Hoo-ahhh. Men apparently run the media, film, advertising, and comic-book industries. Men made Disney stop making movies with princess in their titles, even if the princess is from Mars. In science fiction and fantasy, men seem dominant. (Most notable exception: Christian fiction readers?)

I say this not to chest-thump, but because in this series, women face discrimination. Only one column discussed female caricatures. This is my second about male ones.

Intermittent inequalities like that may be inevitable. Men and women are different but equal, whether equal in their rebellion against God (Rom 3:23), or equal in their status as His adopted children (Rom. 8: 15-16).

Thanks for the coffee, yeoman.

Thus, in one era, women may be victims to over-veneration or else stereotyping, such as the infamous gals of the original Star Trek series. (Miniskirts! In space!)

Whereas in another era, people may get sick of it and decide it’s payback time. Now all our TV shows will be very original and stereotype men! (However, the first few Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes actually tried to put men in miniskirts. In space.)

Eventually, no matter which stereotypes each gender receives, either in nonfiction or in fiction, things even out. That’s no cause for stepping back and not rebutting stereotypes, but it’s also reassuring. So long as storytellers are writing about realistic people, with all their potentials, positives, and negatives, and not merely trying to build a new character machine that’s improved on an old model, more stories will have depth.

Still, many readers have personal gripes with caricatured males in fiction, a very diverse assortment of them — from the bumbling sitcom dad, to the evil business industrialist, to the bumbling and evil talk-radio host. On these we cannot now speak in detail. So let’s focus more on tropes with testosterone, or without it, in fantasy and sci-fi:

Stock males

These guys stand around and aren’t very effective. They may be extras, or soldiers, or evil henchmen — has anyone ever employed evil henchwomen, after all? (But oddly enough, my evidently progressive word processor believes henchwomen is a word.)

Perhaps we shouldn’t nitpick on these bulk-ordered blokes, though. Perhaps every story can’t make every single male character into a fleshed-out, four-dimensional human. But if we tried to find a male equivalent to the stock-female character who exists mainly to be eye candy, I think this would be it.

Examples: Video-game mini-bosses; armies recruited from villages; stormtroopers.

Gender-neutrals

Captain Jack Sparrow: (grimacing) “You’re not a eunuch, are you?”

If the speculative thing doesn't work out, I can always turn to the Dark Side.

Without getting into that whole homosexuality issue, this male character is, from what I’ve read, prevalent in other fiction genres. He’s a man who behaves like a woman — or at least doesn’t directly show many characteristics, perhaps less-popular ones, intrinsic to men. He’s the kind of guy who stands on the cover of a prairie romance novel, in the background, looking just as forlorn as the main female character in the foreground. He’s an emotional guy. (Not gay!) Or he might be burying the pain of his past and need to find someone who can help him, perhaps a woman of like mind. (But not gay!)

However, I’ve also seen him in speculative novels. A prime example: The Guy Who Never Notices Women’s Bodies Below Their Necks. I’m not talking about rubbing-our-faces-in-it-to-be-Gritty lust descriptions here; rather, I’m talking about mentions of even Godly attraction, even to one’s own wife. Some speculative novels avoid this like Andorian plague. I’m looking at you, Left Behind series (which I otherwise still like).

This male caricature’s closest match might be the action-hero warrior woman I used to “kick off” (har!) this series. While that is a man in a woman’s body, this is the reverse.

Examples: Buck Williams, from the Left Behind series; that guy from the novel I won’t name who entered a parallel-world version of the Playboy Mansion but was apparently not tempted by what he saw (in fairness, this could have been publisher constraints).

Bad boys

This one could result in a whole column on his own. Conversely, I’m not sure I even need to say much more beyond the label and a few examples. What is it about bad-boy characters that appeals to readers or viewers so much — especially women?

Examples:

• Tony Stark / Iron Man. Stan Lee was stunned at response to this “bad boy” hero. “Of all the comic books we published at Marvel, we got more fan mail for Iron Man from women, from females, than any other title,” he said. (Source.)
• Edward Cullen. Need I say more? Insert mocking “squee! he wants to suck my blood but stops himself because he loves me so much; how romantic!” comment.
• Richard Maxwell. Does anyone remember him? He was one of the less-frequent but most popular characters on the Christian radio drama Adventures in Odyssey, a teen hacker and henchman who eventually repented and sought forgiveness.

