About
articles • book quests • news • library
reviews • podcast • gifts • archives
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

Shasta’s Meeting with Aslan in ‘The Horse and His Boy’ Helped Me Embrace God’s Sovereignty
Elijah David in Articles, Aug 5, 2022

100 Cupboards
Reviews, Aug 5, 2022

123. Which Fantastical Novels Won Big at the 2022 Realm Awards?
Fantastical Truth Podcast, Aug 2, 2022

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · young adult · grown-ups
All novels Search Add a novel
When Legends Rise, Daphne Self
The Withering, P. S. Patton
The Wonderland Trials, Sara Ella
Shadow of Honor, Ronie Kendig
Lost Bits, Kerry Nietz
Rats of Dweltford, Matt Barron
Vivid, Ashley Bustamante
The Godot Orange, Bruce Roberts
My Soul to Take, Bryan Davis
Into Shadow's Fire, Mark Castleberry
Deceived, Madisyn Carlin
Arena (2022 edition), Karen Hancock
Kurt Nickle-Dickle of Whiskers, N. J. McLagan
"In a city where debts are paid in blood, one young man will learn that everyone needs help sometimes if they want to survive." New in the Lorehaven library: A Matter of Blood, Lauren H Salisbury
Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review

100 Cupboards
“With thoughtful narrative voice and emotional honesty, N. D. Wilson’s 100 Cupboards (2007) opens doors to worlds of mystery and adventure.”
—Lorehaven on Aug 5, 2022

Blood Secrets
“Blood Secrets charts a satisfying conclusion to the Skyworld duology, with dashing prose that draws readers into this world of steam and mystery.”
—Lorehaven on Jul 22, 2022

Jabberwock’s Curse
“In Jabberwock’s Curse, R.V. Bowman blends different elements from Lewis Carroll’s classic into a quick-paced coming-of age story whose three heroes must learn who they were created to be.”
—Lorehaven on Jul 8, 2022

The Governess of Greenmere
“Obscure Arthurian and Celtic references blend with biblical imagery and high heroism in this brief yet old-souled story.”
—Lorehaven on Jul 1, 2022

Book Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs

100 Cupboards
Book Quests, July 2022

Phantastes
Book Quests, July 2022

Lost Bits
Book Quests, June 2022

Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney
Book Quests, May 2022

Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

123. Which Fantastical Novels Won Big at the 2022 Realm Awards?
Fantastical Truth, Aug 2, 2022

122. Why Are More Fans Turning Against Their Favorite Franchises?
Fantastical Truth, Jul 29, 2022

121. Will Humans Colonize the Cosmos Before Jesus Returns?
Fantastical Truth, Jul 19, 2022

120. How Can Christians Enjoy Biblical Freedom in Fiction and Imagination?
Fantastical Truth, Jul 12, 2022

Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Browse back issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

site archives | statement of faith
Articles Questions? Writers

Yes, Speculative Faith Is Closed, At Least For Now
E. Stephen Burnett, Dec 30

Last Stands, Custer, General Gordon, and Being a Christian Warrior
Travis Perry, Jul 2

How Christian Must Christian Fiction Be?
Rebecca LuElla Miller, May 24

Gender In Fiction: The Implication Of Failure
Rebecca LuElla Miller, May 10

Making a Story Visual UPDATE: Behind the Scenes of the Animal Eye Comic
Travis Perry, May 9

What Does “Woke” Culture Have To Do With Christian Fiction?
Rebecca LuElla Miller, Apr 26

About
Library
Reviews
Podcast
Gifts
Guild
Archives
SpecFaith
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ SpecFaith /

Owned

I got “owned” by a grandmother this weekend.
Fred Warren on Feb 14, 2012
No comments

Bonus points for finding me in the mob.

I got “owned” by a grandmother this weekend.

Let me put that sentence into context.

My lovely wife and I were participating in a flash mob at Kansas City’s Union Station this weekend, part of a surprise birthday party for one of our local mayors, who happens to be a favorite cousin of my lovely wife.

This isn’t helping, is it?

Anyhow, we’d finished practicing our songs and dance moves (as if), and were attempting to loiter unobtrusively around the train station until the guest of honor arrived, when we bumped into Hizzoner’s mother-in-law, a dear lady somewhere on the far side of her 70s. She knows I’m a writer, and she mentioned she’d read a couple of my books recently while visiting the grandkids.

“How nice,” I said, steeling myself for the inevitable compliment. “Did you enjoy them?”

“Well, I enjoyed them…”

My chest and head began to expand.

“… but I didn’t understand them. Not my cup of tea, really. I prefer reading books where I’ve learned something when I’m finished. I didn’t feel like I’d learned anything. I read a nice history of Eastern Kansas recently…learned a lot from that.”

Granny's got game.

