One of my minor hobbies is ferreting out corners of the internet dedicated to people who want to think about the intersections between Christianity and art, and about how both the consumption and creation of good art are immeasurably beneficial to faith practice. Finding new iterations of this crossroad is always lovely and a little disorienting. Lovely, because these are things I dwell on a lot, and it’s nice to find other people doing the same. Disorienting, because there is a definite tendency in groups like this to focus on a very specific sort of creative as a model for the Good Christian Artist.
By which I mean, the sort of creative who makes explicitly Christian art.
Don’t get me wrong. I love some explicitly Christian art, by which I mean art that proclaims itself to be about Christianity, rather than discussing faith more obliquely (if at all). I have consumed many an inspirational romance in my time, and grew up haunting the church library (but I also haunted the public library and my school library–I am an equal opportunity library haunter). I was raised on CCM (contemporary Christian music, for those who aren’t In The Know) and spent countless hours on the school bus playing Steven Curtis Chapman and Jaci Velasquez on my CD walkman. The Christian Fantasist’s Holy Trinity (CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle) are the bedrock of my existence as a speculative fiction author–though one could make a case that their fiction work is only rendered explicitly Christian in light of their nonfiction writings.
But I also love a lot of art that very definitely does not fit the explicitly Christian framework. My current favorite fantasy series, The Lumatere Chronicles, couldn’t be considered allegorical, even if you squint. Virginia Woolf’s work helped me get through my teens and did more to impact my own literary voice than anything else. When it comes to television, I’m still off-base, as my favorite comfort watch is Star Trek in its many forms. No one would call music by Noah Gundersen or Ingrid Michaelson or Sleeping At Last explicitly Christian, either. And yet I find so much of goodness and truth in all of these things, despite the fact that they contain no stand-in figure for an omnipotent deity. No hands raised in the name of Jesus.
And then there’s me. A person who, as aforementioned, thinks a lot about the interplay of faith and art, and who makes art for a living, but who doesn’t do it in the manner of Good Christian Artists. I don’t write for a primarily Christian audience, or work for a religious imprint–I publish for the secular market. My books aren’t allegories–they don’t even mention any sort of higher power, much of the time. At the end of the day, though, there is this: I am a Christian, making art to the best of my ability. Does the way in which I choose to do so and the audience I choose to render my work accessible to preclude me from being a Good Christian Artist?
I hope not. I’ve never been much good at preaching to the choir. Or preaching to anyone, for that matter.
The conclusion I’ve come to is this: that as a Christian, you can create religious or irreligious art, but both can be done in faith. Religious art is the explicitly Christian kind–the sort that says “Yes, there is an answer to your questions, and this is it.” It’s instructional by nature–a signpost in the wilderness, a map that points to the road out, and tells you what you’ll find at the journey’s end.
Irreligious art, created in faith, doesn’t offer answers so clearly. Irreligious art is about comfort on the road. It’s not a signpost or a framework, but a friend along the way. A companion who says “I know you’re lost, but I think you ought to keep going. I believe there’s something beyond this, and that you haven’t yet fully become what you’re becoming. I trust you’ll get there in the end, though, and I’d like to walk beside you for awhile.” It is, in the literal sense, an act of encouragement. If a piece of irreligious art is truly Christian, the one who’s taken it in should feel a little stronger, a little more hopeful, a little more fit for the journey. They may not have been told what they’re looking for, or why, or how to find it, but they’ll know that the search itself and the act of struggling for transcendence are profoundly meaningful.
I’m not much of a mapmaker, myself. I still feel pretty lost most days, even if I’ve glimpsed the journey’s end. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll get there, and sometimes my faith in the outcome turns to doubt. But I’m a good walker. I can put one foot in front of the other and just keep going, in spite of doubt or darkness or moments of despair. So that’s what I bring to the table, as a Christian who makes art. Not a signpost, but a piece of my own stubborn soul. A companion for the journey–a fellow walker who may not be sure of the road, but who’s headed further up and further in, and wants to pass some time side by side.