Closest feminine equivalent: the wily and seemingly “innocent” villain’s girlfriend, such as Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series (who was herself preceded by vixens from older Batman comics and the 1960s TV series), who sometimes really wants to help the Caped Crusader, but inevitably returns to the villain’s side.

I wonder if some of the appeal of “bad boy” characters is not only a reaction against gender-neutral males, in stories or in reality, but a twisted attempt to imitate the ultimate God-Man Who is both loving and nurturing, and just and wrathful.

Men-children

Though I don’t see these often in speculative stories, I include them here as a caution: there’s a chance that men-children may be in the audience of such stories. Yes, many people exaggerate the stereotype of slackers in their parents’ basements, who play their video games and accomplish little in their non-virtual lives. But they do exist. I’ve met them. I also can’t laugh very hard at the internet comics that either mock or bewail their existence. Yet I wonder: what if such a man-child was pulled into a real fantasy world? (Dibs.)

Feminine equivalent: Is there one? If there is, should I even say that word on radio?

Examples: Any “man” in a raunchy “comedy” film with a title in big red “funny” letters.

The Übermensch

As more Christian men and women, in particular, wake up to the irritants of feminism-influenced characters, we will likely see more of these in our fiction: the ultimate man, a faith-based superman. He may have flaws, but eventually defeats evil, lives radically, recycles the money he spends on his little girl’s heart medication so he can donate more to world missions — from the cardboard box where he lives — and daily saves the day.

Last week, I quoted from a Christian movie in which a character could be seen as acting like this. But maybe we do need a few stories like this, before things begin to level off?

The Überwomensch would be the ultimate-homemaker or power-girl single woman.

Examples: Some guys from the above-mentioned movie (possibly!); potential future Christian fiction.

Prophesied Heroes™ (part 2)

I must mention this one for this reason: this is probably the most prevalent male caricature in Christian science fiction and fantasy. My definition, from last week:

A poor young man, likely orphaned, who according to ancient prophecy must defeat evil and fulfill Destiny.

For that, we can likely thank John Carter (initials, anyone?); Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy from Narnia; and the Harry Potter series. The first started the modern fantasy/sci-fi genre. The second, though, is more influential for Christians, and particularly inspired the “youth from our world/with humble beginnings who is really a king/queen” idea.

Now I must nitpick my original nitpick. I don’t want to see these characters go away. Why not? Because they’re all based ultimately on Jesus, the real youth from our world, but really another, Who had humble beginnings but was truly the prophesied King. Do I want to see His image scoffed at as only a trope? Or for storytellers to be so “original” that they make heroes out of superior men who never had humble beginnings? No way.

At the same time, in some of the Christian speculative novels I’ve read, even newer ones, I keep finding heroes with whom I can’t identify. I can’t easily come alongside the human hero to see myself — as a longtime Christian and attempting “hero” in this world — as his “brother.” Instead I keep finding another man I want to parent.

When will he come to true faith? Doesn’t he get that this world’s version of God wants him to fulfill prophecy? In a world like this, why wouldn’t he want to go fight and be awesome!

Again, please don’t misunderstand: I don’t want these characters gone. Given the power, I would not institute any affirmative-action program that would lock humble-farmboys-destined-for-greatness out of fiction. I do think, however, we could use some diversity.

Yet I’m convinced this resolution lies not in steroid shots to characters, or extra caffeine in authors, but in authors’ personal growth in Christ — going beyond nonfiction tropes into deeper doctrine magic, applied to real life. That will ultimately make real men in our stories — men who may sometimes do nothing, struggle or have emotional needs, act like “bad boys,” act like children, or make choices and Fulfill their Destinies.

Next week: final series thoughts. What are your thoughts now?

“Dress in sackcloth and lament, you priests;
wail, you ministers of the altar.
Come and spend the night in sackcloth,you ministers of my God,
because grain and drink offeringsare withheld from the house of your God.
Announce a sacred fast;proclaim an assembly!
Gather the eldersand all the residents of the land
at the house of the LORD your God,
and cry out to the LORD.
Woe because of that day!For the Day of the LORD is near
and will come as devastation from the Almighty.”