BOO-YAA! OWNED! My beautifully-arched three-pointer had returned as a faceful of basketball. Ouch.

I managed to keep smiling, I think. My lovely wife said something full of grace and diplomacy, and the discussion turned to other topics. Now, I understand that speculative fiction isn’t, as the dear lady said, everyone’s “cup of tea,” and she’s not exactly my target demographic, and there was no malice in her critique—it was simply a classic, unvarnished, Midwestern statement of fact. It still stung, and later, it got me thinking. Should this be one of my objectives as a writer? Should my stories teach something? If so, what?

We talk a lot here at Speculative Faith about whether or not it’s a good idea to write with an agenda, to preach, or to attempt to convince as the driving motivation for a story. This seems a bit different, though. It’s writing fiction as a form of education, implying a duty to make my readers somehow smarter or better-informed.

Sometimes I see it in hard science fiction, where the story may be framed by the workings of a neutron star, or the physics of solar sailing, or the practical problems of long-endurance spaceflight. Isaac Asimov did a lot of this. Many of his stories turned on a character understanding, or misunderstanding, a single principle of science or logic. Even fantasies that employ magic or a physics-not-as-we-know-it may teach moral lessons or inform us about classic myths and literature.

This weekend convinced me I can’t sing or dance. I can write, but am I also teaching?

And if not, can I truthfully say I’ve written well?

Fred Warren
Fred was born in Tacoma, Washington, but spent most of his formative years in California, where his parents pastored a couple of small churches. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1983, and spent 24 years in the Air Force as a bomber navigator, flight-test navigator, and military educator. He retired from the Air Force in 2007, and now works as a government contractor in eastern Kansas, providing computer simulation support for Army training.Fred has been married for 25 years to the girl who should have been his high school sweetheart, and has three kids, three dogs, and a mortgage. When he's not writing or reading, he enjoys running, hiking, birdwatching, stargazing, and playing around with computers.Writing has always been a big part of his life, but he kept it mostly private until a few years ago, when it occurred to him that if he was ever going to get published, he needed to get serious about it. Since then, he's written more than twenty short stories that have been published in a variety of print and online magazines, and a novel, The Muse, that debuted in November 2009 from Splashdown Books, which was a finalist for the 2010 American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Award for book of the year in the speculative genre. Speculative fiction is his first love, but he writes the occasional bit of non-fiction or poetry, just to keep things interesting.
Website ·
  1. Sherwood Smith says:
    February 14, 2012 at 8:43 am

    Some famous writers are only famous for one book, usually an early one. Fanny Burney, for <i>Evelina</i>, many say a heavy influence on Jane Austen. Anthony Hope, <i>Prisoner of Zenda</i>, a romantic swashbuckler full of wit and honor that started the Ruritanian subgenre . . . many don’t know that he wrote quite a number of other books. Hugh Walpole, who Henry James insisted would be remembered at the other end of the twentieth century (he was writing in the early 1900s) while pifflers like P.G. Wodehouse would be forgotten.
    What do all these writers have in common? They decided they were going to gift the world with Reel Litrachure, to teach the world some wisdom . . . and they forgot to entertain. Those later novels are so stodgy that not even academics slog through them any more, except as curiosities, while those early ones are still in print a century or two later.
    I think memorable books are memorable partly because they entertain so splendidly, but at the same time they teach. The reading experience becomes a learning experience, drawing us back to reread and to think as well as to enjoy. But I also think that the best ones teach obliquely . . . and also, not every book is going to teach every person.
    Granny might be so well read throughout her long life experience that there are few surprises left for her, and insights are now rare. Or it could be that she has gently settled into an intellectual rut, and those nuggets of insight to be discovered in your book fly over her head while she searches for facts that she can quote–dates, famous names, information about a well-known site.
    Teens looking for answers in the world turn to fiction, in preference to earnest informational essays. (A sidestep, I don’t think it’s an accident that science fiction and fantasy are more popular than ever; I firmly believe that this is the religious impulse seeking truth beyond the banality of every day. But that’s another topic, and I’ve maundered long enough.)
    To wrap this up, Granny might have found little to learn in your book, but if she read it, and enjoyed it, she very well could have passed it on to a niece, nephew, grandchild, who will come away shivering with glimmers of truth.

    Reply
  2. Galadriel says:
    February 14, 2012 at 10:17 am

    That statement just makes me shiver. Maybe people should learn something from a good story, but if I wanted to learn, I’d focus exclusively on my classes and never borrow fiction.  Besides, a story like The Lord of the Rings reveals so much more about friendship and valour, honor and courage, then any textbook ever could. That doesn’t mean our stories should be sugar pulp, but  deliberate lessons? Horrors!

    Reply
  3. Kessie says:
    February 14, 2012 at 11:16 am

    That’s why people read big fat Tom Clancy books, because you learn a lot about submarines or nuclear bombs or whatever the topic of the day is. They can justify their entertainment reading as also being educational and therefore worthwhile.
     