A standard piece of publishing industry advice is that you need to read voraciously in any genres you plan to work in, or already do work in. If I had a dollar for each time I’ve heard this, I wouldn’t be precisely rich, but I’d certainly have enough ready cash to take my family out for a very nice dinner.
This is a maxim that used to make me feel like a failure as both a reader and a writer.
Why? Because for the past eight years, I’ve been in the mother of all reading slumps. It started not when I had kids, but at the time that I started juggling working as an author with having kids. Parenting is a singularly all-consuming endeavor. Writing for publication, likewise. And they both involve a LOT of reading. Reading Goodnight Moon fourteen times in a row (or in our family’s case, an infamous storybook called DW’s Guide to Preschool). Reading your own novels fourteen times in a row, your sense of enthusiasm for them withering into disdain with each successive pass (I always say that the best part of publishing a book is knowing I never have to read it again).
Like I said. Both parenting and publishing require a lot of reading, but not the sort that exactly sparks joy. More the kind that progressively saps your will to live. So for eight years now, I’ve been in a reading slump so vicious that I was lucky to read four or five books in a year, outside of those roles. Mostly I stuck to magazines with glossy pictures of immaculately-maintained English countryside gardens. That was, for a very long time, the only form of print that didn’t make my brain feel like imploding.
And throughout it all, I felt really bad about the fact that I didn’t read more. I wasn’t current on the big, highly-praised break out titles in my category and genre. I wasn’t even current on books my own author friends wrote. At the end of the day, if I had an hour or two to spare, the last thing in the world I wanted was to pick up another book. I gamed instead, or watched Star Trek, or juicy costume dramas.
I’m here to tell you that if this is where you’re at, there is nothing wrong with you. And you don’t need to feel pressured to undertake an activity that feels so off-putting you’d rather sit and stare at a wall. Sometimes, we’re just not in a reading season of life, even as self-proclaimed bookworms. Sometimes, we’re in a season of life where we have to read so much for reasons beyond our own pleasure that choosing books for fun is out of the question. None of the fun is left. It has all been sucked out of the pages.
But it will come back. And there are some gentle ways you can implement to hasten its return. I know, because this year, I set out to break my reading slump. To a degree, I managed. Here are the steps I undertook to do so.
Log Every Book
If you read to your kids, or for professional development, or in some sort of work capacity, log it. Those are valid reads. They don’t suddenly fail to count because you undertook them for a reason outside of personal pleasure. This year, I hit that magical place where my kids are older enough to follow more complex chapter books, and was able to introduce them to a lot of stories I absolutely adored as a kid. Was I technically reading them for myself? No. But I read them, and I logged every last one. My favorite resource for this is Storygraph, though your logging system can be as simple as a pen and post-it note.
Visit Uncharted Territory
If you are required for any reason to read in a particular category or genre, do not, and I repeat, do NOT, try to force yourself to read within it for pleasure as well. My sainted Oma Bergmann was fond of saying that a change is as good as a rest, and as usual, she was right. This year, I managed to maintain interest in books I was reading just for me by staying completely outside of YA as a category, and speculative fiction as a genre. I read a couple of adult novels (women’s fiction). But mostly I read nonfiction. I’ve always loved a well-crafted nonfic, and diving down rabbit holes related to whatever my passion of the moment happens to be is one of my defining traits. Right now, I’m super interested in creating an enriching and rewarding home education experience for my kids, so I read a lot of books on that topic.
Try think outside the box when attempting to find reading material that suits. Foray into nonfiction, poetry, romance, mystery novels–whatever might actually get you excited about a book when that enthusiasm has waned.
Don’t Be Afraid to DNF
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, in book circles, DNF means “Did Not Finish”. I am a huge proponent of DNFing with abandon, and have been since before my current reading slump. Unless you are required to complete a book for some reason, life is just too short to slog through something you don’t enjoy! If the first chapter or first few pages don’t seem like your cup of tea, stop, and move to the next thing. The world is full of books–somewhere out there is one you’ll like better. But pay attention to patterns–if you keep DNFing books within a specific genre or category, maybe it’s just not for you right now. Maybe you should shift gears and implement Tip #2.
