Realm Makers – Summer 2025

In this post:

Realm Makers Writers Conference

God’s Jigsaw Puzzle

Writer’s Corner - Donald Maas on Power Scenes

Realm Makers Writers Conference - View of Grand River from DeVos Place Conference Center

REALM MAKERS WRITERS CONFERENCE

The 2025 Realm Makers Writers Conference was held in beautiful downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan this year. It brought together 600 writers, publishers, editors, and more. This year the conference was combined with the Expo which included 140 exhibitors.

The conference is the premier event for writers of faith-based speculative fiction. Speculative fiction refers to all genres of science fiction such as military, dystopian, cyberpunk, space opera, etc. Fantasy includes romantasy, epic, portal, magic, etc.

Want to read more about the conference? See the Publisher’s Weekly article.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/98261-realm-makers-adds-expo-to-faith-based-speculative-fiction-conference.html

GOD’S JIGSAW – THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

Photo by Tanja Tepavac on Unsplash

If you ever took chemistry, you saw a poster of the Period Table bolted to the wall. You probably sat there desperately hoping the teacher wasn’t going to make you memorize it.

Here’s the amazing thing about that collection of elements—it puts God’s glory on display. It’s one more evidence of the Lord's amazing organization of the universe.

The periodic table is so intricate that even if one element is missing, you can look at the ones around it— and predict what goes in the blank. A Russian scientist named Gregory Mendeleev did just that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRVV4Diomg&t=303s (3:16 - 5:02)

I used to give my chemistry students the same exercise. You know what? Almost every single time they predicted the name of the missing element correctly!

Let’s dive into why I call the periodic table, God’s jigsaw puzzle.

Image credit: https://www.ducksters.com/science/periodic_table.php

The table is called “periodic” because it periodically repeats. For some reason, scientists are either incredibly literal or just bad at naming stuff. Like the Big Bang Theory? Really? It was supposed to be a jab, but the name stuck.

Rows Across:

Back to our discussion. Every time the outer ring (or shell) of an atom ends up with eight electrons,* the party is closed and no more electrons are allowed.

*If you forgot what an electron is, they’re the little dudes that orbit the atom. It's a lot like planets orbit the Sun. In the picture below, the red dots are the electrons.

Image credit: https://eng.libretexts.org/

The exception, there’s always an exception in science, is the first row with Hydrogen (H), and Helium, (He). They only allow a max of two electrons at their party.

Think of electrons this way–they’re what comes off a wool sweater when you rub a balloon against it. The electrons from the atoms that make up the sweater get ripped off and stick to the balloon. If you put the balloon against the wall, as long as electrons flow into the wall, the balloon sticks to the wall.

Back to the periodic table. At Row 2, Lithium (Li) and Row 3, Sodium (Na), you just add one more electron in the outer ring until you hit eight, like the picture above.

At Row 4, Potassium (K) has one electron and Calcium (Ca) has two electrons.

Then you hit the transition metals. They get one or two electrons and then you continue on with Gallium (Ga), which has three electrons, and Arsenic (As) with four, until you hit eight.

Image credit: https://byjus.com/chemistry/transition-elements/

Columns Down:

Every time you go down a row, you add another ring of electrons. For example: Row 1 with Hydrogen (H) has one ring of electrons. Row 2 with Lithium (Li) has two rings. Row 3 with Sodium (Na) has three rings.

https://ehschem.wordpress.com/about/chemistry-

If the Lord God cares about putting that much care into the tiny stuff that makes up the universe, how much more does He care about each one of us? He longs to be in relationship with us so much that he was willing to become like us, die for us, and bring us back into relationship with Him. That kind of love will take me an eternity to understand.

WRITER’S CORNER

I attended Donald Maas’s Power Scenes at the convention. That single event was worth the price of admission to the Realm Maker's conference.

To sum up, Mr. Maas said that readers read for emotion. If you don’t have emotion at the beginning, middle, and end of your scene, go back and rewrite it. Emotion is what lights up the reader's brain. They get a hit of happy hormone.

If you don’t have a turning point, ditch the scene. One turning point needs to be external to the scene. What circumstances changed that now propel the story into the next chapter? You also need an internal turning point. What has changed for the protagonist, good or bad? On those notes think goals, counter-goals, power plays, something unexpected, something psychological, something becomes known, something is learned.

Then don't forget subtext. What is the scene REALLY about. Not the stuff on the surface, but what's going on underneath. What does your character really, really want?

That's it for Mr. Maas.

You won't see anything on my novel until after the American Christian Fiction Writer awards are announced in September. The novel is a finalist in the speculative category and ACFW doesn't want to influence the judges.