"Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” – Matthew 12:34
This truth is the writer's blessing and/or curse.
When I look back at old stories I've written, I can clearly see how just beneath the craft of the narrative, the worldview and the choices I make are indicative of where my soul was at in that particular season. And I have also found, through understanding that window back into myself, that I can often get a foggy picture of where other authors are at and what they believe by looking one layer beneath their work.
Writing instructors often say: “Write what you know.” And in one sense, I know precisely what they mean, but in another sense a writer cannot help but write what they know. We can’t help but dip into the well of who we are in order to write.
One of my favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, once wrote: “A good novel tells us the truth about its hero but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”
I’d complexify Chesterton’s droll proverb by asserting that every novel tells us the truth about its author, but with the good ones, the truth is more veiled beneath the capability, characterizations, and craft that any experienced author has learned.
The craft of writing can and should be taught. However, there is a deeper part of storytelling that's simply linked to the artist's soul itself, and that cannot be faked. I’ve heard it said that whatever really bothers you is the problem that you set out to address in your narrative. The author, like the oyster, uses pearl to smooth over a nagging irritant. And the piece of grit that bothers and concerns one soul will often slide right over another. And so our energy, our calling, and our interests are actually a part of ourselves. They’re not at all self-evident. Through a mixture of the craft of writing and reflecting one’s inner soul, we, as authors, can convince readers to share a piece of our irritant and thus share part of the pearl.
Of course, an author can simply pour shoddy concrete over their irritant. This concrete kind of narrative falsifies things with an overlay of beliefs that the author wants to believe, or (more often) beliefs that the author wants to have others believe about them. That's what is usually meant when people say "they hate happy endings" or they "hate religious writing."
When readers sense a fake concrete veneer over the artist's real beliefs, it's as satisfying as concrete is organic. It's like apples being taped to an orange tree. The tree, from the roots up, is built to create one fruit, but that fruit is plucked, and a fake fruit is placed on top. It doesn't seem right, because it isn't right.
For example, this is the problem with most Hollywood Christian movies. They don't believe what they’re doing, but they see a market share and a demographic they can hit, and so they try to hit it. (Side note: I may have to write a separate post on how much I’m dreading the Netflix Narnia series.) As a result, the end product feels like an AI rendition, rearranging words in recognizable orders to try to hit a market. But it's not organic and no soul is attached to this particular communication. It's just concrete.
I agree with Madeleine L’Engle when she writes: “If [an author] is truly and deeply a Christian, what she writes is going to be Christian, whether she mentions Jesus or not. And if she is not, in the most profound sense, Christian, then what she writes is not going to be Christian, no matter how many times she invokes the name of the Lord.”
Any convincing message in a work of fiction is going to have to come out of what you actually believe.
All art is message art because all art is communication, and it's impossible to communicate without having a message to communicate. There's a message in every single piece of art ever created. Even "ars grata artis" is a message. The message is unavoidable, so don't worry about it too much. The message will come out of your character and your soul. In other words:
"Out of the abundance of the heart, the art speaks."
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“Since we were made to glorify God, worship happens when someone is doing exactly what he or she was made to do.”
Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark
This brings another Chesterton quote to mind, which I will attempt to paraphrase. He said that he had heard much about Balzac as a writer, but no one had mentioned that he was a Catholic writer. He went on to say that he did not know if Balzac thought of himself as Catholic, but his writing was Catholic nonetheless. Chesterton said he could even see it in the description of a broom.
All of this is to say that we do not need to sprinkle Christianity onto the top of our writing if it is the foundation of our lives. Those with eyes to see will see it.
Well said!