Having Fun Isn’t Hard When You’ve Got a Library Card
Acquaint or reacquaint yourself with the local library. If you follow the advice laid in Tip #3, you’ll need to. All that DNFing will get expensive if you buy every last thing you read! The library is a booklover’s buffet–there’s tons to choose from, and you can pick whatever looks good for you. But unlike a buffet, it’s free and you can return whatever you don’t like. If, like me, you’re strapped for time and your attention is fragmented while at the library (I go there with the kids, and library trips are primarily structured around their needs as readers), make liberal use of the holds system. Pick out a variety of titles that you think you might enjoy, reserve them via your library’s online system or over the phone, and then simply pick them up at the front desk at your next visit. This process, more than anything else, has facilitated my return to the domain of the written word over the last year.
Hopefully if you’re in a reading slump of your own, some or all of these tips and tricks will be helpful to you. But the most important thing is to be gentle with yourself–there’s no moral virtue implicit in finishing a certain number of books a year, or even in being a reader at all. While many books contain stories of great value, books are patient–they’ll still be waiting when you’re ready for them.
Last year at the end of December, I wrote this post, taking stock of everything that had happened since 2020 began. I had chosen inward as my word of the year for 2020, and oh boy, did I get more of an inward turn than I bargained for! I selected inward out of an instinctive need for more balance in life and more margin, as over the previous years, I’d begun to feel increasingly stretched thin. But instead of the balance I expected to get–the kids starting school fulltime, enabling me to juggle work and life more effectively–we all received something else entirely.
Lockdowns, masks, vaccines, border closures. The chaotic personal and public responses to a pandemic that found us all wrong-footed. It was not what I expected from my year of turning inward. And it was a very, very hard adjustment.
So for this past year, now in its twilight moments, I chose a different sort of word. Touchstone. A reminder to focus on the things that ground me–that serve as a reminder of the beloved prayer all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. And my touchstone year, as hoped, has turned out to be a healing one.
My greatest touchstones of 2021 weren’t the ones I expected. I’d anticipated they’d be personal in nature–moments carved out to just dwell, revisiting books and music and films that I love. I envisioned a touchstone year being mostly about me, holding onto my own comforts for dear life. And in a way, 2021 has been about touchstones I love, but not about grasping them tightly. It’s been about holding them out to others.
2020 felt like the kind of year that had the potential to break me. 2021, in every meaningful way, has been no different. And yet I’ve rested in it. The isolation and seemingly insurmountable schedule of simultaneous work and school has shaken out into something…manageable. Something where I’ve been able to find incandescent moments of joy.
I didn’t expect homeschool itself to become a touchstone, and yet it has. It shapes our days, giving them structure and excitement and zest. We’ve found a rhythm that works, a range of subjects that sing for us. Long ago, homeschool was something Tyler and I considered for the kids, but dismissed as it seemed like it wouldn’t end up being a good fit. Well, it is. In fact, it fits like a glove. Monday has become my favorite day of the week, because we can get back to our schoolroom and our work of learning about the incredible, intriguing, endlessly lovely world we inhabit. Through the rocky start of going from public schoolers on a Friday in the middle of March to homeschoolers the following Monday, we’ve done a long, slow creative work and come up with something beautiful.
We walk (a lot–outside time is essential for cheerful spirits and healthy bodies). We read. We write. We problem solve. We craft and sing and watch and explore, query and measure and investigate and plan. But most of all, we follow our joy. Learning should be an activity founded on enthusiasm and excitement, not a matter of drudgery. And I love the opportunity to ensure that’s the shape it’s taking for my children.
The second greatest touchstone of the year for me has been books. And while I thought it would be primarily books I read on my own, the touchstone stories have primarily been ones the family shared together. This year, we got into a habit of bedtime read alouds. We’ve shared The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, Farmer Boy, A Wrinkle in Time, Misty of Chincoteague, all of Narnia and Dinotopia, Jane of Lantern Hill, Stories of the Saints, and The Jesus Storybook Bible. It has been a marvelous journey, sparking imaginations and featuring several movie nights with popcorn to enjoy film adaptations of books we finished.