~Joel 1.13-15

Two weeks ago, Fred summarized Lent as

“the traditional forty-day season of self-examination, repentance, prayer, and fasting in preparation for the solemn commemoration of Jesus’ death during Holy Week, and the joyous celebration of His resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Now, if you don’t observe Lent, that’s okay. I’m just using it as a jumping-off point to explain why I’m writing a series of posts about death in speculative fiction.
Lent starts out on Ash Wednesday with an affirmation of our mortality: Remember, you are dust, and to dust you will return. It steadies me a little, hearing that, and sets me off on a journey along roads I’d rather not travel, given the choice. My life on this Earth will end someday, maybe sooner than later. What have I done with it? What am I doing with it? What should I do with it from this point forward? When I’ve reached the end, what will happen? Will I be ready?”

Fasting is definitive in prayer and worship. It demonstrates devotion to a specific end, a kind of focus. It’s a particular way of saying “I’m giving up this thing because I want more of this other thing.” And, as far as Jesus is concerned, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” you fast, same as it’s “when,” not “if” you pray. In fact, he spends a great deal of time discussing what kind of fasting is proper and what isn’t.

Scripture itself provides many examples of it: King Saul declared a fast for his army until they defeated their enemies. (This was one his son Jonathan didn’t hear, and, when the men told him, he pronounced his father foolish for making his men march, then fight, on an empty stomach.) Many times in Israel’s history it was common to declare a nation-wide fast. Esther prayed and fasted for three days before approaching Xerxes; and her cousin Mordecai put on sackcloth and ashes outside the palace gate to get her attention.

The ritual is often also associated with a state of mourning, because apparently people didn’t look much different than when they wore sackcloth and ashes for a formal period of grieving. It can be associated with distress or repentance, too.

I used to have this habit of randomly fasting, at least for breakfast and lunch. I’m admittedly out of practice, but for me it was a matter of making a habit, making the discipline familiar instead of foreign. Fasting has a few rules. You don’t announce it to the world. You don’t make a show. You are giving up one thing and replacing it with a greater thing.

Prioritizing, in other words.

I have this friend who’s been praying for more time to read her Bible. She’s already getting up at about 4:30 in the morning, but lately she’s felt an impression that she should get up even earlier so she can read before work instead of during or after (her job allows it). I have another who’s worked his schedule out so he can find more time to write.

That’s really what Sabbaths and retreats are for, too: they’re saying “I’m walking away from everything else so that I can fix my eyes on Christ.”

One reason I loved Karen Hancock’s “The Enclave” is because the book dealt full-on with what’s important and what we do and don’t do to stay focused on what’s important; and she did so with characters who ate, slept, lived, and breathed their jobs. Some gave up. Some went to bed and woke up at random hours to squeeze in prayer – fasting from sleep, as it were.

I used to think it was cheating to fast from anything other than food and drink, honestly. I’d never say anything, but inwardly I was a bit snobby about it. “That’s not a real fast,” I’d think, and inwardly sneer at someone’s “inability to do the real thing,” as if sincerity were based solely on what you were abstaining from.

Yeah, I was a snot. I got better . . . at least about that. Isaiah 58 has plenty to say regarding what qualifies as a righteous fast; and Paul actually had to tell married couples they couldn’t abstain from one another without mutual consent on the part of both spouses. No lie.

Either way, God’s squelched my ignorance, to use a former professor’s phrase. Scripture would have us understand that whether we abstain from something or not, take a vow – which, I think it’s James who says it’s better not to vow – or not, recognize particular holy days or not, to do it all in the name of the Lord.

Fix our eyes on him, in other words.

Fasting has a catch. You don’t tell anyone. (My mom’s request was that we tell her so she could plan dinner; and I made a point to make sure my college roomie/best friend wouldn’t worry, but that was it.) It’s a thing that, once you’ve drawn attention to it, loses its meaning. It goes back to the joke about the dad asking his son why he had his eyes open during prayer. Clearly, the dad wasn’t focused on the pastor’s prayer if he was watching his son. (Or he’s like me, and just prays with his eyes open.) Either way, to seek approval for fasting is to lose sight of your “greater thing.”

I get lost in story. Really, really lost. I’ve started doing with TV shows and movies the way I’ve always done with book series: binge/purge. I used to joke that I had two modes: writing and reading, and I was never in both at the same time. So I’d write for two or three weeks, almost non-stop, and then burn out and revert into reading mode for about the same amount of time, finally coming up for air in time to go back into writing mode. I can read a trilogy of 500 pages a book in two days and watch an entire season in a week and a half (I know there are some who can do it faster, but my brain turns to goo if I watch too much tv).

