Christian authors these days often have a hard time discerning how to base their stories on the foundational morals of Christendom without writing "Christian fiction".
Sure, I definitely will. These days though, I think I need more marketing advice as I cannot wrap my head around how to get more reviews for my book and more sales for it.
Yes, telling the story well is a necessary condition. But, it's not sufficient. Woke propaganda fails on story and message. Christians have the right message; more of us need to master storytelling.
One notes that it is morally wrong to commit fraud. And therefore one must make one's fiction as entertaining as you can, because that's what it's sold as.
Also, fiction is very poor at the intellectual level. In C.S. Lewis's description from *The Abolition of Man*, the chief thing it does is educate the *sentiments*. It does not discuss courage as a cardinal virtue but instead portrays it as admirable.
I am with you in spirit here, but I think the problem goes deeper than preaching vs. storytelling. You say, "Christian authors who want to convey Gospel truths should first write good stories." But that is exactly the problem: not that they can't write good stories, though that is true of most people, Christian or not, but that they are trying to convey Gospel truths. They are trying to use fiction for something is was not intended for.
We need to make a clear distinction between two domains of communication: the propositional and the experiential. Essays are about proposing and defending propositional truths. Stories are about creating experiences. As long as you are trying to convey Gospel truths, or any other kind of truth, you are in the domain of propositions, and your proper form is the essay.
This is not to deny that you can use parables as a rhetorical device to convey propositional truths. But the parable of the prodigal son is not a novel. It bears none of the hallmarks of the novel. It is an illustrative example for a moral teaching.
But if we really want to tell stories, as oppose to using stories as a rhetorical device to teach Gospel truths, then we have to get the idea of teaching Gospel truths out of our heads entirely and focus on telling stories that create human experiences. Can those experiences we create include the experience of the divine? Of course they can. That is part of human experience. But the story has to focus on creating the experience, for forming or hinting at a proposition.
For an example, I would encourage people to read The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a short story contained within Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows. It is the best literary expression of the numinous experience that I know of. Yes, the god in question is not Christ, but that only serves to universalize the experience, and the experience is what counts.
All that is required of a Christian plumber is to be a good plumber. The world needs good plumbing. If the Christian plumber came into your house singing hymns and distributing tracts but left your pipes leaking, he would not be a good Christian plumber.
All that is required of a Christian novelist is to write good novels. But if a Christian novelist wants to be specifically Christian in their writing, they should focus not on preaching the gospel, but on creating the types of experience that reveal, in the experience itself, not in any proposition, the full wonder of life and the world under heaven.
Can experiences evangelize? Oh yes, sometimes far more powerfully than propositions. It is often the experience that prompts the request, "Tell me more."
Unfortunately, the problem that I have seen tends to be the opposite of this. Far too many Christian writers write novels that have absolutely nothing to do with Christian morals. Their characters don’t really act in any way different from the world, and certainly don’t bring out the hard things that Christianity calls us to do.
Perhaps we aren’t communicating. Who is the Christian author who you feel has best written in the way you suggest here? That has the most Christian influence while reaching a wide audience?
My misunderstanding. Lewis is a good apologist to be sure, but his fiction is too heavy-handed. For the quintessential Christian author who writes excellent stories that seamlessly and organically uphold Christian morals, look no further than Gene Wolfe.
There are some westerns that did this pretty well.
Gilbert Morris is hit or miss, but one from his Reno series was exceptional.
I wouldn't classify The Curly Wolf by M.R. Kayser as "Christian" fiction, but the admirable characters believe and live Christian principles (there's no mistaking they are Christian) without any sermonizing I can remember.
And perhaps it should be said that by writing good stories, first and foremost, and then not shying away from public awareness of your own faith, you present yourself as someone to look up to and aspire to. Those that do, will see your faith in you as a person, and some may seek further as a result. Just again, don't make your About Author page too preachy.
"“For I testify together to everyone who hears the Words of the prophecy of this Book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add on him the plagues that have been written in this Book"
always wondered how Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins didn't pick up on that
I will definitely be responding to this in one of my upcoming podcasts this week. But for now I'll just say, I feel like this article should be entitled "ways to make Christian fiction better". Christian fiction shouldn't be a naughty word, nor should it be avoided. I'm going to give you some reasons why when I do my podcast.
I know it is the Done Thing to disparage the Harry Potter books, due to the obnoxiousness of some of its fans. These fans are fair game.
The book's themes could only be more Christian if Rowling converted.
