More Than a Story

By Heather Norman Smith

Great stories make people feel. Really great stories make people feel and think.

As writers, we aim to weave words in such a way to make the reader laugh and cry, and maybe even to make them afraid or angry before we resolve the conflict and they close the book, contented. We want our stories to touch hearts, but fiction can do even more than entertain and elicit emotion.

Fiction authors, the same as nonfiction authors, have an opportunity to interject our world view into the culture, if we choose, and that opportunity is a great motivator for accomplishing my writing goals.

On days when I can’t seem to move the plot along and the words don’t flow freely, I try to remember my platform. Not my meager social media following or my marketing leads, but the underlying messages I want to convey, the purposes beyond telling a good story.

As a Christian Fiction writer, I have an obvious and unchanging platform of sharing my faith. But there are other causes I hope to support through my writing. For example, highlighting the need for foster and adoptive parents is important to me. Because that is a major theme of my debut novel releasing spring 2019, it helped push my story to completion.

Do you highlight a special cause in your writing? Preventing human trafficking? Promoting ethical treatment of animals? Raising awareness about environmental concerns? If so, try focusing on your passion for that cause when you hit a slump. If not, perhaps building a story around an important moral message will help spur you on in your writing journey.

Of course, some stories are meant to be light-hearted reads that don’t tax the reader’s brain at all. That’s okay! But consider using your writer's voice to comment on what’s important to you, and it might just be the fuel you need to finish your book.

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Heather Norman Smith is a devotional blogger and author of Christian Fiction. Her goal is to use the written word to entertain and encourage, while illuminating the redemptive love of God. She also enjoys writing songs and singing about Jesus.Heather is proud to be a life-long North Carolinian and aims to present the beauty of the Tar Heel State in her writing. Her home is just outside Winston-Salem, NC, where she lives with her husband and their three children.Website/Blog: http://www.heathernormansmith.com Social media links: http://www.facebook.com\heathernormansmith  https://twitter.com/HNSbloghttps://www.instagram.com/heathernormansmith/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9AaY8aZGKA9xQEksJmmybQ