Such is the life of a storyteller.

Fasters don’t neglect their bodies–which was Jonathan’s point to King Saul. People with diabetes or other health concern should do their homework before fasting from food. The point is devotion, not starvation or comas. Similarly, writers have one body. It’s easy to overwork our brains and neglect our bodies. My dad has to stay after me with regards to this one. I’m the person who forgets to eat and will stare at a screen or book all day. Ultimately, it will affect the mind too, and neither is a healthy state. Moreover, the point of fasting is not to diet (and simply not eating is unhealthy and no diet anyway) or lose weight; and neither is the point of cutting something out or adjusting a schedule so you can binge/purge on a writing high.

There’s something to be said about secrecy. A friend of mine talks about ‘the discipline of Secret,’ meaning that there are some things that are secrets between you and God and you just don’t tell anyone else. And, as far as writing goes, I’ve never really felt a need to tell people things like “I’m ditching social media so I can get an extra hour of writing in.” Moreover, part of this idea of secrecy is that you don’t look the part. Remember Jesus’ warning to people who would walk up and down the streets looking the part so they’d get pity for being in a state of fasting? Those people.

The writing equivalent is more akin to people who neglect family and other responsibilities. Don’t fail to file your taxes so you can get that hour in. Don’t skip your kid’s parent-teacher meeting. Don’t get mad because your mom asked you to run an errand.

And, just as I’ve learned there’s many ways to fast, so there are many ways to prioritize so as to focus on writing productivity. Ultimately, you can read a hundred books on fasting and a hundred books on how to approach the writing life, but in the end it’s going to come down one goal: lament, mourning, distress; determination, devotion, reflection & meditation; wordcount, research, editing, characterization, storyboarding. But fix your eyes, and don’t let anything alter your heart, mind, attitude, or bowed head.

“The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
It is good for a man that he bear
the yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone in silence
when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust—
there may yet be hope;
let him give his cheek to the one who strikes,
and let him be filled with insults.
For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not afflict from his heart
or grieve the children of men.”
~Lamentations 3:25-33

Hardly a fantasy author alive has not heard her or his work referred to as “Tolkien-esque.”

You know what I’m talking about, fellow writers! “Tolkien-esque” or the “next C.S. Lewis” or some strange combination thereof. These days, there might be a few new names thrown in for good measure. “An epic romance reminiscent of Twilight.” Have you written one of those? Or how about “fun and magic on a par with Harry Potter”?

The fact is, as great a marketing ploy as these comparisons might be, they are often nothing short of embarrassing. I know I’ve cringed when I’ve seen my work declared “Tolkien-like.” Huh? How are my allegorical fairy tales for teens anything like that VAST adult fantasy epic?

Or, because it contains allegorical threads, my work must be “similar to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia.” What? Allegory aside, how are my romantic/comedic full-length YA novels even remotely comparable to those short classics written for children?

Worst of all was a big banner in a magazine calling my work: “A Tolkien-esque fantasy for the Twilight audience.”

(Insert tears here.)

“All that work!” I cry. “All those years of English major drudgery! All those carefully constructed literary themes! Shall I then be dismissed as a wanna-be copycat jumping on a popular bandwagon?”

So I take myself away to sulk about it for a while. When the sulking ends, however, I have to start thinking . . .

Great fiction is made up of themes: Love and longing, coming of age, voyage and return, fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, overcoming the monster, death, birth, and more. These are universals, themes that can be, on one level or another, understood by any man or woman. The fantasy genre is a place of extremes, thus these themes become even more dominant. The monsters to overcome are literal dragons or warlords. A maiden’s love or a hero’s longing means the binding of great alliances, the rise and fall of nations. Fathers are kings, sons are thieves, daughters are warrior maidens, and mothers are enchantresses. All these universals take on a proportion so much bolder than life that they become truly fantastic and unreal.

They can also start looking repetitive.

Because they drew us to fantasy in the first place, these extreme universals and archetypal characters are what we want both to write and to read. But in a sea of handsome Chosen Ones, feisty heroines, dark lords, and made-up names, how can our stories hope to stand out?

We must learn how to bring the personal to the universal.

My most brilliant plot-device, character arc, or surprise twist is never going to be original. Not on its own. All those universal themes have been done before and by better writers. But the one thing those authors (I’m talking to you Messrs Tolkien and Lewis!) can never bring to their work is . . . me.

Only I can do that.

