Canadian Prairie Writer: PlainText

So, when is it backstory, and when is it . . . well, not?

The problems of a less-than-founded story (voice of experience talking):

One of the reasons my library is chock-full of non-fiction, with only a few fiction titles, is that I can get actual, clear commentary on Scriptural truth from non-fiction. In other words, it gives me something I can take back to the Bible and examine for truth.

Oh, yeah, and the other reason I have so much non-fiction is because church libraries keep throwing it out to make room for the novels.

Fiction doesn't do that truth thing for me. I read it, because I absorb writing technique from it, but it's very rare for me to find a book that lives up to its intended goal of expressing who Jesus Christ is and how to get to Him. That's what put Francine Rivers to the top on my Most-Favourite-Authors-of-All-Time list.

I'd like to correct that flaw when it comes to my own writing. I found myself struggling with it again this morning as I went back over another short piece of backstory, trying to determine who a character was before he was a Christian. (I've discovered he was a crass, foul-mouthed jerk, if anybody cares.) I was sitting there, trying to revise the scene where he comes to Christ, and--I hate this part, but it happens every time--it kept falling short.

It's a bit of a cliche scenario, but that's okay. The closest it may ever come to publication is this blog, if at all. So anyway, here's the guy, lying in a hospital bed after getting stabbed, knowing he's OD'd a couple too many times, and the spiritual counsellor from the downtown mission is at his side.

What does the spiritual counsellor say?

The fact is, when I read Christian books these days, I tend to skim over the sermons, the Bible quotes, and the trite "discussion" dialogues. They're cookie-cutter. They don't engage me. For the most part, those approaches also didn't engage me before I was a Christian when people tried them in real life.

Knowing this, most Christian novelists have fallen back on the old saw that non-fiction is cerebral, while fiction is emotional. They focus on the experience of becoming a Christian, whatever that means to them. Flashing lights, voices in the sky, weeping and gnashing of teeth (I don't mind that one, though I'm disappointed it's increasingly being replaced by psychedelic ecstasy). But it's all subjective.

The gospel isn't subjective. As such, I'm compelled to argue that one can't fit it into fiction adequately--not without breaking the fiction mold in a bad way for the scene one wants to write.

Ah, but--there is another alternative I can see: Brutal honesty. The problem is, it will embarrass most, if not all, denominations, and create unmarketable work. And if it's not marketable, then what? We shall all surely die.

In this hypothetical series of four I've been playing with, the literary device in the third manuscript is definitely brutal honesty. In honour of unpopular folks like Rob Zins, Mike Gendron, Richard Bennett, Jim McCarthy, and the ordinary-everyday former Catholics I know personally, it features an ex-Catholic evangelical pastor. It also features his cynical, nominal younger sister, and two men whom I intend to let her torture in a variety of ways in order to make my case for what Christian love is and isn't.

It's really interesting what happens to the characters under such unmarketable realism. But, y'know, I don't know what else to do, except to write what I see happening around me: People getting disillusioned by convenient religion, all the while thirsting for an ounce of honesty. When that ounce of truth comes in, the contrast is unmistakable. At least, that's my subjective experience.

....

So I open my Writer's Digest mag, and it's not actually the writing prompts or the technical tips that get me. It's a small article on describing landscapes. Well, perfect. Out here on the prairie, there's not a whole lot else to describe.

I have zero fear of descriptive writing. It's the one area where I get consistently strong positive feedback. I could describe the fur off a wallaby. My struggles are with plotting, clear characterization and effective dialogue - I know, it's wacky for a writer not to understand communication. In each of the latter two cases, the weaknesses revolve around the plotting side of things. What character traits will move the plot? What dialogue is necessary (or unnecessary) to the plot at this moment?

I have the same trouble with description - I can write it, but can I make it meaningful to the plot? Unfortunately, at times I'm almost a candidate for the "literary fiction" category. In other words, ZZZZZZZZ. Now you know why the wallaby's shedding - it's actually duress.

As usual, it came down to one principle that I can drag along with me anywhere, just like Linus's blanket. The principle was essentially that describing the landscape should set the tension in the scene. The way the characters view the scenery is a reflection of their inward landscape. Which I know, yes I do, but I got distracted by all the other stuff I've been fretting over. I needed the permission to go back there again with fresh eyes.

This should help me tighten up and interweave my descriptions, saving word count and reader ennui.

Think about the story's physical landscape took me back to the scene that got the whole manuscript started. Maybe it's weird, but every story idea I've had that I've really wanted to write, I've gotten from a compelling dream.

Some are full of tension, some are oddly emotionless, but all of them have a mystique I can't even explain - a sense of being in another world. I wake up, and I'm driven back there to quest for the end of the story. Intellectually-derived concepts just don't motivate me to the same degree, though I have a whole list in my story files.