So. Those are the bright spots, and they have been all the brighter for shining at a time when the global state of being is bleak.
There have been pitfalls and fraught moments as well. Though I’ve managed to strike a tentative balance between homeschool and work, work itself remains an uncertain thing. No career in the arts is a safe bet, and I count myself lucky every time I sell a book. I want to do this forever–it is, without exaggeration, my dream job, and connecting with readers makes every moment of uncertainty worthwhile. But the reality is, that anything beyond the work of crafting an excellent story lies outside my control. I cannot in any meaningful way impact sales numbers or success. All I can control is the book itself–the characters and themes that rest between the pages.
The story and only the story, I’ve realized over the course of the past year, is my publishing touchstone. It is easy for things beyond that–platform-building and trade reviews and royalty reports and Best Of lists–to feel like they matter most. They don’t (or shouldn’t). What matters is me and the words, and that at the end of every story, I get to place a book on the shelf that I’m proud of. That I know got the best of me, right now, as I am.
That is why, for 2022, I’ve chosen the word retreat to define my year. Touchstone brought joy and balance and wonder to the mothering and teaching side of my life. Retreat, I’m hoping, can restore those things to the creative and the author in me. Here is the sense I’m using it in…
Retreat
1. an act of moving back or withdrawing 2. a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax 3. a period of seclusion for the purposes of prayer and meditation
Retreat is both a strategic act and a sanctuary, and I’m hoping to tap into both those facets of it throughout 2022. In honor of my upcoming year of retreat, I’ve already taken a good hard look at how I spend my creative energy and engage in online spaces. I’m pulling back from platforms that I loved but where I felt an obligation to deliver a performance in service of selling a product.
That’s not me. I write books, and you can buy them or not buy them–I prefer you do the first, but I have no interest in spending my time cajoling you into it 😉 I have a great deal of interest in growing as a creative and working on my next projects. In becoming a better and more thoughtful crafter of words.
So I’m retreating to spaces that foster deeper and more meaningful modes of communication. This blog, my email newsletter, and a printed, sent-to-your-mailbox newsletter which will start up this spring and which I’m very excited about (sign ups are here). I am hopeful that this intentional withdrawal, coupled with some deep thinking about the whys and whats of my work–why I continue to create stories, and what I want to say with them–will have the same rejuvenating process for my creative existence that focusing on touchstones did for parenting and educating.
But whatever the outcome, I’m looking forward to seeing what the journey brings.
It’s a common woe among writers–you hit twenty or thirty thousand words in a first draft and your plot just…fizzles out. The luster of starting a new project fades. The exciting and climactic final act is still just a glimmer on the horizon. And you get stuck, in the bewildering, unexciting doldrums of moving your characters from a good beginning to a better end.
Many a time have I foundered in those very doldrums.
Over the years, I’ve learned to structure my plots not just around a thrilling finale, but also around a high-stakes, explosive midpoint. Previously, I envisioned stories as a steady uphill climb, where characters ended on a peak of revelation. And boy, was that climb a drag sometimes. Now I envision them as an entire mountain instead–there’s the uphill striving, the summit, and then a precipitous descent towards the inevitable arrival in new territory.
My amazing friend Wendy Heard has talked more extensively about midpoints, and her thoughts on the matter have really shaped the way I now approach plotting. Where I used to break things up into three acts (a la the very well known Save the Cat beat sheet) and the second act would lag, I now break plots into four acts instead.
However, I’m a very checklist-oriented person, and love to use templates. In my travels about the internet, I’ve never been able to find an existing template for four act structure that I really love. There are some templates out there, and some comprehensive breakdowns of how four act structure functions, but none of them really worked for me on a fundamental level.
So since I couldn’t find a four act structure template that entirely suited my needs, I cobbled together ideas from a few different sources (this fantastic post by Heather Cashman, this one by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky and this one by The Magic Violinist were all incredibly helpful) and made my own. Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe one of the structures I linked to will better serve, or maybe you’ll need to forge your own path like I did. But this is the template I’ve ended up with, and I thought I’d share. I’ve provided some well-known examples for each plot point within an act, though they’re from older books so the division of the four acts is different than you’d find in modern novels.