The trio of Tom Riddle, Severus Snape, and Harry Potter, were each handed the same birthright of power, abandonment, abuse, and a rescuing opportunity for love. In Anderson's (Now there's a Christian writer exemplar) The Garden of Patadise, each step forward toward temptation renders the next exponentially more compelling. In the lives of Rowling's characters, she shows what happens when they turn back from mortal sin and toward agape - and when they do not.
I could go on, there's loads more both deep and trivial (Using Christian metrics, who is more demonic: Umbridge or Voldie? The establishment press are parasites 😆)
The reason the fans are so wedded to this series is that in the secular tradpub world of children's lit there was nothing like it. It hit the moral vacuum with the same whammy Star Wars did the movie-going one.
You've made excellent points, and I am wholly aligned with your agenda. I have noted (recently) a spate of people bemoaning the lack of a "new Brideshead Revisited." However, as an author you surely recognize the need to appeal to a demographic. And the intersection of deep spiritual meaning and secular storytelling is a very narrow place. The challenge is not writing such work - I am convinced there are a great many authors with this same mission - it is in getting such work published and read. Of course this is based on my own experience (and I won't bother to plug my work here). At the front end of the process you have literary agents who are sniffing out anything that isn't woke. Then you have Christian and Catholic publishers who are afraid (with good reason) of putting off their audiences by promoting works in which the layer of secular reality is shocking to the sensibilities of their readers. I have thought for some time of starting "Bad Catholic Press" as a platform for just the sort of modern "Evelyn Waugh" story, which, as you know, features some pretty shocking stuff - infidelity, homosexuality, materialism and hedonism, faithlessness and loveless marriage, etc. But, starting a new publishing house in this readerless day and age seems an exercise in futility. Anyway, best of luck to you (and to all the other writers with the same mission).
To call publishing houses the new horse buggy whip manufacturers would be an insult to the horse buggy whip industry. The idea that authors must sell of their rights to a third party that takes 85% through an agent who takes15% of the remaining 15% is a historic anomaly that is fast correcting itself.
The walls have fallen. Pay the gatekeepers no mind.
Yes, all good points. I've tried to write to where my readers are, to start with that. Otherwise, you'll never be able to bring them in the tale.
Very good points all around, will have to apply the lessons here to my own fiction.
Thanks. If you ever need writing guidance, don't hesitate to let me know.
Sure, I definitely will. These days though, I think I need more marketing advice as I cannot wrap my head around how to get more reviews for my book and more sales for it.
CS Lewis said as much.
"The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature."
"Christian fiction" is the same as woke fiction. It fails for the same reason.
We don't want The Message. We want a story. When all we get is The Message, the story fails utterly.
Yes, telling the story well is a necessary condition. But, it's not sufficient. Woke propaganda fails on story and message. Christians have the right message; more of us need to master storytelling.
Exactly.
One notes that it is morally wrong to commit fraud. And therefore one must make one's fiction as entertaining as you can, because that's what it's sold as.
Also, fiction is very poor at the intellectual level. In C.S. Lewis's description from *The Abolition of Man*, the chief thing it does is educate the *sentiments*. It does not discuss courage as a cardinal virtue but instead portrays it as admirable.
I am with you in spirit here, but I think the problem goes deeper than preaching vs. storytelling. You say, "Christian authors who want to convey Gospel truths should first write good stories." But that is exactly the problem: not that they can't write good stories, though that is true of most people, Christian or not, but that they are trying to convey Gospel truths. They are trying to use fiction for something is was not intended for.
We need to make a clear distinction between two domains of communication: the propositional and the experiential. Essays are about proposing and defending propositional truths. Stories are about creating experiences. As long as you are trying to convey Gospel truths, or any other kind of truth, you are in the domain of propositions, and your proper form is the essay.
This is not to deny that you can use parables as a rhetorical device to convey propositional truths. But the parable of the prodigal son is not a novel. It bears none of the hallmarks of the novel. It is an illustrative example for a moral teaching.
But if we really want to tell stories, as oppose to using stories as a rhetorical device to teach Gospel truths, then we have to get the idea of teaching Gospel truths out of our heads entirely and focus on telling stories that create human experiences. Can those experiences we create include the experience of the divine? Of course they can. That is part of human experience. But the story has to focus on creating the experience, for forming or hinting at a proposition.
For an example, I would encourage people to read The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a short story contained within Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows. It is the best literary expression of the numinous experience that I know of. Yes, the god in question is not Christ, but that only serves to universalize the experience, and the experience is what counts.
All that is required of a Christian plumber is to be a good plumber. The world needs good plumbing. If the Christian plumber came into your house singing hymns and distributing tracts but left your pipes leaking, he would not be a good Christian plumber.