The temptation, especially for young writers, is to ignore this. “After all,” we tend to say, “what have I got that’s interesting enough to live in the pages of epics? I’m too young. I’m too old. I’m too inexperienced. I’m too boring. That’s why I write fantasy, to liven up my ordinary life!”

So we fall into clichés. We fall into cheesiness, writing about epic themes without the personal touch. We take ourselves very seriously and therefore lose credibility.

But I’m here today to argue that cheesiness and clichés need not be our fate! We can work with the brilliant, the epic, the universal themes so wonderful in the genre, but we can use our own experiences. For instance . . .

Did you ever have a first crush? For young and old, this is a pretty universal experience. But your personal experience of those first-time feelings–the sudden sense that maybe childhood perspectives on boys and girls are insufficient, that there might be more, that you might be more–is unique. Have you ever stopped to analyze that singular coming-of-age moment in your life?

Or how about this: Have you ever been assigned a task for which you felt inadequate? Babysitting three toddlers at once? Giving birth? Passing an algebra exam? Organizing a team that simply refuses to be organized? Ordinary experiences, to be sure, hardly the stuff of epics. And yet,  the very real and very stressful feelings of your personal experience are universals that carry over to the world of danger, dragons, and dire deeds that is the fantasy genre.

These are basic examples. Yet they translate beautifully into themes everyone understands! And when I began recognizing this notion of the personal/universal, I first saw my own work take on life.

Like the heroine in Heartless, I have foolishly built dream-castles on a young man who didn’t keep his promises. Like the hero in Veiled Rose, I’ve struggled to redefine my identity and lost myself in the process. Like the hero in Moonblood, I have thought I could earn my own redemption. Like the heroine in upcoming Starflower, I have experienced having no “voice” simply because I am a woman. Like the hero in my recent work-in-progress, I have experienced my human limitations–lack of beauty, lack of brains, lack of respect–and despaired in inadequacy.

Like my characters, I have sinned, I have stumbled, I have made a hash of my life. And I have been the recipient of undeserved grace!

My life experiences have been simple enough. A sheltered child, an ambitious student, a hard worker at various jobs, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife, an animal-fanatic . . . Nothing worthy of epics. I am not a brilliant Oxford don with war-time experience and decades of classical and theological education under my belt.

But I have faced my own dragons. I have seen my own kingdoms rise and fall.

So let this be my encouragement to you: Use these universal themes of love and longing, death and life, monsters and kings and Chosen Ones. Use them with excitement, knowing they will touch the hearts of your readers. But remember that your personal experience of these universals will bring the originality, the freshness your work needs. Don’t make your heroes Aragorns or Harry Potters . . .  make them you. Don’t make your heroines Bella Swans or Lucy Pevensies . . . make them you.

For there has never been a “you” before now. Bring your personal to those classic universals, and you’ll find you have something new. Yes, by pure virtue of being fantasy, it will be compared to Tolkien. But you will never be Tolkien. You will only be you.

And that, my friends, is true originality!

– – – – –

Anne Elisabeth Stengl is the author of the Tales of Goldstone Wood, a series of fantasy adventure novels told in the classic Fairy Tale style. She is married to the handsome man she met at fencing class and lives with him and a gaggle of cats in NC. You can follow her on Facebook or contact her via her blog.

Time for a small, not all that shocking confession. I’m a fan of the TV show Castle. Nathan Fillion, playing a writer? Yes, please! I love the wit and the banter and, while I hope one day Castle and Beckett will ‘fess up about their feelings for one another, a larger part of me hopes that’s a long time coming, simply because we all know that once a smoldering TV romance goes “hot,” it’s pretty much a death sentence for the show.

And yet, as much as I love Castle, I also love reading Lee Lofland’s blog, The Graveyard Shift, after each episode. Mr. Lofland is a former police officer and each week, he dissects the episode for mistakes made in the police procedure. It’s always a fascinating look into how it’s done in the “real world.”

One of the things that Mr. Lofland has done, though, is identify some Castle “tropes” that have been done to death. For example, Lanie, the ME, will always spout off some ridiculous voodoo forensics at the start of the episode. Beckett, the tough and savvy police officer, will usually get kidnapped and/or have her gun taken away from her. And the real killer will always be “subtly” introduced in the early part of the show (but usually in such a hamhanded way that long-time viewers can guess who it is). These are tropes that, I suspect, Lofland would consider “done to death.”

