Zachary D. Totah—Zac to his friends—is the newest Spec Faith contributor. His articles will appear every Tuesday, starting tomorrow. In order for our visitors to get to know Zac some, we put together an interview.

RM: Zac, tell us a little bit about your background—where you grew up, your family, what’s your day job, if you have one.

ZDT: I’ve lived in Colorado my entire life, mainly in Parker, a suburb of Denver. We’re in a neighborhood, but everyone has around three acres of land and the roads aren’t paved, so friends have joked we live in the middle of nowhere. Even though we’re only five minutes from “civilization.”

I’m the oldest of four kids (a sister and two brothers). My parents homeschooled us all the way through, and my sister and I have graduated. My siblings and I love to play sports, and my sister, second-youngest brother, and I are in a D3 hockey league. Everyone is a huge sci-fi and fantasy fan, and we love books and movies. Traveling was a big part of life for a number of years. Vacations ranged from Lake Louise and Banff in Canada to New England to Florida.

My day job is writing . . . sorta. I don’t get paid for it, but I spend a lot of time on stories and blogging. I’m earning a Communications degree through an online program, so that takes up a big chunk of time.

RM: Ah, growing up in Colorado! 😉 (Yes, that’s where I was born. My family still has some mountain property there.) How great that you enjoyed speculative fiction with your family. I can see why you’ve chosen the genre for your own writing. But Christian? Tell us about your faith journey. Did you grow up going to church?

ZDT: Both my parents are Christians, so I grew up going to church and hearing about God and Jesus. In my younger years, it was more of a distant thing. I made profession of faith when I was sixteen, but it’s only been in the past four years, after coming out of a legalistic environment, that I’ve come to appreciate the comfort of the Gospel and the importance of right doctrine.

RM: Praise God you came out of the legalistic environment with your faith intact. A lot of people don’t. But turning a page, what one thing would people be surprised to learn about you?

ZDT: Only one? Well . . . I like shopping. For books, obviously, but also for clothes. Which mainly consists of admiring all the things I want to buy and knowing I don’t have the money for it.

RM: I can relate! About the books and the admiring things I don’t have money to buy. But since you mentioned books, describe your journey as a novelist. What got you started writing, who influenced you, what are your aspirations?

ZDT: I actually wrote a blog post that partially answers this—and includes parallels to Lord of the Rings. As writers go, I was a late bloomer. I didn’t take any interest in writing until I was seventeen, when one day an idea popped into my head and I decided to turn it into a story. Haven’t looked back since. A couple early influences were Tolkien and Lewis. I know, standard answer. Seriously, though, they are amazing. More recently, I’ve been blown away by Brandon Sanderson. I want to write like him when I grow up. 😉

In terms of teaching influences, Jeff Gerke is probably at the top. I’ve read most of his craft books, and I’ve had the privilege of meeting him in person, twice at Realm Makers and twice for lunch—since we live only an hour apart.

Of course winning awards and making a living off my books would be great, but for me, the main ambition is to share the joy of stories with others. My goal with storytelling is to connect with people on a meaningful level by telling stories infused with imagination that shed light on truths such as redemption, sacrifice, and loyalty in a way that’s compelling and inspiring.

RM: No doubt about it: Lewis and Tolkien influenced a lot of us. But I wouldn’t call you a late bloomer. I mean, I didn’t start writing fiction until I was well into adulthood. I’d been teaching for nearly twenty years. I guess that’s the great thing about writing: no age limit!

We’ve already touched on this, but why don’t you expand some: why do you write speculative fiction instead of contemporary or historical or suspense or whatever else you might have chosen?

ZDT: Honestly, I can’t put a finger on exactly why I got started writing spec-fic. Again, books I’d read when I was younger played a part, but it’s only been more recently that I’ve figured out I love the sense of being transported. My tagline is Imagine, Dream, Explore, a condensed version of imagine the impossible, dream the unbelievable, and explore the uncharted. That sense of transportation to another planet or world, the thrill of knowing anything is possible, is the heart of spec-fic to me and I can’t get enough.

