A Speechwriter for a King: A Story

Jonathan Crowe stood on the sidewalk along Buckingham Palace Road, staring at the security entrance for the palace. He glanced at his watch. He was 10 minutes early for his interview with Jay Lanham, head of communications for Buckingham Palace who, at only 30, was already becoming legendary in UK public relations and media circles. Lanham was the communications man for King Michael and had successfully fended off a series of almost brutal public attacks on the king.

Lanham, and the king, were looking for a speechwriter.

Jonathan was 26 and a reporter at The Guardian. He was five foot ten, with closely cropped hair, a slight beard, and a medium-dark complexion. The only person he had ever written a speech for was himself, and that was for presentations he had made at university. But Lanham had seen Jonathan’s newspaper stories, and had read dozens of them, in fact. During the initial phone interview, Jonathan had been impressed with just how well Lanham had read his stories. Lanham also knew a considerable amount of Jonathan’s background, including his family’s Jamaican heritage, where his parents worked, that he still lived with his parents (a reporter’s salary alone wasn’t sufficient for almost anything in London), and that he attended St. Paul’s Church in Brixton.

Lanham had both reassured him and slightly alarmed him when he said that palace security had already done background checks.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: A front gate at Buckingham Palace.

Why Publish? Why Write?

My head’s swirling. I’m editing, rewriting, drafting, doing other projects, maintaining a rather hectic if not torrid pace when I’m suddenly stopped cold by a question.

Why do I want to publish?

I have three novels and a non-fiction book published. A fourth novel and a collection of stories are in the works. 

Why?

It’s not as if the novels have been so wildly successful that I can live off the royalties. So why am I doing this again, when each novel has turned out to be far more of a wrestling match than I expected?

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

Writing: Is It Themes or Is It Story?

In 2013, a study by three researchers at the University of Toronto suggested that people who read literary fiction are more comfortable with ambiguity, tend to avoid snap judgments and can deal better with disorder and uncertainty. Publishing in the Creativity Research Journal, the researchers found that reading fiction may help people open their minds. (You don’t have to read the entire study; a short and succinct article in Salon translates the study from the original Academic-ese.)

Business executives don’t read novels to help them make decisions. But perhaps they should read novels to help them understand the culture around them. They might make better decisions as a result. 

I spent a career writing non-fiction – speeches, articles, reports, studies, and essays. And I read the business stuff I had to read – The Wall Street Journal and a multitude of business and trade publications. But I also read a considerable amount of fiction and poetry, and the understanding followed was reflected in my career work. I don’t think I could have written a lot of what I did without having read Charles Dickens, for example, or The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (as bad a novel as it was, it changed the laws governing food production). 

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

Characters or Story: What Drives Your Writing?

I was having an email exchange with a writer and poet who had just published a novel. Specifically, we were discussing how each of us wrote fiction.

She had trouble, she said, with multi-viewpoint novels. Her stories tended to be character-driven, and especially lead character-driven. She said she found multi-viewpoint novels confusing.

Multi-viewpoint novels are what I write. But I don’t call them “multi-viewpoint.” I call them story-driven.

This isn’t to say that character-driven novels can’t have a strong story line, or that story-driven can’t have strong characterization. But you know when you’re reading a novel that is character-driven and one that is story-driven. One is not superior to the other. They are simply different ways of writing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Alessio Lin via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“What Do Jesus’ Parables Mean?” by R.C. Sproul

It is a commonplace that the most effective way to explain to explain a complex issue, event, or relationship is to tell a story. This use of story is as old as storytelling itself.

One kind of storytelling – the use of the parable – is strongly associated with Jesus, largely because of the accounts of the parables in the gospels. But Jesus didn’t invent the parable. By New Testament times, the parable was commonly used by the Pharisees and rabbis to explain or illustrate Mosaic law, says R.S. Sproul in What Do Jesus’ Parables Mean?. Jesus often used the form of the parable but in a very different way. “Jesus used them to give new revelation,” Sproul writes. And he points out that you find the parable used anywhere in the New Testament except in the gospels.

In this relatively short and concise account that’s part of the Crucial Question series, Sproul examines 11 of the parable of Jesus. They include the unjust judge; the rich fool; Lazarus and the rich man; the Hidden treasure and the pearl of great price; the workers in the vineyard; the Pharisee and the tax collector; the unforgiving servant; the good Samaritan; the prodigal son; the wise and foolish bridesmaids; and the talents. All of these are recorded in the gospels of Luke and/or Matthew.

Sproul points out that, for a long time, the parables were interpreted using the so-called “allegorical method,” which looked at everything, and every detail, in a parable is having deep theological significance. Today, parables are interpreted as having one central point, and so Sproul does not get bogged down in examining every single detail of each parable.

He also points out that the parables were used to explain Jesus’ teaching – for those who had an understanding. And they were used to conceal, for those who did not. People might still understand the point of a good story, even if they didn’t grasp that Jesus was teaching about the kingdom of God.

R.C. Sproul

Until his death in December of 2017, Sproul led Ligonier Ministries, based in Sanford, Florida. He wrote numerous books, articles, sermons, and speeches on Christianity, church history, theology, Calvinism, Reformed theology, and related topics. The Crucial Questions series now includes some 30 topics which are free as eBooks, and volume on conscience is a part of the series.

The parables are familiar, but familiarity doesn’t suggest they should be overlooked. They include some of the bedrock meaning of what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God. Sproul’s What Do Jesus’ Parables Mean? provide both a solid introduction and a succinct explanation.

Related:

How Can I Develop a Christian Conscience? by R.C. Sproul.

How Should I Think About Money? by R.C. Sproul.

Does Prayer Change Things? by R.C. Sproul.

What is the Church? by R.C. Sproul.

Top photograph by David Werbrouck via Unsplash. Used with permission.