    Don’t let it get to you. If you’re writing for entertainment, then do that. You don’t have to be Tom Clancy.

    Reply
  4. Yvonne Anderson says:
    February 14, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    Sounds to me like the dear lady simply prefers nonfiction. I wouldn’t sweat it. Just write what the Lord leads you to write and realize not everyone’s going to like it.

    Reply
    • Kristen says:
      February 15, 2012 at 12:26 pm

      I agree. 

      Reply
  5. E. Stephen Burnett says:
    February 14, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Should this be one of my objectives as a writer? Should my stories teach something? If so, what?

    Yes. For the Christian, I’m very sure they should.

    But, there’s more than one way to learn. If your grandmother, or anyone else, picks up fiction expected to be taught things propositionally, in a nonfiction way, he or she will very likely not learn anything. How come? They’re not open to learning in a way that only fiction, and not nonfiction, can teach.

    The same would be true if a Christian were to read Romans, and then Psalms, while expecting Psalms to be just like Romans. I’m quite sure that is why so many of the Psalms, especially the imprecatory ones, confuse people. They expect systematic theology, more nonfiction like Romans, and get something entirely different (see also figure B: Jesus’ parables, and figure C: Song of Solomon).

    Perhaps your grandmother, as Yvonne said, is simply not a “fiction person”? In that case, she would either need to want to learn fiction’s “rules,” how to read fiction — just like someone would need to learn to read or even to listen to music. Otherwise, it may be that she’s simply not able to comprehend or enjoy fiction, and will in the New Earth.

    Or, I must ask with some bias, I wonder if she’d like a novel with an older protagonist …

    Reply
    • Kaci Hill says:
      February 15, 2012 at 11:20 am

      Yes. For the Christian, I’m very sure they should.

       
      Really? My first thought is “What lets non-Christians off the hook?” And my second is, why can’t some things just be for fun? I got nothing out of Finding Nemo and Nancy Drew but a good time.  I’ve read more than one good book that, honestly, was below my reading level and just fun. Most YA, for me, is like that (and the exceptions are truly cross-overs, as far as the age break goes). 

      To quote the Joker, “Why so serious?”

      Reply
      • Fred Warren says:
        February 15, 2012 at 12:22 pm

         I got nothing out of Finding Nemo and Nancy Drew but a good time.

        C’mon, Kaci, they were entertaining and highly educational:

        Finding Nemo: “Fish are friends, not food.”

        Nancy Drew: Smart girls are cool, and 1ND = 2HB.

        Reply
        • Kaci Hill says:
          February 15, 2012 at 2:15 pm

          The students over here are going to start wondering what I’m snickering at. 0=)
           
          Then, they all think I’m clinically insane anyway. Bwahaha.

          Reply
  6. Lelia Rose Foreman (@LeliaForeman) says:
    February 14, 2012 at 2:01 pm

    *snicker* I have good friends who have told me they can’t stand science-fiction, ergo, my books are similarly trash. One niece who critiqued a book said it was her version of hell. LOL. And I can’t dance or sing either. Even one of my babies told me to not sing when I would sing lullabies to him. Sheesh. Nope, we’ll not please everybody.

    Reply
  7. Stuart says:
    February 14, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    I don’t think fiction is necessarily there to teach people facts and figures. But I do think that for fiction to really strike home with a person they should learn something about themselves while they are being entertained. Stories should present questions for the readers to ponder and mull over, but not necessarily give them the author’s answer to that question. Instead I would hope the reader would take those questions and search out answers on their own, thus learning about themselves in the process.

    While you won’t get every reader who catches onto the questions, I think it’s the best way to “teach” without “preaching”.

    Reply
  8. John Otte says:
    February 15, 2012 at 1:48 am

    You know, I’m not sure that you always do have to “learn something” when you read. Sometimes the journey through the story, whatever and wherever it may be, is the point and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

    Reply
  9. Fred Warren says:
    February 15, 2012 at 10:36 am

    While I wasn’t fishing for a pat on the back and a cookie, thanks for the supportive comments. I think it’s good for me to get a reality check once in a while–it keeps me from getting complacent and stirs me to thinking a little more deeply about what exactly I’m putting on the page, and why.

    I agree that stories should on some level leave the reader knowing or at least pondering something they hadn’t before, and it’s not mutually exclusive of entertainment. There’s obviously a balance point somewhere between meaningless fluff and Afterschool Special.

    Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

  • Scary Title Alert: The Discipline Of Reading FictionScary Title Alert: The Discipline Of Reading Fiction
  • The Parable Of The PlatypusThe Parable Of The Platypus
  • SoliloquySoliloquy
  • You Write Like A GirlYou Write Like A Girl
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven


Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.