Appropriate material for fiction books?

[Kim G]

I have been a "writer" since first grade, when my mother taught me to keep a weekly journal. I love words and grammar and diaries and the smell of new books and old books, and I want to write.

However, I often feel that some books that I consider worth reading contain material that I would not be comfortable writing about. For instance, I don't think I could write about witches and wizards, whether Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. I get embarrassed writing anything with any hint of romance, even though I enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Little Women. I don't think I could write about violence even though I love Doyle, Christie, Sayers, and Poe.

I keep thinking about the verse that tells us that we should think about things that are good and lovely and right and true and virtuous. But we can't leave out sin and pain and problems.

I guess my question is two-fold:

1. Must a Christian write "Christian" fiction? That is, with an overtly religious message? Does removing God remove the "right" and "true" and "virtuous"?

2. If a book were written from a Christian "world view" without being overtly religious, what kind of material is appropriate to write about? A fictional world without religion? Crime novels? "Soap opera" romance novels?

I feel like I'm stuck writing little children's stories that don't have to deal with "real life" issues. Does anyone have some advice?

 

[ericfromcowtown]

I keep thinking about the verse that tells us that we should think about things that are good and lovely and right and true and virtuous. But we can't leave out sin and pain and problems.

I guess my question is two-fold:

1. Must a Christian write "Christian" fiction? That is, with an overtly religious message? Does removing God remove the "right" and "true" and "virtuous"?

2. If a book were written from a Christian "world view" without being overtly religious, what kind of material is appropriate to write about? A fictional world without religion? Crime novels? "Soap opera" romance novels?

I feel like I'm stuck writing little children's stories that don't have to deal with "real life" issues. Does anyone have some advice?

I'm a Johnny Cash fan. For all his failings, he was a Christian, and I recommend his autobiography/testimonial The Man in Black. He was once asked if he was a "Christian musician," and his reply was "No, I'm a musician who happens to be a Christian."

In a similar sense, I don't think that a Christian need be a "Christian author" limiting themselves to "little children's stories." Life is messy and the world is fallen, and I don't think that there is any reason for an author who happens to be a Christian to avoid writing about "real issues." In writing about violence, casual sex, or addictions without glorifying or normalizing them, I am sure you will be given plenty of opportunities to let your Christian morals and/or the gospel message flow into your work, without making it seem forced.

 

[a mere housewife]

Kim, I don't believe a story with a 'forced' moral is going to be a good story. If the Christian theme does not enter into what you are writing naturally, then I wouldn't try to force it in. People don't form stories in a vacuum of theology, morality, faith, etc. In other words, any idea you have has already been formed in a shape of what you believe. The way you would consciously write it would be further influenced, even without your trying to force something in. I think that probably in some cases, more care has to be taken on the score of not misrepresenting, by pretending to speak for, God, than in trying to force Him.

Some of the best stories I've ever read have been childrens' stories. George and Martha is one of my favorite books.

I am not sure either that it's best to sit down and think of what to write as if for a school paper. I think ideas occur through whatever means --experience, mental pictures in C. S. Lewis' case, something someone says, an angle of light, etc. Certainly one can analyze and reject an idea as a Christian, as an author, as a woman, as a human being, a moral person, etc. But it's more like being hunted down than hunting.

