Bret Lott is a New York Times best-selling author, best-known for his beloved novel Jewell. He teaches creative writing at the College of Charleston, where he was also writer-in-residence. Recently Bret wrote On Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian. That's the book that caught our eye at PreachingToday.com, because so many of Bret's insights about writing fiction parallel the art of preaching.

PreachingToday.com: In your recent book you write, "Precision is the most important element to crafting a piece of prose—and to crafting a poem, in fact, to crafting any piece of writing, from an obituary to a grocery list … " What do you mean by precision and how does that apply to writing a sermon?

Bret Lott: To begin with, I can't imagine the kind of pressure preachers must feel at the job of finding, week in and week out, something to say of meaning and redemption and truth and beauty and warning and salvation that will be edifying and, dare I say it, entertaining in its own way to a crowd of believers and skeptics alike. I salute you all! Having said that, I have been on the receiving end of sermons for 50 years, which makes me a kind of connoisseur at best, and a raw consumer at worst. I've heard good and bad, right and wrong, inspiring and boring, clichéd and original.

What I mean most by the need for precision is the scouring of our common language in search of just the right word. I mean listening to your heart and soul and mind and, especially, to the Holy Spirit for the real words that will strike first your own heart—there is nothing more condescending than a sermon meant only for its hearers because its preacher already has it in the bag—and therefore the hearts and minds and souls of your listeners. I tell my writing students all the time—preach would be the better word—that if there is no engagement in the story by the author, no stake in it for him or her, no matter of life and death felt by the writer that is worthy enough of searching for the exact right word to capture that stake, then how can one expect a reader to feel what is at stake too? This might sound like Preaching 101 (if there is such a thing), but I mean it as the bedrock foundation of making a sermon alive: your own life must be at stake in what you say, and your search for the exact words for that matter of life and death must be the engine for getting that matter across.

You suggest that the opposite of precision is writing or preaching with clichés. You write that "words can betray us by our overuse"—usually because those words did work at one time. How do you think preachers can "overuse" words?

For years I have been telling my students that their job as storytellers is to "Run it up the flagpole and see if someone salutes." That is, to describe in new ways what they see and feel and hear and touch, and then, in workshops of their stories, see if what they have written works. But one day a couple years ago I realized I was getting no reaction at all from the students when I used the phrase "run it up the flagpole." No nods of affirmation, no worried brows, nothing to tell me they understood. Then I asked, "Hey, does anyone here know what I mean when I say 'Run it up the flagpole and see if someone salutes'?" Not one of them got that old reference. Not one. And here I was thinking I was being succinct—and a little funny—when the only person getting it was me. The point: I wasn't aware that my trying to describe using new language was cloaked in language no one understood anymore. For this reason, I would suggest that one of the primary tools a preacher can use is to ask, "Hey, is anything I'm saying here working?" I would surround myself with people who will tell me the truth about my sermons; I would seek critiques—regularly—of what I was saying from the pulpit. I don't mean listening to those crank emails and hallway praises one has to encounter as a preacher. Rather, I mean having a band of people—intelligent, thoughtful, critical, honest, Spirit-filled—who will meet to critique what you are saying, and how you are saying it. This takes bravery and courage on the part of both parties, preacher and critiquers alike. But I learned how to write by giving people my stories to read and critique, and then listening to what they had to say.

How can we discipline ourselves so we don't preach with clichés?

Read fiction. I mean that. Fiction relies on making things new via the language it employs; it opens up otherwise shuttered windows of the heart and soul and mind to story. We must be readers who are still held rapt by a good story, and who still love the language by which that story arrives. No one ever thought the story of Jesus to someone else, though of course we have plenty of records of Christ's glory and fact revealed to people via dreams. But the only way—either through the written word or the spoken—that the good news of Christ ever came was through His story and the language by which it arrived. Christ healed the sick, as did the apostles, but those acts were always coupled with the good news of the forgiveness of sins and the glory of God: by language. Reading fiction reacquaints us with the value of story, the way things happen, and the sense of awe we can be filled with by invented action and developing characters. There's a reason the Narnia books, even before all those movies came out, have always far outsold those extraordinarily important nonfiction books Lewis wrote.

You write, "Precision starts with life. Precision starts with the real. Precision starts in the experiences you yourself have had, and if you want to write … you better pay attention to what is happening around YOU as a means to be precise. You better begin to look, and to see." What does that mean for the average preacher? How can we learn to "see"?