RM: Wow! I’d like to bottle that answer. Awesome tagline, especially the expanded version. And to be honest, I can’t get enough either, particularly of fantasy. And particularly of a specific kind of fantasy. So what is your favorite speculative novel of all time (Christian or secular) and why is that your favorite?

ZDT: Oh dear. That’s like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. If I had to pick one, I’d go with Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. It’s incredible on many levels. Diverse characters, awesome magic systems, fascinating cultures, cool settings, imaginative creatures, complex plot lines, portents of world-changing doom, intense battles, court intrigue, philosophical musings, probing themes, mysteries and surprises aplenty. Everything epic fantasy should be. So. Much. Yes.

RM: OK, OK, I’m sold! I’m checking out Words of Radiance as soon as possible! But you’ve written epic fantasy, too. Tell us a little about The Skyriders Series.

ZDT: This is actually the fourth series I’ve written, but it’s the first one I feel was decent from the get-go. It’s a cross between Sword & Sorcery and High Fantasy. Four books total, though I’ve only completed the first two and they still need loads of editing (doesn’t everything?). The main feature is a worldbuilding one. A perpetual layer of cloud exists and is like the surface of the ocean. Below is a typical fantasy world, with the Nine Kingdoms of Kadriath playing the central role. Above, however, are mountain peaks and stone formations that poke through the clouds like islands, where another world exists. The two worlds have legends and tales of the other (as well as a complex history) and end up meeting and clashing.

The two main characters in the series are Alya, a princess outcast from Kadriath, and Elior, a Skyrider from the Sky Realm, called Azurin.

The first book is mainly Elior’s story, as he tries to stop a Skyrider from destroying the order while working to overcome fears and doubts stemming from his past. I’m reworking it slightly so it ties more directly into the second book.

The second book expands significantly and follows both the Nine Kingdoms, which the Skyriders call the Underland, and Azurin, primarily through the two points of view, Alya and Elior as they try to prevent an enemy army from conquering the world at the bidding of their gods.

The details for books three and four are still shady. What I have so far is that the third book builds on the outcome of the second book, and likewise the fourth book builds on the third, and to some extent the second. Some characters become more important, there’s a search for a Skyrider artifact called the Lifestone, catastrophes loom, and Alya and Elior sail a turbulent sea that tests them mentally, physically, and emotionally.

RM: What an intriguing world! I know this is a series I’m going to enjoy. But what, if anything, about your work is distinctly Christian?

ZDT: In my fantasy worlds, I’ve always included some notion of God. It’s not obvious every time and sometimes doesn’t directly impact the main characters. I’ve noticed I tend to write redemptive or sacrificial themes as well. And sometimes there aren’t any Christian elements, veiled or otherwise. It depends on the story.

RM: So I take it you’re not aiming exclusively to be published by a traditional Christian publisher. Fill us in about what you’re working on now.

ZDT: I put editing the first book in the Skyriders Series on hold so I could focus on school, but I’d like to get back to it soon. In the meantime, I just started posting installments of a novella called The Time That Was Not on my blog. I recently wrote a flash fiction story for Splickety Magazine’s Havok imprint that didn’t make the cut, so I’m deciding whether I’ll tweak it and submit somewhere else or post it on my blog.

I have a couple ideas simmering that might turn into short stories or novellas. And I’ve considered writing flash fiction for each edition of my soon-to-launch newsletter. In short, too many ideas and not enough time.

The ultimate goal is to publish my novels. If I can find homes for some of my shorter works, that would be great, but I also like the idea of putting them on my blog or in my newsletter—because who doesn’t love free stuff?

RM: Interesting. I recently read an article about content marketing which addresses that very idea. With all the “too much to write and not enough time, what makes writing a challenge? A joy?

ZDT: The challenges: Finding the time to write. Dealing with doubts and wondering if my efforts are in vain. Putting to death my perfectionism so I can actually move forward instead of obsessing over every little detail. Procrastination. EDITING.

On the positive side, I love crafting plots and creating characters and worlds. Writing is a great outlet for my creativity. Coming up with ideas is also addicting. It’s also cool to look back over something I’ve written and think, “Wow, I actually like this.” At the top of the list is the ability to share stories with people. Having people read and enjoy what I’ve written is the best reward.

