forced to make this concession: snowflakes are not just frozen menaces. She visited my college this morning, and after class let out called attention to the beauty of a single snowflake. Perfectly symmetrical, with six intricate flowery points. I should get used to making such observations. I intend to settle in Tennessee for several more years at least. These bitter winters will be part of my life, and I only stand to gain more joy if I learn to see the beauty in them. At least this way I'll be better at writing inclement weather in my stories. -Zachary Holbrook When 2020 rolled around, several authors I follow published “Top X Books I read last year” blog posts. As I was mulling my recent reading, I thought, “Hey! I’ve read great books too. Why don’t I do something like that?”. So, with no further ado, and with no ranking because these are all great books, here a handful of favorites from last year: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. My mom assigned me this book when I was twelve. This year I returned to it voluntarily, not once, but twice, and found it riveting each time. The characters are complex and compelling, and the plot, despite its slow start, picks up steam and thunders to a thrilling climax. Till We Have Faces by C.S Lewis In my opinion, the greatest book the 20th century. Gripping from beginning to end, with a complex, relatable protagonist and one of the most powerful portrayals of God’s grace I’ve ever seen. I read it for the third time this year and plan return to it again and again. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansari Not exactly a history of Islam, but a history of the world from an Islamic perspective. Some of the events Ansari chronicles, such as the Crusades, I was familiar with from Western history, but here they’re told in a new light. Each historical occurrence is not merely recorded in isolation, but woven into an overarching narrative that gives insight into how someone from an Islamic culture might view the world. I finally get the reasons for the Sunni/Shi’ite split, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of modern nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In addition to being extremely educational, Destiny Disrupted is a delight to read. Highly recommended for anyone looking for either a greater understanding specifically of Islam, or to expand their knowledge of other cultures in general. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman This book proved immensely helpful in writing battle scenes and their fallouts in my current epic fantasy novel. Grossman argues that humans have a strong instinct to not kill fellow human beings, backing up his claims with statistical evidence— for example, only 15-20% of infantrymen in WWII actually fired their rifles at approaching enemy soldiers. He then explains how this killing inhibition can be overcome, and the consequences inflicted on the mind of the killer. I gained valuable understanding that applies to my writing, although as the book deals with people at their darkest moments, some of the examples were a little bit traumatizing. Content warning: It includes a chapter on killing at sexual range, which I skipped. The Burning White by Brent Weeks I’ve written a longer review of the Lightbringer series as a whole. Suffice to say that although the series has some major flaws, this conclusion makes it all worth it. Kip, Karris and Dazen Guile have three of the most intense character arcs ever written. Their transformation over the course of the series is both drastic and believable. Imagine this: you're engaged in a story, rooting for the protagonist, eager to see how his journey will end. Then the climax comes. You're on the edge of your seat. But when the end credits roll or you turn the last page, you're disappointed. Maybe you spotted a massive plot hole, or your favorite character's arc was dropped abruptly, or the story just dragged on way too long until the excitement you felt at the beginning faded.
I've been there. I've felt the frustration when a story I love fails to deliver on its promise. But I don't let this frustration go to waste. I don't sit there, helpless. No... I get revenge! Not just any revenge, but authorly vengeance, the best kind. I take the elements I liked about that story-- the plots twists of The Last Jedi, or Princess Kushana's character from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind*, and I stow them away in the deep recesses of my brain. Then I began picking them apart and reforming them, combining disparate elements like pieces of Frankenstein's monster. Eventually something emerges: an outline for a completely new story that takes inspiration from the good parts of those tales that disappointed me. In telling this story, I have an opportunity to do better. One character is reborn as another, perhaps with elements of two or three other characters mixed in. A plot twist is recycled and given new thematic weight, and several unique settings combine in the background. In the end, I have something that is both inspired by the authors that influenced me, and wholly my own. Most of my inspiration as an author comes not from masterpieces of literature (although those have a great influence in the long run), but from good stories that could have been better. This is my revenge on stories that disappoint me: I write better ones. What kind of stories inspire you, my readers? How do you react to disappointing stories? -Zachary Holbrook *I'm not bashing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind here. It's a really good story; I just wish Kushana's character had a larger role. |
Progress on Doombear, Rough draft:10%
Progress on The Lore of Yore, third draft:
100%
"In truth, by leaving, I was seeking only one thing. A journey."
-Oathbringer, pg 981 Types of blog posts:
All
|