If you read my theology, you'll know I'm not a "dreams and visions" type. I believe in concrete , down-to-earth spirituality. Besides which, some of those dreams happened before I ever became a Christian. However, I do know that some of my outa-left-field thinking, I can only allow myself to do in my sleep.

In this case it was a dream of a young man and woman riding in a horse-drawn sleigh, full of joy that they'd found each other. That's all. Needless to say, between artistic license and structural pressures, it ain't like that in the novel. But the WD article enabled me to go back to that otherworldly sense and find a voice that's been buried for months now.

The young man who used to be my most straightfoward of characters has become the most complex as I've developed him. It turns out he's just really good at hiding things. I didn't intend for him to pretend at being happy, but that's what he does.

He lives in one of those hidden hollows of the prairie, surrounded by bushland. I'm now developing what he hears and sees in his home environment in order to express his hidden feelings without forcing him to talk about them.

I foresee a degree of perfectionistic tweaking and fussing over it. But that's okay. I found nearly 3000 words in my head in the space of a few hours, and that hasn't happened since the snow left.

What is it that I really must say?

Are there things that I really mustn't say?

Will I ever have an uninterrupted thought again in my life?

Yesterday, the kids were gone. It was good. It was quiet. I could think. I took the time to get myself into trouble. I took the time to consider what the message is.

The message. Is there anything to say that hasn't already been said? No, there isn't, according to Ecclesiastes. So why say anything at all?

There is a time to shut it and hold onto the silence. I think that's where I've gotten to. First, I have to locate the silence, which I haven't heard (without my husband's direct intervention) in a long time. I suspect it might be stored in my garden shed, and I should look there first. The place needs cleaning up anyway.

The Message. Why was I writing, again? How far off course I've come.

It wasn't anything fancy. It was just that two different male friends at different stages of my life shared something horrible with me. They had each been sexually abused. Their small communities, two different places, had each covered it up. The one town, because it's a peculiarly prideful place, and would never risk its reputation with such a scandal. The other town, because it was a Bible Belt place, and things like that weren't supposed to happen among Christians. If a few children got sacrificed, then it was for the majority's comfort.

All I wanted to share was what it did to these friends of mine. They were both such men - gentle, sensitive, strong. Both quiet on the surface, full of thoughtfulness beneath. I don't know where either of them is anymore.

I know there was a broken, aching space within that couldn't be shared with many people. I sat up late one night, and I found myself praying for one of them, and I realized that my strongest fictional character was to have that shameful secret. He was to tell what it was like to live behind a wall.

I lost sight of that. I mean, the book I've been working on could be about many things. It could be about rural vs. urban, about Prairie life, about clashes within the religious subculture. It could be about what it means to be an authentic Christian.

I didn't originally intend it to be about any of the above. It was to be, quite simply, a story about a man with a secret terror of finding out he is as worthless as he feels. A terror we all know in some way.

Time to sit back and think.

Someone from crit group told me Marcus was a confusing character. I agreed. I'm not sure if I'm writing him effectively, yet, in spite of being into a 5th draft and a 3rd working title for The Heritage of Tears.

That's okay. It's my training manuscript. What I'm learning from him is how to walk into my place of inner ugliness and drag some use out of it.

We're talking about a guy who cusses. (Still a problem for me, but not one I have admitted to much up till recently.) A guy who has naughty thoughts. Yeah, I used to live that way. I came from a culture where "female freedom" meant the freedom to do all the same ignorant things men do, because why should they get all the fun, right.

I have a well of ugliness. It's full of contaminated water, and I struggle with its existence every day. When I write this particular character, I have to face everything that appeals to my weaknesses. Unlike those characters whom I simply consider wrong-headed or bad, I have an emotional attachment to Marc, the fallen protagonist. I can't detach myself from those parts of me that go into him.

This is a character who messes up constantly. Sometimes knowing full well what he's doing, and completely rationalizing it. I don't like facing that side of myself. If I could have my way, I'd be a nice picture in a sidebar of a more thought-provoking, spiritually-nourishing blog than this one. I wouldn't be some broken, flawed mess.

Yep, it would be great to laminate myself with a permanent Mona Lisa smirk and call it a day. Truth is, though, I'm not wise, I'm not gentle, and I'm not a very large-hearted character. I survive by the grace of God, odd days when I let it in through the cracks.

And that's the addiction of writing fiction. It makes me look at my self-evident truths, however sad and painful. At times, there's more reality in the catharsis than there is in all the smiling, nodding, and polite socializing that makes up my days. I am not that nice mommy who cares about everyone and does all the good things "a Christian should do."

I wear masks with those I speak to face to face. I wear masks when I look in the mirror. But I can only fantasize away my life's true tenor for so long. Then the muse dumps me out, cold and dark, needing God, somewhere between dreams.