The five basic patterns for writing devotionals listed below were originally suggested by Mary Lou Redding, managing editor, The Upper Room (used with permission).

1. The Interior Monologue: One person reflects on past experiences. An individual looks inward to seek understanding.

2. A First Person Interacting with Others: One individual is talking to and/or sharing an experience with others. (My friends and I, my daughter and I, etc.)

3. A Third Person Reports or Observes: The writer didn’t participate in the incident. He is telling about someone else’s experiences.

4. The Object Lesson: Take a common object and reflect upon it. Use items such as a turtle, a sunset, a rock formation, or ocean waves.

5. Phrase or Motto Set in a Christian Context: Take a well-known motto and think of how Christians could understand it in a different way.
Example: Crossover means taking the Cross over to an unsaved world.

Often the audience for devotionals is phenomenal. Mary Lou Redding, who is the managing editor for The Upper Room, says that their devotional guide is read or listened to by eight to ten million people in forty-four different languages. It is the most popular devotional guide in print. In 1990, I taught creative writing at the India Communications Institute in Mumbai, India An editor, who had read one of my devotionals in The Upper Room, traveled over 1,000 miles by train to attend my seminar.

Besides reaching many people, devotionals are an excellent way to break into print. A publishing house may not want to take a chance on a first-time author with a book contract because the risk involves thousands of dollars if the first print run does not sell out. But Mary Lou Redding says they would like to use 365 different authors in The Upper Room each year, and many are first-time writers. You can obtain their writers guidelines from their website at www.upperroom.org/ .

Daily Devotional Markets are listed in the Christian Writers’ Market Guide under that heading in the periodical section. Many of these are written on assignment only, but don’t let that stop you from submitting. If you write quality devotionals or get some published, you can send them as samples and ask for an assignment on speculation, meaning the editor is not obliged to buy them if you don’t deliver what he or she is looking for.

Devotionals are normally comprised of three components, although you should check the guidelines for whatever market you wish to submit to because they do vary.

1. Bible Verse: The first component is a Bible verse around which the devotional is created. Be careful not to tack one on at the end. And don’t write the devotional and then try to find a verse to submit with it. Instead, start with your Bible verse. Creating the devotional with a scriptural base will add depth to it.

2. Personal Experience: The second component is a personal experience. It can be yours or another person’s. Devotionals can be written in either first or third person. The important thing is to have a good anecdotal experience. This is the heart of the devotional. Then bring in a spiritual application that ties the personal experience to the Bible verse.

3. Prayer: The third component is a prayer at the end of the devotional, which is usually short, compact, and the crux of what you are saying.

Devotionals are probably the shortest items you will write. They are normally only 250 words long, although some range up to 400 words. In books, they can be as long as 600 words. Devotionals are concise and to the point. There is no room for unnecessary words.

If devotionals are well written, they can help a variety of people who have different concerns and needs. Each individual will draw something different from the same meditation. You achieve universal appeal by keeping your examples general enough so a wide variety of people can identify with them. The Bible does this, which is one reason we all benefit from our daily Bible reading time. Plus, the same devotional may strike one individual in totally different ways at various times in his life, depending on the current circumstances at a given moment. So try hard to make your devotionals deep and broad-based.

A drop of ink may make a million think. – Lord Byron

The best devotional takes five minutes to read, yet can be remembered for a lifetime. One reason I like to write devotionals is the feedback I receive from people across the country and around the world.

You want people to be influenced by what you write. You want them to say, “That’s what I needed today,” or “I didn’t know anyone else felt that way.” It is amazing how you can touch people’s hearts in so few words with a devotional.

If God hasn’t touched your heart on a particular subject though, you aren’t going to reach your reader. Write from your experiences. Write what is around you— the everyday occurrences. Be aware of interesting details or parallels in life. Write from your heart.

“Show, Don’t Tell!” is stated over and over again in writing books and at writers’ conferences. But what do those words really mean?

Often on first rough drafts, writers tell the story in a narrative form either from an observer’s viewpoint or from the main character’s mind. Both of these locations are boring. Readers want to participate in the action. They want to experience the events that occur as they are happening. They want to crawl inside the skin of the main character and feel what he or she is feeling. They want to hear what he is saying and what is being said to him. Thus, whether you are writing fiction or a true personal experience story, action and dialogue become the vehicles to move your story along and to keep your readers interested in reading your story.