RM: I suspect you’re going to experience a lot of that reward here at Spec Faith, Zac. But let’s not limit them to this venue. How can visitors find and follow you elsewhere on the web?

ZDT: Um, hop in a TARDIS?

Kidding aside, I’m most active on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, and I’m also on Instagram and Goodreads. Of course, I’d love to have more visitors to my website. If you’re into sci-fi or fantasy, I think you’d enjoy my posts.

RM: I couldn’t agree more. Thanks so much for sharing with us, Zac.

Tuesday’s post on weak construction in fiction writing peels back the veil a little to give you a peek at exactly how mundane a writer’s job can be. The incredible thing, though, is how much those little details—words, and syntax, and things—affect the people and the worlds we meet on the page of a finished story.

Sort of like how, right now, millions of tiny little proteins and neurons and things are at work in your cells, and they’re all making up the you I had coffee with last week.

God is a master artisan, that much is obvious. Writers are just blundering along in his footsteps.

But this isn’t a website for writers. It’s a website for readers. How does all this apply to you?

Let me tell you a story

Once upon a time, publishing was controlled by gatekeepers. (Not as cool as the gatekeeper who guards the Bifrost in Thor, I’m sorry to say.) A relatively small group of people controlled printing presses and distribution, and more importantly money, and so they decided whose work got into print and whose didn’t.

This got us a mixed bag of results. On the one hand, gatekeepers do ensure a measure of quality. On the other hand, not much Christian speculative fiction got published (because who would ever buy that?)

Then along came the Internet, social media, Kindle, print-on-demand, etc., and the old world was just pretty much blown to smithereens overnight. I mean, it’s still there. But nobody has to pay attention to it anymore.

But here’s the thing about this new world we’re living in, boys and girls: we have met the gatekeepers, and they are us.

Which might imply a level of responsibility.

You have the power

(I was going to write “you have power,” but “you have the power” sounds way cooler for some reason.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe quality should matter when it comes to the books we read. There’s a tendency in Christian circles (I know it’s been discussed here many times) to give anything a pass as long as it “preaches the gospel” in some way, never mind whether it’s “good fiction” or not. Who needs resonance, and poetry, and profound characterization, and all that rot? Just give us a sermon and package it up like a story so we can fool our neighbors into listening to it.

(I contend it’s not usually our neighbors reading that stuff anyway, but I digress.)

I’m not actually calling on you here to start dissing poorly written fiction. Actually, the best thing to do with poor writing is ignore it. But when you find something really good? When you come across a writer whose prose sings? Whose characters live? Whose stories make you ask questions and shake yourself and walk around with a stutter for three days because you’re trying to process it all?

Tell somebody. Share a review. You have no idea the power of an Amazon review to help a book get traction. Yes, buy a book and give it to your neighbor. (They might actually read it.) Thank the author for taking the time really write.

Don’t become critical. But become a critic. Think about what you read. Take time to appreciate cadence and word choice and the beauty of sentences.

I quoted Annie Dillard on Tuesday, saying that to become a writer you have to love sentences. But I think a lot of readers love them too.

So spread the love.

Here’s looking at you

Of course I can’t leave this blog behind without practicing what I preach. So here’s to you, Jeffrey Overstreet, George Bryan Polivka, Anne Elisabeth Stengl, Stephen R. Lawhead, Tracy Groot, Patrick W. Carr, Marc Schooley, Lars Walker, Andrew Peterson, and a lot more of you. Some of you are writing a lot, and some of you I haven’t seen around in a while. But thanks for your love of sentences and your attention to words. I hope we’ll see more from you soon.

From Story Evangelism: Top Myths About Christian Novels, E. Stephen Burnett:

The first myth may be that Christian stories spend all or most of their time John 3:16-ing the reader. No, they don’t.

Evidence? I think we agree that Frank Peretti’s novels—the angels-and-demons-and-men kind—are awesome. That’s not because those stories do not include the gospel preached. Of course they do. But in the Perettiverse the gospel is 100 percent assumed. God is real. Jesus lived, died, and resurrected. Angels are real. Demons are real and can get you.