Something I wrote was published a few years ago here, which was simply a narration of a scene I'd seen in a nature: I wasn't thinking how I could make it 'Christian' --but the scene and a Psalm were vivid in my mind together. It isn't at all a model story and I'm ashamed of much of it now; but I'm referencing it because it's my experience of writing something that I don't think is overtly 'Christian' (except for quoting the Psalm) --and yet, because I am a Christian, it is. Since then I haven't finished any stories, and don't feel adequate for it: though there are definitely stories that have somehow taken up residence that I believe worth communicating. Do I want to write them because they are Christian stories? I would say yes, I love them, and believe in them, because I'm a Christian. They stand in and for truths I love. But not because there is no evil, no fantasy, no violence, no bad language. The Bible itself could hardly be 'Christian' on those terms. There are no overt references to the gospel, no theological explanations or witnessing scenes. But they are certainly not pagan stories: not the hopeless cycle of Greek literature where sin spawns sin, and this is the only hope of justice; or the inevitable balance of eastern literature where people are relentlessly trapped and contorted but the geometry goes on; or the cowardly refusal to participate emotionally and spiritually in life of Hinduism --I don't believe that defeat and victory are the same thing. That isn't the way I think or believe or feel: I experience that outlook only by despair, by losing sight of the ending; or reading other people's stories. I believe in happy endings: I believe that good is stronger than evil, and that the lamb beats the dragon; and that love redeems us from death; and if I do write something, that will naturally be reflected in the shape of the crisis, and the way it ends. I think that this is unavoidable in people, authors or no: and is why C. S. Lewis can write such an obviously Christian series as Narnia, and yet say it wasn't allegory. He never set out to do what Bunyan did. But those books have his Christianity stamped all over them: they came out of the mind and heart and imagination of a Christian.

 

[Ex Nihilo]

Say what you will about N.T. Wright on other subjects, but I found this article helpful:

Response: The Seattle Pacific University Magazine

That is what the beauty of this earth is like. It is a true signpost. God has put us in a beautiful world, and wants us to celebrate it, but he wants us then to use our imaginations to write those other parts. We'll get it wrong, we will imagine it wrong, but then we'll get glimmers which are getting it right, and the music will grow, and swell, and we will teach one another, and enlarge one another's horizons so that we can actually glimpse and see that there is to be a yet fuller beauty, a beauty in which the ugliness of this world is redeemed, in which the violence is rebuked, in which the possibilities of this world are finally fulfilled. Our culture is not good at imagining that, and it takes the arts to help us to do it — music, poetry, literature, dance, drama, all of that.

And the Bible is not just one tool which can help us. The Bible gives us the framework within which we can start to imagine Christianly, not just winging it vaguely taking off in flights of fancy, but living within the great story. I hope when you read the Bible that you are aware that it is a single great enormous story, a great epic running from that original creation in the garden to the final New Creation when God brings earth and heaven together finally and forever — with the climax of that story being Jesus dying on the cross and rising again as we were just singing. And then the work of implementing that achievement being given to us.

 

[dcomin]

I keep thinking about the verse that tells us that we should think about things that are good and lovely and right and true and virtuous. But we can't leave out sin and pain and problems.

You are to be commended for the desire to meditate on those things that are lovely and right and true. Bear in mind, though, that the same God who inspired the Apostle Paul to write those words of admonition also inspired the author of Judges (a book with not a few nasty scenes), not to mention Kings and Chronicles, which include accounts of sorcery, incest, and all sorts of depravity. It's not the content, per se, that makes a piece of writing unwholesome, but the presence or absence of Biblical morality informing and directing the narrative.

I do not believe that when Paul exhorts us to think upon those things that are pure and lovely that he means we should pretend that those things that are unsavory and dishonoring to God do not exist in this world. In fact, we are elsewhere exhorted to expose the darkness... which is difficult to do if we write as if it doesn't exist.

I guess my question is two-fold:

1. Must a Christian write "Christian" fiction? That is, with an overtly religious message? Does removing God remove the "right" and "true" and "virtuous"?

A Christian writer shouldn't have to make a distinction between writing "Christian" fiction as opposed to "non-Christian" or "secular" fiction. If one is a Christian, he or she will write out of their godly worldview, regardless of whether the subject matter explicitely refers to religious themes (which, I think, is what you mean by "Christian" fiction).

On the other hand, I don't see how it is possible to "remove God" from anything. Not discussing Him overtly does not make Him cease to exist, nor make the underlying morality of your writing cease to be informed and directed by His truth. In a work of fiction, you might imagine a world utterly different from this creation, and make that fictional world and its inhabitants the setting for your story, but the basic laws of morality - the worldview of good and evil - would still flow from God's absolute truth.

The book of Esther is a prime example of the communication of a powerful account of good triumphing over evil, yet it never mentions the name of God.

2. If a book were written from a Christian "world view" without being overtly religious, what kind of material is appropriate to write about? A fictional world without religion? Crime novels? "Soap opera" romance novels?