Flannery O'Connor, one of my two literary heroes (the other is Raymond Carver), once wrote that anyone who has lived through his childhood has enough material to last the rest of his life. I believe it—no one has ever skipped a day of his life to find a few hours have gone missing. The sourcebook for his own stories, therefore, is inexhaustible. Period. I have never been so riveted in a sermon as when the preacher tells stories about his own life. This calls for thoughtful rumination on one's life, a slow sifting of past events, memories, thoughts, perceptions, but it also means a focus on what's happening right now. I can't imagine a believer who doesn't live like this, always looking for and seeing where and how God's hand is and has been at work in his life. I think that preachers shouldn't shy away from talking about themselves in relation to their life in Christ, or even their lives out of it. Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century writer considered to have been the inventor of the personal essay, wrote that "Each man bears the entire form of man's estate"; therefore, he reasoned, what he was attempting to render in words about his own personal life will be of interest to all. Being in close contact with the story of one's own life—paying attention to it—will make what one has to say about it all the more universal, and so all the more listenable, and engaging, and worthy.

At PreachingToday.com we talk a lot about the need to illustrate biblical truth with compelling stories. What advice would you give for preachers in crafting illustrations that connect with the biblical text and with people's hearts and minds?

I'll answer this with an extension of the prior answer: a thoughtful rumination on one's own life, both past and present, can yield meaningful and resonant connections with the texts at hand. But the secret is that there must be honesty—unflinching honesty—about one's life. Christ accepts us as who we are, but we must acknowledge that "as I am" is not a pretty sight. We cannot rewrite ourselves and the details of our lives so as to appear in a certain light to those who listen. Yet on the other hand a preacher must use discernment—of course!—as to what is appropriate and what isn't. Crafting those stories into illustrations calls for an acquaintance, as I said, with fiction, with the idea of narrative arcs, the detail that will tell more than it seems, the development of the character—it calls for an acquaintance with storytelling. Of course it doesn't hurt a whit to resort to current commentaries and what they have to say about a particular passage, but when it's you who are in the pulpit and seeking yourself to understand what a text means, there must be an allegiance to the fact you are at stake here, your own life is a matter of life and death. I don't think this is selfish or narcissistic; rather, it is to admit to one's listeners that you are in the same boat, working out with fear and trembling your own salvation.

You use Judges 3 (the story about the left-handed assassin Ehud who kills King Eglon) as an example of precision. Obviously, we all assume that the Bible is God's Word, but what can we learn about preaching with precision by just paying attention to the Bible as literature?

You can learn about preaching by loving to read the Bible, and reading it all the time. Read it like the book it is, and not a reference manual or a mere guidebook or a pedantic tome. This is a book of stories, and a book of The Story. And read the all of it with the understanding that there are many different genres at work throughout, and that each has its own texture and import, and that no matter what genre, details reign throughout. I must admit to a propensity for the more historical chapters, where the folly of man and the glory of God roll out through generations of good kings and bad ones—and the novel-like Book of Acts is my favorite book of the Bible. But within the laundry list of David's mighty men in I Chronicles 11 is the quick shorthand story of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, a valiant man who "went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen" What a detail, that snow! And within the sometimes bewildering prophecy of Zechariah (think of those four horsemen waiting down in the myrtle trees, and that two-sided flying scroll) are moments of absolutely beautiful and intimate peace: "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets" (8:4,5). What an extraordinarily detailed portrait of the all-encompassing love God has for all His people: old people sitting with their canes watching boys and girls play. And when Jesus comments on headlines torn from that day's Jerusalem news—"Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?" (Luke 13:4)—it sure seems He gives us reason enough to poach from what's happening on the news right this very moment. Even Jesus stayed up to date with what was going on around him. He was paying attention.

On page 59 you say that we serve a precise God and that our writing should be precise because we're made in the image of a precise God. What does that mean for the average preacher in his or her sermon writing process?

Cut to the quick. Love those you speak to with abandon. Tell stories from your heart. Give them details that in their particularity speak universally. Trust that the Holy Spirit will be with you. This is a matter of life and death.

Thank you for this opportunity to yammer on to people who know a whole lot more about this all than I do. God bless you, and I hope this has been of some help!

Tell us a little bit about your church background, particularly how you respond to preaching.

Though my parents took me to church all my life, I was born again after a Josh McDowell rally when I was eighteen and a freshman at Northern Arizona University, way back in 1976. I have for twenty five years been a member of SBC churches, and have since 1990 been attending East Cooper Baptist Church, a reformed theology SBC congregation, in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina (our pastor, Conrad "Buster" Brown, is the most widely read man I have ever met, and a very good preacher).

I hear a sermon every week. Very often they fit into my life in that they confront me with who I am, and how I fall short; very often I am encouraged and nourished; very often I laugh, and very often I swallow back tears about the truth of God's everlasting mercies, and Christ's everlasting sacrifice for me. Sometimes the sermons don't particularly fit into my life, but I am comfortable with the idea that there are other people in the room, and that it doesn't always have to be all about me.

Bret Lott is a New York Times best-selling author, best-known for his beloved novel Jewell. He teaches creative writing at the College of Charleston, where he was also writer-in-residence.