All that is required of a Christian novelist is to write good novels. But if a Christian novelist wants to be specifically Christian in their writing, they should focus not on preaching the gospel, but on creating the types of experience that reveal, in the experience itself, not in any proposition, the full wonder of life and the world under heaven.
Can experiences evangelize? Oh yes, sometimes far more powerfully than propositions. It is often the experience that prompts the request, "Tell me more."
Unfortunately, the problem that I have seen tends to be the opposite of this. Far too many Christian writers write novels that have absolutely nothing to do with Christian morals. Their characters don’t really act in any way different from the world, and certainly don’t bring out the hard things that Christianity calls us to do.
Yes, the correct way for a Christian to write a story is to show Christian morals as the winning behavior.
So what do you consider the best ‘Christian Fiction’?
As I said in the post, I don't.
Perhaps we aren’t communicating. Who is the Christian author who you feel has best written in the way you suggest here? That has the most Christian influence while reaching a wide audience?
Narnia?
My misunderstanding. Lewis is a good apologist to be sure, but his fiction is too heavy-handed. For the quintessential Christian author who writes excellent stories that seamlessly and organically uphold Christian morals, look no further than Gene Wolfe.
It has to be said Louis has reached a huge audience though.
There are some westerns that did this pretty well.
Gilbert Morris is hit or miss, but one from his Reno series was exceptional.
I wouldn't classify The Curly Wolf by M.R. Kayser as "Christian" fiction, but the admirable characters believe and live Christian principles (there's no mistaking they are Christian) without any sermonizing I can remember.
And perhaps it should be said that by writing good stories, first and foremost, and then not shying away from public awareness of your own faith, you present yourself as someone to look up to and aspire to. Those that do, will see your faith in you as a person, and some may seek further as a result. Just again, don't make your About Author page too preachy.
"“For I testify together to everyone who hears the Words of the prophecy of this Book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add on him the plagues that have been written in this Book"
always wondered how Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins didn't pick up on that
I will definitely be responding to this in one of my upcoming podcasts this week. But for now I'll just say, I feel like this article should be entitled "ways to make Christian fiction better". Christian fiction shouldn't be a naughty word, nor should it be avoided. I'm going to give you some reasons why when I do my podcast.
I know it is the Done Thing to disparage the Harry Potter books, due to the obnoxiousness of some of its fans. These fans are fair game.
The book's themes could only be more Christian if Rowling converted.
The trio of Tom Riddle, Severus Snape, and Harry Potter, were each handed the same birthright of power, abandonment, abuse, and a rescuing opportunity for love. In Anderson's (Now there's a Christian writer exemplar) The Garden of Patadise, each step forward toward temptation renders the next exponentially more compelling. In the lives of Rowling's characters, she shows what happens when they turn back from mortal sin and toward agape - and when they do not.
I could go on, there's loads more both deep and trivial (Using Christian metrics, who is more demonic: Umbridge or Voldie? The establishment press are parasites 😆)
The reason the fans are so wedded to this series is that in the secular tradpub world of children's lit there was nothing like it. It hit the moral vacuum with the same whammy Star Wars did the movie-going one.
You've made excellent points, and I am wholly aligned with your agenda. I have noted (recently) a spate of people bemoaning the lack of a "new Brideshead Revisited." However, as an author you surely recognize the need to appeal to a demographic. And the intersection of deep spiritual meaning and secular storytelling is a very narrow place. The challenge is not writing such work - I am convinced there are a great many authors with this same mission - it is in getting such work published and read. Of course this is based on my own experience (and I won't bother to plug my work here). At the front end of the process you have literary agents who are sniffing out anything that isn't woke. Then you have Christian and Catholic publishers who are afraid (with good reason) of putting off their audiences by promoting works in which the layer of secular reality is shocking to the sensibilities of their readers. I have thought for some time of starting "Bad Catholic Press" as a platform for just the sort of modern "Evelyn Waugh" story, which, as you know, features some pretty shocking stuff - infidelity, homosexuality, materialism and hedonism, faithlessness and loveless marriage, etc. But, starting a new publishing house in this readerless day and age seems an exercise in futility. Anyway, best of luck to you (and to all the other writers with the same mission).
To call publishing houses the new horse buggy whip manufacturers would be an insult to the horse buggy whip industry. The idea that authors must sell of their rights to a third party that takes 85% through an agent who takes15% of the remaining 15% is a historic anomaly that is fast correcting itself.
The walls have fallen. Pay the gatekeepers no mind.