These sorts of “been there, done that A LOT” tropes can pop up just about anywhere, even in Christian speculative fiction. You know what I’m talking about: the plot that’s been done a dozen times over. The character that shows up in too many books. The theme that everyone wants to expound on. It got me thinking: I wonder what the readers at Speculative Faith think has been “done to death” in Christian speculative fiction?

But before I officially throw open the floor, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and share one such concept that I think has been overdone: the Nephilim.

In some ways, I understand why people gravitate toward that short snippet in Genesis 6 that describes the Nephilim. It’s kind of bizarre:

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend withhumans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4, NIV)

Like I said, weird, right? We’ve got the whole “sons of God” marrying the “daughters of men,” and the men of renown popping up afterwards. Seeing as speculative fiction writers like the bizarre, it’s understandable that so many of us have gravitated toward this passage, crafting tales of fallen angels mating with human women, producing monsters of varying sorts that need to be wiped out by the Flood.

Yawn.

Oh, excuse me. Like I said, in my grubby little opinion, the Nephilim have been done to death in Christian fiction.

Now, to be honest, part of the reason why I’m sick of this trope is because I have theological problems with the angel/human hybrid explanation. I don’t actually think that’s Biblical (notice in the above quote that the author of Genesis never says that the Nephilim were actually the children of the sons of God and daughters of humans!), and the arguments I’ve seen in support of that theory are filled with extra-Biblical texts that people try to bootstrap into pseudo-canonicity.

Or, to put it another way, I don’t buy it.

Personally, I think there’s a more mundane explanation for this passage. I believe that what’s being described here is an intermixing of two different human families, specifically the descendants of Cain (the daughters of man) and the descendants of Seth (the sons of God). Notice in Genesis 4 and 5, when the author shares the family trees, that we have additional data about the seventh son of each branch. In Cain’s family, the seventh son is Lamech, who brags about killing a man for wounding him. The seventh son in Seth’s family is Enoch, who walked with God and then was no more. The way I read the whole “sons of God/daughters of man” business is that the descendants of Cain corrupted the more pious descendants of Seth.

As for the Nephilim, I’m not sure what they are, but they sound human to me. They’re described as “men of old, of renown.” Old heroes. But given that the word nephilim in Hebrew means “the fallen ones,” it makes it clear that what’s heroic to men isn’t necessarily heroic to God.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now and turn it over to you. Disagree with me if you want, but I really do want to know: what’s been done to death in Christian speculative fiction?

Feminism is disgusting. Ugly. We saw it most recently with that whole Susan Komen Foundation debacle, and we hear about it frequently — and will keep hearing about it, such as when, say, evangelical translators start messing with pronouns in the NIV.

Really, we should expect feminism to get about in secular stories. Already in this series I’ve discussed one secular stereotype or negative icon: the whole “warrior princess” or shooting-up-heroine ideal. Yet unique to some evangelical “lore,” our teachings and our fiction, are at least two other feminine icons — not bad ones, altogether, but ones that should be combined, applying their Biblical ideas, and rejecting the wrong ones.

Do that in reality, and it will reflect in our stories. Do that in our fiction, and female characters will become stronger, better-rounded, more-realistic, and will glorify God.

So far, though, I’ve only talked about women. I’m thinking I’ll get to the negative icons and/or stereotypes about males, next week. I’m not sure, though, if I should be worried, because I’ve identified far more evangelical ideal sets for males than I have for females.

But first, a thought about the term icon, which here I’ve been using interchangeably with stereotype. Last week, Fred said he didn’t believe the term fit with my suggested examples. “They aren’t focused enough, and they seem more like stereotypes,” he wrote. Unlike icons, stereotypes distort truth, instead of summarizing it into a visual symbol that communicates truth, and which by itself is not harmful and can be positive, he said.

Fred and I have a series coming up soon about icons: the philosophy of them, Christian history with them, and their difference from characters. So it’s likely I learn more, then.

At this point, though, I do think the word icon can describe these kinds of stereotypes, mainly because of how evangelicals treat a supposed human who embodies these traits. Of course icons, by themselves, are not evil. (I have a few on my desktop. Rim shot!) The Proverbs 31 Woman™, as mentioned last week, is certainly not evil, and the closely related Domestic Doyenne icon has some good traits. On the male side, aspiring to some values of say, William Wallace, would also not be evil — unless our sermons, books, and ministries talked about Wallace too often and said all men should imitate him. (A-hem.)