The entire story is “evangelizing” you by presuming this is the state of reality.

In my reading experience, it’s not the content that matters but the presentation.

The laws of storytelling, while malleable and subjective to a certain extent, are in their essence neither arbitrary nor inconsequential.

One of those laws is that character action must be realistically motivated. Convincing character motivation can elevate even the most banal content to greatness (think of Gladiator or John Wick — simple revenge tales with the power to move us), and, as has been proven repeatedly by the Kendrick Brothers and others, even the most spectacular and poignant story in history — the gospel — can easily be stripped of its luster if characters approach it in unrealistic ways.

In other words, it’s not the Conversion Scene™ or the Relevant Cultural Commentary™ that make a novel stilted; it’s the presumption on the part of a writer that such content carries automatic significance in the minds of readers. It’s the belief that the gospel — or some Biblical Principle™ — is powerful enough to melt hearts and change minds all on its own, that all one need do is present it to readers.

But this is the logic of preaching, not of storytelling. Stories are full of supposedly-real people, and real people rarely identify truth through intuition.

You mentioned Peretti’s Darkness novels as examples of well-integrated spirituality — of “message-grade” content that doesn’t feel shoehorned in as a prop for a rickety plot. This is true. Though Peretti doesn’t always manage to pull it off without flaw, he’s certainly one of the most effective contemporary practitioners of the properly-motivated “Christian” spec-fic message-novel.

The example I’ll cite comes from The Oath, one of his standout works (spoilers follow). The story takes place in a remote Northwest logging town (what with Peretti’s popularity, I’m surprised anyone still visits my region of the country) haunted by a vengeful dragon. Yes, dragon. Breathes fire and everything. Our heroes are outsiders who arrive to hunt the thing, but eventually fall under its power. You see, the dragon is a personification of sin. And when our heroes end up fornicating together, they relinquish their spiritual immunity. And then the hunters become the hunted and yes, if this sounds very much like an allegory it’s because that’s exactly what it is. (Confession time: I secretly love allegories.) And then there’s a desperate conversion scene heading into the final furious confrontation.

The content seems cheesy, no? But it’s not. And the difference is in the telling. The characters act naturally. When they sin, it seems only natural. When they repent, it’s because they’re terrified of their sin’s consequences. The Conversion Scene™, far from feeling obligatory, is an essential plot element without which the whole story would collapse. It’s only in there ’cause it’s motivated.

(Note: it’s not necessarily the novel’s fault that fornication, being super-stigmafied in Christian culture, doesn’t exactly catch the reader by surprise as an in-world strategic misstep. What *The Oath* lacks in subtlety it kinda makes up for with symbolic clarity. But I certainly would’ve preferred that a less-obvious sin necessitate our hero’s repentance — something like idolatry or covetousness or false witness.)

For another exemplary exhibit, let’s return to the well. In The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo the Ringbearer — who’s been assaulted day and night by the lure of the Ring of Power — at last stands before the Crack of Doom, what happens? He falls. He cracks beneath the strain, caving in to temptation, and Middle-earth is saved in that moment only through the providential intervention of another ringbearer in thrall to sin.

I contend that this is not only the highest and best drama of Tolkien’s legendarium, but the make-or-break moment that determines the realism of the entire plot. If Frodo hadn’t been revealed to be fallible, the story would’ve been about his cardboard endurance, his flawless heroism, his unreal perfection. He would’ve morphed from a living character under the influence of real pain and temptation, into a plot device intended to exhibit a lesson. By breaking Frodo, by marring his “usefulness,” Tolkien erases the moral gap between character and reader. Only then do Frodo’s prior struggles against sin take on the fullness of the real world.

The point I’m making is this: content alone determines nothing. A gospel presentation or a conversion experience does not a good story make. Nor does it necessarily transform a story into mere propaganda. What makes the difference is character motivation. Do the characters act like recognizably real people? Or does the writer have such little faith in his own beliefs about God or morality that he feels it necessary to alter human nature itself in order to showcase said beliefs to an audience?