I wouldn't put artificial limits of "acceptable" or "unacceptable" subject matter, though I can't readily conceive of "a fictional world without religion," or what the point would be of inventing one. Religion is an inescapable concept. Try to create a world without it and you are left with the religion of humanism, or Narnianism, or whatever-the-creatures-in-that-world-are-called-ism. I would think that the concern of a Christian author would be to communicate through the medium of writing something valuable and edifying to the reader - not mere empty entertainment for its own sake - but a story that, on some level, directs the reader to those things that are pure, and lovely, and worthy of praise.

I've rambled enough... I hope I've said something helpful.

Blessings,
Doug

 

[py3ak]

There are not necessarily specific topics or approaches that are off-limits to a Christian writer: and there is not any such thing as a Christian meter for poetry, or a Christian novelistic technique, etc. In that sense there is no Christian writing, there is only writing done by Christians. And that may be good or bad in more than one way. It may be good or bad writing; it may be good or bad Christianity. But the two are quite distinctly separable.

Every novel world is a fantasy world and all fantasy worlds borrow from God's creation, some subtly, some overtly. Your written world is never an exact copy of the real world, and the fantasy world is always made out of elements already found in the real world. But what that does mean is that you are in control of what elements you want to carry over into your fantasy world (which could be set in 2007 Brooklyn, but it's still a fantasy, even if a readily accessible one). And since a story or novel is not a systematic theology, you are under no obligation to carry everything over. Say that with certain characters and situations that have come to you, you can see that a point could be well and subtly made that the one who rises early and blesses his neighbor with a loud voice is like one who curses; because you carried over that Proverb doesn't mean you have to carry over every other Proverb.

 

[staythecourse]

My former pastor wrote a book that was published about the Darfur slavery racket. It was called "The Redemption of Akin Apot" and is being made into a movie called "Beyond the Sun."

He wrote a fiction book based on a conglomeration of people helped through and helping ina real Christian ministry, too. It was made into a movie and even one an award (called the Touch)

The book on Christian slavery in Darfur is a fiction book based on real research he had to do.

So, since I am not much of a fan of fantasy, fiction, and whatnot, I believe this is an acceptable way to tell people of Christ and the "real drama" that goes on in any Christian life. It's sad if we have to make up fiction books because their is nothing more dramatic than the "life and death" spiritual warfare we experience. It makes me wonder why we need fiction. Are we not living the life worth living with real people, some elect and some not, with demons, angels, principalities, created things God and Christ? Existence is a book with amazing characters so why make stories up?

But, I believe the more we love Jesus, the harder it is to write of someone else. IF we are as bowled over with ought with who Christ is, a fiction book would quickly come around to a clear presentation of Jesus.

 

[TimV]

Very thoughtful, Ruben.

 

[dcomin]

There are not necessarily specific topics or approaches that are off-limits to a Christian writer: and there is not any such thing as a Christian meter for poetry, or a Christian novelistic technique, etc. In that sense there is no Christian writing, there is only writing done by Christians. And that may be good or bad in more than one way. It may be good or bad writing; it may be good or bad Christianity. But the two are quite distinctly separable.

Exactly!

 

[Ex Nihilo]

So, since I am not much of a fan of fantasy, fiction, and whatnot, I believe this is an acceptable way to tell people of Christ and the "real drama" that goes on in any Christian life. It's sad if we have to make up fiction books because their is nothing more dramatic than the "life and death" spiritual warfare we experience. It makes me wonder why we need fiction. Are we not living the life worth living with real people, some elect and some not, with demons, angels, principalities, created things God and Christ? Existence is a book with amazing characters so why make stories up?

As Heidi said, we make up stories because they help us see the truth about the life we are currently living. Also, good stories give us hope that the world should be and will be more beautiful than it currently is. Existence is interesting and even amazing, but the world is fallen, and therefore it is inherently dissatisfying to us -- we were created for something better. Stories, whether fictional or not, help us see the parts of life that are beautiful and understand why the ugly parts are there and how they will be defeated.

Did you read the Wright lecture I linked above?