Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff continues our series on the Craft of Chrisitan Writing.

The World We Write In

My original cunning plan for blogging here was to comb through books on craft and selectively cull them for witty and insightful thoughts.  I quickly decided that I didn’t have the time to properly read any of those books and didn’t want to pretentiously misrepresent myself as some expert on the wide world of poetry-writing guides.  I have other ways of being pretentious.

I began this post at a Borders café in downtown Evanston, IL, the well-to-do hometown of Northwestern University.  While I sat with my gourmet iced tea, blithely typing away on my laptop like the very model of a modern metropolitan, a woman sat down at a table across from me with a huge book on witchcraft.  I thought, two hundred years ago we were burning witches at the stake; now we’re marketing to them.  I don’t think this is a phenomenon limited to “liberal” urban centers—it’s just easier to find here, where there are more people who exist together anonymously.  This is the world we live in, a world in which average people think it not out of the ordinary to “explore” alternative worlds, alternative narratives, including those labeled “metaphysical” and “occult” by Borders, Inc.  And this is the world Christians write poetry in...

Fiction Editor Alan Ackmann describes why designing a story around a moral can sometimes be a risky proposition.

My last blog mentioned that good writing does not judge its characters, and since discussion of this idea has appeared on other sites, I thought I’d make this the first in our series of common miscalculations. In Christian writing, judging characters most frequently manifests as overt moralizing on the writer’s part, so that the understanding readers are intended to take away is not of someone else’s life, but of how to live their own lives better.  The instinct to do this makes sense; God tries to tell us just what we should do, and we Christians try to comply.  Furthermore, the mostly pure intentions of Christian moralizing often amplify the instinct.  While some writers’ heritage still has a thread of “cast the sinners into the fire” fervor, most Christian stories overflow with compassion, their didacticism guiding rather condemning.  Personally, I often sense tension between my literary training (which tells me the writer should be a guiding, invisible hand, rarely sensed and never seen) and my Christian training (which practically mandates didacticism by telling me I should use my gifts to help people know God).  These two goals—one requiring absence, the other presence—seem initially irreconcilable, and I grapple with them as a writer and an editor.  As explained in a previous post, however, I ultimately gauge all aspects of fiction by their effect on characterization, which makes moralizing risky.  Here’s why: 

Today's blog brought to you by Alan Ackmann , our newly appointed Relief Fiction Editor, and the letter Q , because it's cool to be sponsored by letters of the alphabet.

In the interest of contributing to Project Blog-a-lot (and of introducing myself) I thought the fiction folk in cyberspace might appreciate some insight into the stories Relief is interested in publishing, as well as in strategies they can incorporate into their writing.  Before giving out specific tips or tricks, however, I thought I would explain my primary assumptions, as both an editor and a writer, about what makes good Christian fiction—as well as good fiction in general.  Here we go!

1.      Good Fiction Explores Characters

From my perspective, fiction’s most noble goal is to explore character, and to analyze the traits, desires, mistakes, and idiosyncrasies of individual human beings.  The exquisite paradox of art is its ability both to demonstrate what is unique about ourselves, and to create universal emotions through precise portrayals—and the economy of short fiction makes it suited to this task.  Unlike sprawling, luxurious novels, short stories allow writers to focus on one person and one situation, and this heightened focus leads to heightened understanding.  Emphasizing character also provides a filter through which other dimensions of fiction can be refined, since the primacy of character designates all other aspects—style, structure, dialogue, description, plot, etc—as secondary elements, which are then judged by the extent to which they further understanding of the primary element. Emphasizing characterization does not mean things like plot or style shouldn’t be considered—only that they should not be distractions.  Knowingly flashy writing, for example, takes focus off characters and redirects it onto the writer . . . which is a flaw.  Similarly, digressions into philosophy, description, or history that do not further understanding of people often limit fiction rather than enhance it.  There are, of course, writers whose work I love who might disagree with this aesthetic—Don Delillo, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, and (when he’s playful) Vladimir Nabokov among them.  And most of these writers could argue me under the table.  So while I’m not opposed to well-written fiction that operates under a different aesthetic, my favorite stories in literature (and in Relief) explore specific worlds of individual people, and clarify how those experiences which set us apart from one another can also, mysteriously, generate emotions that unite us. 

2. Good Fiction Never Passes Judgment

This one’s best illustrated by example.  Anton Chekhov, one of the great masters, almost never commented on his character’s choices or mistakes—he simply portrayed them. This didn’t mean Chekhov wasn’t compassionate—he was actually quite generous with both his time and gifts.  A doctor, Chekhov routinely offered pro bono care to impoverished Russian peasants.  He also, however, had a clinician’s removal.  If the victim of a farming accident brought before Chekhov needed his leg amputated, it didn’t matter whether Chekhov wanted the man to not have a leg, or whether he considered the amputation morally wrong.  The leg was gone, and that was that.  Similarly, if Chekhov wrote about a soldier who loses his ability to believe in God, it did not matter (from an artistic point of view) whether Chekhov wanted the man to believe in God or whether the lack of belief was morally wrong. Agnosticism is the man’s reality, and Chekhov’s artistic duty is to display that reality.  In one of my favorite Chekhov stories, “Lady with a Little Dog” (or “Lapdog”, or simply “Dog” depending on your translation), two characters have an affair that is illicit, flawed, addictive, specific and heartbreaking . . . and by the last word it is impossible to tell whether Chekhov thinks his characters are behaving well or poorly—but the clarity of their behavior touches us.  Chekhov handles the material differently than, say, Tolstoy might in one of his desperately moralizing phases, or Steinbeck or Dickens might on one of their social crusades. Again, this doesn’t mean Chekhov doesn’t care—only that he respects the limitations of his aesthetic.   He has the restraint to let his characters follow their own understanding . . . and to let his readers do the same. 

3. Good Fiction Leaves Preaching to Preachers

I don’t believe the purpose of all literature is to bring people to God. If I have an evangelical hope for Relief, it is that non-Christian readers will attain a more complete understanding of Christianity’s struggles, hopes, fears, sacrifices, and joys—and if this demolishes barriers or sparks curiosities so be it.  I also do not believe literature should simply reaffirm comfortable beliefs, or present a sanitized reality assuring readers that everything is okay when clearly it is not. The thing I hate most in fiction (other than authorial arrogance) is feeling deceived, as though a writer’s pulling punches makes a story artificially “safe.”  “Edginess” (to use this journal’s buzzword) does not, to me, mean salaciousness or shock; it means having the fortitude to display Christian realities without worrying who they might offend.  This does not mean you, as a writer, should exploit doubts, limitations, or sins—only that you should not ignore them.  My favorite Christian stories are of struggling people—some who succeed, and some who fail—and are told with clarity, courage, and grace.  A love of such stories, ultimately, led me to Relief. 

Come Back Next Week for “Crafting Your Fiction, Part 1”

There are other aspects of Christianity’s role in fiction (what stories Christians should be telling, for example, or whether a “Christian” story is always about Christians) but I’ll leave those for future posts, where I’ll also address issues of craft and technique.  Before moving onto what Christian writing should do, however, we should further explore what it should not do.  The next few posts will focus on common miscalculations, and how these might be corrected.  Thanks for reading, and tune in next week.  

Related Articles:

• Crafting Fiction Series Part Two: The Moral of the Story is . . .