And now we arrive at the heart of the matter.

Isn’t the essential power of the gospel found in the fact that it works in the real world? The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). It doesn’t require ideal people or picture-perfect circumstances or cringeworthy accommodation. We Christians don’t believe in a message that can’t survive exposure to reality; the gospel is the ultimate acknowledgement of reality — the exultant revelation of the world’s most painful secret (that we humans, left to our own devices, are lost and depraved) and its deepest magic (that God in His grace has intervened to save us).

As Tim Keller writes in Every Good Endeavor:

The gospel worldview equips the artist, as it does the journalist, for a unique combination of optimism and realism about life. The gospel is more globally pessimistic about human nature than virtually any other view of things. There is no one class or group of people responsible for the world’s situation; we all are responsible. Each of us is capable of the worst kind of evil, and there is nothing we can do to change ourselves, or even see ourselves in our true light, without God’s help. And yet, on the basis of God’s salvation in Christ, the gospel allows us to be at the same time deeply optimistic, envisioning not simply heaven but a perfectly renewed material creation. So artists shaped by the gospel cannot be characterized either by sentimentality or bitter hopelessness.

It’s no coincidence that all the best “Christian” speculative fiction I’ve read features well-motivated characters recognizable as human beings. Since Christianity itself begins with a realistic appraisal of human nature, it ought never be said of a “Christian” story that it distorts human nature as we know it. Whether we set our stories here on Earth or in a realm long ago and far away, whether we aim to evangelize our readers or just tell a rippin’ good yarn, we Christians must embrace reality, not flee from it. After all, reality’s what supports the gospel, the greatest story ever told.

(I’m continuing my theme of movie quote article titles)

One of the most riveting scenes in The Matrix, aside from the gravity-defying bullet ballet that is still cooler than pretty much anything released in the 15+ years since, is Agent Smith’s sit-down with Morpheus.

In his condescending monotone voice, he says, “I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague, and we…are the cure.”

At first I bristled to hear a fictitious movie character malign my species this way, but the notion wormed itself into my brain and hasn’t let go since. Of course I do not agree – human beings are God’s masterpiece, and He sent His Son to die for their sins. Yet the analogy is uncomfortably accurate. Human beings do behave as a virus according to this description, though the fallacy lies in equating mankind’s worth with that of a virus, a creature that is usually scorned.

Yet when we turn on the news and see report after report of inhuman horrors happening across the globe, it’s hard not to think that Agent Smith might have a point. Science fiction is packed with stories of leaders/aliens/robots/whatever trying to subdue humanity’s baser urges and make them docile, compliant, and soulless. Sometimes I wonder if that might not be a better option; drones don’t kill each other in the streets.

But then I remember the truth. Humanity is fallen and cannot redeem itself. Sin is part of our very essence, but it is this darkness that drew the Light to Earth. And despite what the news media blares in our faces 24/7, there are far more acts of kindness and decency every day than terrible ones, and they are done by people of all faiths and creeds.

Human beings are not a cancer; the sin inside our hearts is the cancer. The cure is not control, subjugation, drugs, or harvesting. The cure is believing in Jesus Christ’s death as full payment for our sins and in His resurrection as our hope for the future. I’ll take that over the Matrix any day.

 

Author and former SpecFaith contributor Rachel Starr Thomson returns to showcase an excerpt from 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing. The new book–by authors C.S. Lakin, Linda S. Clare, Christy Distler, Robin Patchen, and Thomson–features more than 60 detailed before and after examples of flawed and corrected passages to help authors learn to spot flaws in their writing.

This Friday, Rachel returns to explore how fans and readers can best study the art of good writing.

Fatal Flaw of Fiction Writing #3: Weak Construction

Annie Dillard wrote that one who wants to be a writer should like sentences. In reality, I think, most of us write because we have stories to tell, but the love of words (and sentences, and paragraphs) must come into play, or else we would all be making movies instead of writing books.

Along the way we learn that not every sentence is created equal. That our words and how we string them together will give life to the stories we tell or drain them dry.