Without further ado…
A Four Act Structure Template, by Yours Truly
ACT ONE: Setting the Scene
Image by Sir John Tenniel
The Old World This is where readers get a brief glimpse of the main character’s life and world to date. How does everything around them function before their adventure begins? This stage of the story is important because in order to appreciate changes the plot will bring, readers need to know what is being changed, and what (if anything!) will ultimately remain the same. Think Bilbo sitting on his doorstep blowing smoke rings during the opening of The Hobbit, or Alice dozing on the banks of the stream before her journey to Wonderland.
Inciting Incident In a Hero’s Quest narrative, this stage is often referred to as the Call to Adventure. It is where something happens that beckons the main character away from their current circumstances and towards something new. It is the first whiff of change, though the protagonist may initially resist it. Again, think Bilbo unexpectedly being drawn into conversation by Gandalf, or Alice seeing the White Rabbit hurry by.
Initial Stakes This is where the gentler invitation of the inciting incident becomes an insistent push. Something happens to tilt the scales in favor of the protagonist abandoning their old world and heading out into the unknown. There may be some distasteful quality of the old world the character wishes to escape–for Alice, the initial stakes are her current boredom versus satisfying her curiosity about the White Rabbit. Or, there may be something about the shift the inciting incident has provided that draws the protagonist in. For example, in The Hobbit, the dwarven dinner party provides Bilbo with his initial stakes–it piques the inherent adventurousness of his Tookish side coupled with wanting to be thought better of by the dwarves.
The Lock In The lock in is where the main character goes all in. After the enticement of the inciting incident coupled with the intensification of the initial stakes, they’re fully invested in the events to come; they’ve reached the point of no return and proceeded to barrel past it. Again, this is Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, and Bilbo tearing out of his comfortable hole to chase after the dwarves. The call to adventure has been both heard, and heeded.
ACT TWO: Heading Uphill
Image by J.R.R. Tolkien
Hatching a Plan This is when the protagonist first takes ownership of their circumstances. Previously, they’ve been responding to external movers. Now, as their adventure really begins they must decide what their role will be in the new realm they’ve entered. This stage will echo throughout the remainder of the story, as it involves the main character committing to a certain vision of themselves and their place in the world. The vision can be wrong or right, or a bit of both. This is Bilbo choosing to become the burglar the dwarves hired him as when faced by the trolls; it is Alice drinking her first potion and fundamentally altering herself in order to navigate the strangeness of Wonderland.
False Calm The protagonist’s proactive planning and new sense of identity seem to be paying off. They’re coping fairly well with their changing world, and it seems like the vision of self they’ve arrived at is an accurate one. Bilbo is of great use to the dwarves along their journey to the Lonely Mountain, using his self-image as a burglar to rescue them on multiple occasions. Alice uses her shape-altering capacity to move throughout Wonderland, meeting odd and interesting creatures.
Storm Clouds Build Uncertainty begins to mar the protagonist’s competence and confidence, and signs point towards greater conflict to come. Things are set in motion that cannot be undone, and that the main character will have to reckon with before the end. They have nearly reached the summit of their uphill climb, and conflict is looming. For instance, Bilbo’s less than friendly encounters with the goblins and wood elves foreshadow the eventual Battle of Five Armies even as he arrives at the Lonely Mountain, and Alice’s meetings with the White Rabbit and Duchess serve as a preview of the tempestuous nature of the Queen of Hearts’ court.
THE CATASTROPHIC MIDPOINT: Gains and Losses
Image by J.R.R. Tolkien
All of the first and second act have been leading to this point. The protagonist must, for the first time, face the major conflict their journey and their current vision of self have been moving them towards. This may end in a total loss, or they may both gain and lose something from the encounter, but it will NOT resolve the plot–this is not climax of the story, but rather the thing that tips the protagonist over an edge to hurtle towards the climax. Likely at this point, the protagonist will learn their initial vision of self was flawed in some way, and requires correction. This is Bilbo successfully facing Smaug in his burglar role, only to pridefully raise his ire and indirectly cause the destruction of Lake Town; it is Alice finally getting through the little door to the beautiful garden only to find not the peace she sought, but the pettiness and danger of the Queen of Hearts’ entourage.
