A Daily Dose of Creativity

Gearing up for VBS

         This year I won't be teaching at VBS. It makes me a little sad because I enjoyed it so much, but I get to help out with crafts. Good thing I enjoy crafting.
         My youngest son was disappointed that I wouldn't be teaching, but he soon got excited when he realized that he would see me during craft time.
         They had placed my oldest son as helping out in crafts as well, but he wanted to be outside with my husband helping with the recreation. They have a lot more adults out there than during previous years, mostly because they have built an obstacle course (including a zip line}, and they want to insure the safety of the children.
         Last night when we went to church they had already begun decorating for this week. The front of the church was covered in a camoflage net. It was strange, but it goes with our theme of God's Army.
         When the children got up this morning, my youngest son started with, "When are we leaving for church?"
         I'm so glad that they are excited about church, but I wish they would be excited about going to hear the message, not excited about getting to play on the zip line.
         It's so easy for the message to get lost in the decorations. Same with our writing. It's easy to bury the idea in the description. Do we really need to know what the room looked like down to the dust on the shelf? While it may help the reader to visualize the settings, if it slows down the movement of the plot, it may just bore the reader.
         The current novel that I am working on, I had a section where I described the office of one of my characters. I pondered over whether or not it was necessary and came to the conclusion that I really needed that section because I wanted the reader to know something about this character.
         The description of the surroundings helped me to describe certain characteristics about my character. I wanted to show that the character was wealthy, he enjoyed expensive things, and he felt that those items were a type of status symbol.
         With another character, I did the opposite. To set up his character, I used his thoughts and actions. He was to be an average person. Someone the reader could easily identify with.

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