Fortunately, while natural talent and a good ear certainly help, good sentence writing is not some mystical skill that only the most devoted Jedi will ever attain. This fatal flaw is all about weak sentence construction—or, more specifically, how to avoid it.

To Be Inging, There Was Passive Vagueness

Okay, that nonsense subhead was fun to write. I admit it. Let’s watch its parts in action:

Before:

The ramshackle mansion was being built on a hilltop. In the trees birds were singing and the leaves were rustling under a sky that was sunny and clouds that were puffy and white. Nails were hammered sharply into boards while bricks were laid. It was a beautiful, pristine day. The work was coming along. Filling the air, the sounds of construction were encouraging. Laying aside his tool, he knew the workers were waiting for him.

After:

Garth stood on the hilltop, arms folded, gazing on the workers and the ramshackle mansion rising at their hands. The striking, churning, buzzing sounds of construction drowned out the songs of birds in the trees. Dark-skinned slaves hammered nails into boards and laid bricks one by one as the sun shone down on them from a pristine blue sky.

He set aside his hammer, encouraged by their progress. The workers awaited him.

The main problems of the Before paragraph can be broken down as follows:

• Overuse of “be” verbs (be, being, been, is, am, are, was, and were)
• Overuse of the past progressive (aka past continuous) tense—the “ing” verbs
• Overuse of the passive voice
• Vague descriptors

I use the word overuse when addressing these problems because “be” verbs, past progressive, and passive voice all have their place in our writing. Artists will use all shades, not only primary colors. But overuse—or just plain bad use—of any of these is death on vivid storytelling.

To Be or Not To Be

The eight forms of the verb “be”—otherwise known as state-of-being verbs—are useful, necessary little words without which English would hardly function. It’s a great mistake to try to excise them from our writing completely. (And contrary to legend, the use of a “be” verb does not automatically constitute passive voice.)

In storytelling, however, the state-of-being verbs can be a problem because they do just that: they state being. They do not show action. They do not move, act, or describe. They are just there. And nine times out of ten, they can be replaced by a stronger verb.

So rather than “She was at home,” you might try “She waited at home,” or “She stayed at home,” or “She twiddled her thumbs at home, wishing with all her might that she were somewhere else.” A “sky that was sunny” becomes “a sunny sky,” and “clouds that were puffy” become “puffy clouds.” “There was a man on the hill” becomes “A man stood on the hill.” Word count drops, rhythm improves, and images grow vivid.

The “be” verbs also act as helpers for past progressive verbs. Rather than simply stating that an action happened, a past progressive (or past continuous) verb traces its action—it shows that is “is happening.” So in the Before paragraph we see “was being,” “were singing,” “were rustling,” “was coming,” “were encouraging, “were waiting.”

At times you may want to stress the continuation of an action. In that case past progressive is fine. But normally, the simple past form of the verb will be more effective: sang, rustled, came, encouraged, waited. “Was being” is completely replaced by wording that shows the mansion being built.

The forms of “be” show up again in the use of passive voice. This is actually the biggest problem with the Before paragraph, far outweighing the others. Reading it, you might wonder, “Who the heck are these people? There’s no one in this scene!”

The mansion might be raised by phantoms for all we can see.

The ramshackle mansion was being built . . . by whom? Nails were hammered sharply into boards . . . by whom? Bricks were laid . . . by whom? Who was encouraged by the sounds of construction? Who lays aside his hammer? There isn’t a single actor in the whole paragraph; instead, every noun is acted upon. That is the difference between passive and active voice.

Passive Voice Does Have a Place

Even passive voice has its place in fiction. But active voice acts, and that makes it by far the stronger mode of construction. The After passage has people doing real things.

Which brings us, finally, to the problem of vagueness. Passive voice and state-of-being verbs contribute to making a scene vague. So does past progressive tense with its tendency to suggest that nothing is ever really finished or going anywhere definite.