This concludes the nine-part series on “Writing from the Heart.”

You want to meet the felt needs as well as the real needs of your audience. You want them to say, “That’s what I needed today,” or “I didn’t know anyone else felt that way.” You want to leave them with a “take-away” message—something they can take into their own lives and use for their own personal growth. You want to offer them hope and help them grow closer to the Lord.

Some years ago a woman at a writers’ conference purchased my book, Rest Stops for Single Moms. The next morning, she came to me with tears in her eyes and said, “I didn’t know anyone knew how I felt, but you do.”

The real need of people is to receive Christ, but their felt need is to be entertained. If they lay down our books and magazine articles with a bookmark stuck inside and never pick them up again, we have let down our reader—and we have let down God. It’s a sin to bore the reader with the Gospel. God deserves our very best.

“Written words change lives” because reading gives each individual reader a chance to digest what the author is saying. The author’s words become part of each reader as they formulate their own opinion on the topic.

In a personal experience article, the story line becomes the vehicle to relate the message you want to convey to your readers. This is true in nonfiction books and novels also. It may be a moral lesson, an ethical issue, or a religious truth. You want to provide insight and instruction for your readers. They must own their own belief system and values to live by. Relating to a story results from having the humanness come through with which the readers can identify.

Today’s writing is moving from the didactic to the anecdotal. If you are writing current social issues articles, make sure you include personal experience stories in these articles as vignettes. Personal experience stories also add a new dimension to nonfiction books, helping readers to better identify with your message.

When you write, picture one individual in your mind—someone you want to touch with that particular message at that point in time. When I was writing the stories for Rest Stops for Single Moms I pictured a different single mom in my mind with each devotional. Each one was written specifically for one woman. Yet many who have read the book feel that I am speaking directly to them. That’s because many single moms have experienced the incidents described in the vignettes.

Make your readers laugh. Make your readers cry. Instead of causing your characters to cry, create tears in your reader’s eyes. Here is the beginning of a story from Rest Stops for Single Moms. Any empty nesters?

The Apron Strings

[Starts with a quote] There are only two lasting things we can give our children. One is roots, the other, wings. –Author Unknown

One of the most difficult times for me as a mother was allowing my oldest son to go away to college. When he graduated from high school, I wrote him the following letter:

Dear Richard,
Today is your high school graduation. I have spent the last eighteen years teaching and guiding you. Now it is time to let you go and to allow you to choose your own way.
As you were growing up, I shared your victories and defeats. I cheered at your swim meets and applauded at your cello concerts. I watched a skinny, freckle-faced blonde boy change into a handsome, six-foot-three muscular young man.
As a mother, the hardest job for me is to let go—to allow our roles to change. I worked hard at being your mother, and now I want to enjoy being your friend. As a token of my feelings and my confidence in you, I’m enclosing my apron strings in this letter. They are cut off from my apron to symbolize your total freedom.
Yet, you know that I will be only a phone call away. I want to continue to share your life, to hear about your experiences, to be there when you need me. The difference is that now you are in the driver’s seat, and I’m the passenger.
I believe in you, and I love you very much. Congratulations, Son!
All my love,
Mom

He cried when he read that letter, and our roles really did change.

Third, we don’t have to undergo an exact experience in order to write about it, but we need to feel passionately about our subject. We can use a similar emotional response within ourselves to evoke a reaction in our reader. If God hasn’t touched you on a particular subject, you aren’t going to touch your reader. Write from your experiences. Write about what is around you—the everyday occurrences. Be aware of interesting details or parallels in life. Write from your heart.

For example, my latest book is Too Soon to Say Goodbye: Healing and Hope for Suicide Victims and Survivors. I wrote it with the same two co-authors who coauthored Wounded by Words with me. Karen’s son committed suicide, and Jeenie deals with suicide survivors in her practice as a marriage and family therapist. No one close to me has taken their own life, but I have several friends whose sons have, and it is a subject I feel passionately about, so I feel comfortable writing about the subject. We used stories of many people who have been touched by the suicide of a loved one, or who had contemplated suicide at one time. Many of the stories are written under pseudonyms. It was the hardest book to write of the 30 I have written.