The main topic for writers in the Christian-targeted fiction space this last week or so has appeared to be “intellectual rigor”.
Everyone wants more of it, even though no one is entirely sure what it looks like, other than “C.S. Lewis!”.*
Because I’m always trying to keep at least a window open in my mind to catch a breeze I joined in the Christian Spec Fic Reading Challenge thrown down by Becky Miller and initially taken up by Mike Duran. For this challenge I’m–we’re all–reading Patrick W. Carr’s A Cast Of Stones.
It was midway through reading this book that I hit upon a realisation.
Carr’s first novel in his The Staff & The Sword trilogy reads less like the Christian-targeted fiction of a decade ago and more like something I’d pick up from Tor or Orbit. I don’t mean in terms of theology (a topic for a different post) or plot; I mean, simply, it’s written in the STYLE of those books. As I’ve followed more and more authors of Christian-targeted fiction I realise they’re all getting the same advice from the same editors at the same workshops and it is making many of their books read like the same subpar reading experience. “Don’t have a prologue!” “Stay away from adverbs!” “Use short sentences to build suspense!” “Don’t change character POV! [which they phrase as “don’t head hop!”] Meanwhile I think upon all the true classics of literature, the BEST-SELLING classics that have had prologues, lots of adverbs, longer sentences, POV changes. And I realise that Christian-targeted fiction has been held prisoner by one specific style of writing tailored to a specific audience.
I read romance novels; I write romance novels. This is not an indictment of the romance genre. But I will say that when most readers of romance pick up a book in that category they are looking for an easy, escapist read. If they want more challenging stuff they’ll go for classics like Tolstoy or Austen. It’s not that they don’t read challenging material, it’s that the genre is shaped around easy escapism.
Since that’s the far-and-away top-selling genre for Christian-targeted publishers it’s going to stand to reason that many of the editors and successful writers are going to be seeking and writing those types of books. Hence all of those seminars with all of those pointers on how to make your book fit this market.
That’s what I realised when reading Carr’s book last night. I first read his bio** and saw that he credited folks like Robert Jordan and Guy Gavriel Kay as his influences instead of just regurgitating “C.S Lewis!” and “Tolkein!” as so many in this space do. That’s why his book sounds different. He’s reading outside the bubble and being influenced by THOSE stories, not just going with the same influences and seminars as everybody else.
And that’s when it further hit me.
Do we want intellectual rigor in our fiction? Yes. How do we get it?
BY READING INTELLECTUAL FICTION.
I’m not saying that you can only read Marquez and Salinger and those other ponderous literary works. I’m actually giving yet another reason why I think it is essential for any writer to be well and diversely read. Intellectualism is just wrestling with ideas. You’re not going to be finding many ideas to wrestle with if everything you consume has the same ideas, the same style, the same point of view.
If Christian-targeted fiction wants to branch out it has to believe that there are other books to read besides what’s on the shelf at LifeWay and it has to believe that there are other ways to write a book besides Janette Oke and Ted Dekkar.
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* This is becoming the default response to ANYTHING that comes up in the Christian Fiction space. It’s like a special subset of Tourette’s where no matter what the question or argument folks can respond with “C.S. Lewis!” and feel like they’ve made a point.
**I had to know if he was old enough to grok who Martin and Lewis were when he called two of his characters Martin and Luis.
“Intellectualism is just wrestling with ideas.” Katherine, this is perhaps the best line in this entire discussion!
Yes, Patrick is writing differently, but so are the other writers I recommended to Mike–Anne Elisabeth Stengl perhaps more than the others. I thought of another one I should have recommended to Mike, closer to his genre: Beckon by Tom Pawlik.
Becky
At least I said one good thing today . :-p
I’ve heard good things about Stengl. I’ve tried Pawlik in the past but if I recall correctly he writes more horror-type stuff and I’m off horror at the moment.
Ha! You say lots of good things. In this case it was the best of all the things said in the discussion.
Stengl is good. I just finished Dragonwitch and in some ways wish Mike had chosen it instead. It would have been hard to come into the series without some idea of what was going on, though. It’s not a continuing story the same way The Staff & The Sword trilogy is, but there are people and . . . things, the way the world works, introduced in previous books. It would have been challenging, to say the least!
Pawlik does write horror-ish fiction. That’s why I thought Mike would like him. I read two of his–loved the first one. The other I read wasBeckon, and although I wouldn’t call it horror, I decided I didn’t want to read any more of these near-horror books. I end up, at best, feeling relieved. Not satisfied or happy or content or hopeful. Not even sorrowful or frustrated or … whatever other emotion someone might have at the end of a book. No, I’m relieved. I can’t imagine that’s the way the author wants the reader to feel at the end of a book.
Becky
Enquiring minds really, really want to know about Martin and Luis.
They’re two priests (Or whatever this world’s version of Priests is) who are hiding out in the woods keeping an eye on the Mystical Child Hero in Hiding. And their names are Martin and Luis. And I was all “you’re kidding, right?!?” and everyone yesterday said “it’s pronounced Loo-EEEs” so I had to go into my whole “personal framework for pronunciation in Sci-Fi/Fantasy” whereby I intuit name pronunciation from linguistic construct of the surrounding institutions and ephemera instead of solely from contemporary usage” and therefore was calling the man “Loo-wiss” in my head. Then after my initial mention Martin and Luis began bantering and I was like “this dude seriously MEANT to do this.” So I told him he owed me a $5 Vanilla Shake for calling them Martin and Lewis and he started bantering with me about various Jerry Lewis trivia. So I’m fairly certain it was one of those authorial in-jokes that bug me but I’ll be a good sport about in this one instance because the dude lives here in our fair burg.
For consistency, I guess, they should be “Martín and Luis.” Is their banter funny? And can Martin (or Martín) sing?
You’re halfway through? I’m on Chapter 2. 😦 The first chapter didn’t hook me, but the second one caught my interest. The odds of me finishing it unfortunately aren’t all that good, but that’s not a slam against the book. I can stop reading a great book halfway through, allowing it to collect dust on my nightstand for 6 months. I’m not sure how I manage that.
Interesting. The last Christian spec fic book I read was Frank Perretti’s Piercing the Darkness 20 years ago. Since then, it’s been secular fiction.
This could explain why the Christian spec fic I’ve started reading in the last 3 years feels much the same. Hmm.