The more general the wording, the less vivid it will be. The more concrete and specific, the more vivid. Specifics make a movie out of mud. In the After passage, therefore, we have Garth, a man with a name; we have dark-skinned slaves, a hammer, sounds that are not just “sounds of construction” but that buzz, scrape, churn, strike, and drown out other sounds.

Strong verbs, active voice, and concrete nouns and modifiers all make for scenes that move, are vivid, and create stories out of sentences and invite us in.

G. K. Chesterton, one of the important influences on C. S. Lewis, oozed opinion on any number of subjects, not the least of which was stories, particularly fairy tales. His contention was that “modern fiction” colored the world with gray.

Modern literature takes insanity as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of insanity. A lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite serious; that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is a piece of glass is to himself as dull as a piece of glass. A man who thinks he is a chicken is to himself as common as a chicken. It is only sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity. Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary and the tale extraordinary. But you have made the hero extraordinary and the tale ordinary—so ordinary—oh, so very ordinary. (from Tremendous Trifles)

After the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris this past week, we might think that modern fiction has it right: the world is gray, until it turns black. And what’s so bad with gray? Ordinary doesn’t sound so bad.

But Chesterton saw in speculative fiction something greater: in “fairy tales” hope ascends.

For the devils, alas, we have always believed in. The hopeful element in the universe has in modern times continually been denied and reasserted; but the hopeless element has never for a moment been denied…. The greatest of purely modern poets summed up the really modern attitude in that fine Agnostic line—“There may be Heaven; there must be Hell.”

The gloomy view of the universe has been a continuous tradition; and the new types of spiritual investigation or conjecture all begin by being gloomy. A little while ago men believed in no spirits. Now they are beginning rather slowly to believe in rather slow spirits. (from Tremendous Trifles)

I find Chesterton’s perception of “modern fiction”—stories written in a realistic style nearly a hundred years ago—eerily similar to stories written in a realistic style today. When the imagination is separated from spiritual reality, it seems to stall on the bleak and the horrible.

Any number of stories illustrate this, none less so than The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a post-apocalyptic novel (released in 2006 and made into a movie in 2009) about survival in which the protagonists determine they are the good guys. When the boy’s father dies, his hope then hinges on his father’s statement that after his death, his son can pray to him, and on the idea that the people he joins are also good guys.

Survive. Try to be a good guy. And die.

Those facts fit with what we know. Life is … not as exciting as we wish, and more horrible than we can bear. In short, the consequences of our actions and choices are more dire than we expect. Then, awaiting at the end is … the end.

In contrast, the Christian sees beyond the here and now. Because of our Biblical worldview we understand that spiritual realities (the eternal) are more real than physical realities (the finite and temporal). The here and now is the prelude, not the main act, and most definitely not the final act.

When we grasp spiritual realities, whatever happens in space and time takes on a different characteristic because with it comes Promise. And Hope. The life we live is abundant life!

The one point I disagree with Chesterton about when it comes to story is his view of the protagonist of a fairy tale:

Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos. (from Tremendous Trifles)

As I see it, a Biblical worldview says the soul is “sick and screaming,” but the world also has gone mad and at its best appears dull.

So the problem a fantasy deals with is this: what does a soul, sick and screaming, do in a world gone mad? Certainly painting it in those terms, such a story does not appear to traffic in hope.

But I suggest the solution to the problem offers the truest hope—such a soul can do noting to right the world. He must trust in Someone greater than himself.

The idea that the soul is healthy, I think, is perhaps the cruelest of concepts, one that leaves the reader, knowing himself to be less than whole, not only wanting but isolated, since he concludes that he alone is not healthy.

As I see it, then, there are two kinds of stories that lead to hopelessness—ones that are realistic about the physical world but not about the spiritual, and ones that falsely infuse hope by suggesting a person can become a healthy soul of his own accord, or that society, by working together, can achieve the dream.

In a world that feels increasingly unsafe, a speculative writer has the awesome task of painting the picture of spiritual victory and eternal safety. False promises won’t do. Speculative fiction needs to infuse readers with the truth about the here and now but also about the hereafter.

What books do you think successfully confront the truths of this world in light of God’s eternal truth?

Minus some revision, this article first appeared here in September 2011.