ACT THREE: Careening Downhill
Image by Sir John Tenniel
Initial Failures Just as initial stakes pushed the protagonist towards a fundamental change, initial failures now push them towards a need to expand their understanding of the world and their place in it. They are faced with the consequences of attempting to overcome their major obstacle while harboring a flawed or incomplete sense of self. Bilbo, until now operating primarily as a burglar, sees Lake Town destroyed and the dwarves and others consumed by greed for the treasures he’s made accessible. Alice has a terrible time at the croquet game, is unable to use her skills to succeed at it, and begins to realize that Wonderland is truly a lawless and illogical place.
Dark Night of the Soul The weight of carrying a flawed understanding of self, and of weathering the catastrophic midpoint followed by further failures, wears the protagonist down. They are defeated not only externally but internally at this point. This is their “all is lost” and “abandon hope” moment. But is just that–only a moment, and it must cause a greater understanding of their role in the new world as they reckon with their failures. This is Bilbo’s increasing unhappiness with the decisions of the dwarves as he realizes they’re making many unnecessary enemies, but that he’s tied his fate to theirs; it is Alice thinking she’s at last found sensible and sympathetic allies in the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon only to fail to understand them at all.
ACT FOUR: Crash-Landing and Reconstruction
Image by Sir John Tenniel
The Bitter Dawn Armed with a new understanding of self that is informed by their failures as well as their successes and personal agency, the protagonist once again takes their fate into their own hands. The Bitter Dawn is the fulfillment of The Lock In in Act One: where they initially chose adventure and conflict, now they choose to move towards resolution, no matter the cost. This is Bilbo turning his burglary skills against the dwarves and attempting to trade the Arkenstone for what he now knows he truly values: peace and song and friendship. It is Alice returning to the Queen of Hearts’ court for the Knave’s trial, and attempting to bring order to the chaos at hand despite her own confusion.
Victory The protagonist’s new sense of self is cemented by their sacrifice during the Bitter Dawn, enabling them to finally prevail over the forces arrayed against them. Frustratingly, Bilbo is robbed of active participation in the Battle of the Five Armies, but his overtures in the name of peace and his previous encounters with goblins force a victorious alliance between the humans, dwarves and elves, and his decision to leave the dwarven stronghold to seek peace arguably saves his life. Alice realizes that she does not require external agents to control her destiny in Wonderland, and that she can impose order on the looming chaos. She alters her size without help, and scatters the threatening army of cards.
The New World With victory obtained, we are given a brief glimpse of the protagonist’s post-adventure life, mirroring our vision of the Old World in Act One. We see what has irrevocably changed, and what has stayed the same. Bilbo returns to Hobbiton, where he still enjoys his creature comforts but keeps very different company and is perceived very differently than before. Alice returns to her dull existence, but we realize that sleepy circumstances will never dampen the fire of her vivid imagination. All is as it was; all is fundamentally different. And so our story draws to a close
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There you have it! A recipe, a template, an outline for Four Act Structure and an end to saggy story middles. I hope this proves helpful to at least some of you–may all your plots be cohesive, all your pacing airtight, and all your character development flawless <3
In January, geese fly overhead Arrowing their way to the lake beyond the wood. They pass over And pass over And again, they pass over In their ones, their tens, their hundreds, Until breathless, you realize, their thousands have come and gone. They appear before dusk, when the clouds are soft and small, the sky pink like spun sugar, And they sing as they go, that wild, ululating cry.
They know nothing of plagues, or how the world has ground to an unstable halt; How in that grinding the Earth seems fit to tear itself apart. They know only that it is warm in January–warm enough to feign a spring, And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps it is spring, and we have shifted the seasons as we grind down the Earth. “Look,” you tell the small souls in your charge. “Look up from your books And see what they are teaching you. There is one, There is ten, There is a hundred, And a thousand.”
They look up with wonder in their eyes, and no book could teach this– How the finite can seem to last forever.
