In this series on Becoming a Better Writer, we’re sharing tips and secrets to improve your writing. Today I want to focus on crafting an effective testimony: the personal story of someone’s encounter with Jesus.
I cannot keep my eyes dry when someone shares a powerful testimony. And by powerful I do not mean dramatic, or miraculous. To me, a powerful testimony is a well crafted one that has focus, story, and Jesus (not necessarily in that order, just to be clear!).
Before I expand on these three, a little mini-rant. I know that for some people, there’s an inherent contradiction in a crafted testimony. They believe in a spontaneous, Spirit-led if you will, testimony-on-the-spot. I understand where they are coming from. I just want to say this: I believe the Holy Spirit can work just as well during prep as on the spot, if not more so. And especially if you are writing and not ‘speaking’ a testimony, you need to carefully prepare your story in close relationship with The Spirit.
Focus
The first important aspect of an effective testimony is focus. What point do you want to make with your story?
Many people still see a testimony as a recap of their entire life. But it’s much more powerful to choose a single decision, or a single aspect where you experienced God making a difference. Also, it frees testimonies from always having to be dramatic, or from-hell-to-heaven kind of accounts.
Focus on a message that you want people to experience, to feel, to relive through your story. Maybe it is redemption, but it could just as easily be God’s presence, forgiveness, the kindness of others through the grace of God, or God’s encouragement in a difficult period.
Next, only include the details, info and stories that are relevant. This is the hard part, because we all tend to include way more details than are necessary to ‘get’ the storyline. Do we need to know you grew up in a Christian family? That you chose Christ in college? That you are married, with five kids? Maybe we do, maybe it is necessary to understand your story. Chances are, we don’t.
Be ruthless in cutting out unnecessary details. Your listeners and readers will thank you for it, as it will make your testimony exactly the right length to make your point. Plus it will make it way easier for them to follow your story, without getting off track by unimportant details.
Remember: when you include a detail, readers will unconsciously think it matters. They’ll wait for it to become important and when that doesn’t happen, that may (unconsciously) annoy them and diminish the power of your story.
Story
Don’t ever forget that a testimony is in essence a story. So use a story structure! Start with a beginning (the old situation), tell what happened that brought change (the middle) and then share how things are now (the end).
Like all stories, testimonies can use a little dramatizing. That doesn’t mean you lie, or embellish details, but it does mean you make your story come to life in the way you tell it, or write it. This is where details matter, and describe those using your five senses.
Also, dialogue can make a big difference here. When you get to the dramatic high point of your story, your climax, use direct dialogue when possible to ad tension and drama. We’ll get into the art of writing dialogue in more detail in a later post, but here’s a very basic guideline:
- Use quotation marks for a literal dialogue. Example: “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. Pay attention to the positioning of the comma!
- Don’t use them for indirect dialogue. Example: He said he didn’t know what I meant.
- Whenever possible use ‘said’ as a verb and nothing else. Using verbs like ‘whispered’, ‘grunted’, or ‘shouted’ may seem more dramatic, but they quickly irritate. Plus, people notice these and start paying attention to them, instead of to the dialogue itself. This may seem contradictory to my earlier advice on stromg verbs, but this is one place where one verb does the trick ‘to say’ 🙂
- Mind the difference between writing dialogue and truly spoken dialogue: omit ‘uhms’ and such, but also keep your sentences short enough to be realistic. Few people use long-winded sentences in real life, at least not without going off track.
Jesus
The last part has little to do with writing, and everything with theology. When you’ve written your testimony, make sure Jesus is front and center. Sometimes we talk too much about ourselves and too little about Jesus. But He should get the ‘honor’, not us. Just saying…
What are some of the most powerful testimonies you have read?
Why did these affect you so much?
[Image via Chris Smith/Out of Chicago via Compfight cc]
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