Maybe we do need another term, something more personal and visual than the more-abstract-sounding term stereotype, a term that sounds more positive (though it isn’t), but which also doesn’t sully the idealism-connoting term icon.

My mental thesaurus is coming up short. So, I’ll be very creative and suggest caricature — a stylized picture of a specific person, or even general people group, that exaggerates many features. Caricatures are mainly for fun, or to make points, as in editorial cartoons or parody images of celebrities. But what happens when Christians take them seriously?

One result: caricature-icons of women, and men, infect our thinking. In our nonfiction or fiction, they settle in our minds and make us suspect anyone or anything that doesn’t conform to the caricature-icon. This can work for feminism, or its opposite: chauvinism.

Twisted features

Plenty of complaints have come up in this series about not one, but two sex-related evils of our age: feminism and chauvinism. I’ve been surprised and glad to see them equally railed against — not because I hold Spec-Faith readers in low regard, but because many well-meaning Christians seem stuck in the mindset of opposing only one at a time.

Which is the worst problem in the church: infecting feminism, or infecting chauvinism?

Answer: Both/and.

Yet if anyone, even subtly, presumes that Christians are only vulnerable to one error, they’ll overcorrect and end up buying into an equal-opposite caricature-icon.

One possible result of over-feminized Christianity (slightly modified for illustrative purposes).

1. ‘The Church is too feministic!’

Result in reality: Creeping chauvinism. We neglect Christ’s sacrifice for His Bride, the Church, and the Father’s nurturing care that is reflected in women who are created in His image. Among humans, we see women’s domain as only the home, and set men on higher spiritual pedestals. In the case of organized “Biblical patriarchy,” this leads even to viewing men as intercessor-priests of their houses, edging aside the only Mediator.

Result in fiction: Stories that treat women as silly and frivolous, while the men handle real spiritual struggles. I don’t see this in Christian novels, especially speculative stories, but if certain male-driven caricature-icons prevail (more on that later), it may happen.

2. ‘The Church is too chauvinistic!’

Result in reality: Creeping feminism. We neglect the Bible’s references to God with masculine pronouns, Jesus’s God-Manhood, and the wrath, holiness, and justice that God does exhibit. On a human level, men don’t have a clue what they’re supposed to do, only what they’re not; just as with women under the “too-feministic” paradigm, men’s lives become only a long series of antis. They don’t lead in their families or churches.

Result in fiction: Stories that treat men as weak or irrelevant, while the women handle real spiritual struggles. I haven’t seen this in speculative novels, but it does seem more common in female-centric Christian fiction. (Queue arguments we’ve all already heard.)

Though I’m by no means immune to either of these extremes, I do wonder sometimes how come people feel a need to elevate one sex while devaluing the other.

Can we not have God-honoring real lives and superior stories when all are considered humans created in God’s image, different but equal?

Particularly in fiction, don’t readers often dislike stories in which other heroes are made weaker so the favored character stands out? Wouldn’t he be an even better character if equally strong characters, with diverse abilities, surrounded him, even followed him?

Maybe you’ve recently read a novel, Christian or otherwise, that seemed to echo some of these caricature-icons — either feministic or chauvinistic. With your own beliefs and background, how did that make you feel? How could that story have been improved? And how do you believe these improvements could aid readers, Christian or otherwise?

“They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep [mourn].’”
(Luke 7; CR Matthew 11)

I’m admittedly re-contextualizing this verse. The context is that John the Baptist is in prison. He learns what Jesus had begun to do and sends his disciples to investigate and ask Jesus a question: “Are you really the one?” It’s no small question. John has been resolute in his faith in Jesus’ identity from the womb. But now, with his Messiah here in the flesh, he’s rotting in prison wondering if he’ll be released or beheaded. This is John’s lowest, most desperate moment. The strong man suddenly isn’t sure. Jesus’ reply is a paraphrase of a chapter of Isaiah meant to reassure John of his own faith (he does, some note, also leave out the verse that might indicate to John that he would be released from prison, something John would have noticed). He then commends John and tells everyone that, not only is John the “greatest man born of a woman” but that “the least in the kingdom” would surpass John.

The public response is that they “acknowledged God’s way of righteousness, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But since the Pharisees and experts in the law had not been baptized by him, they rejected the plan of God for themselves.”

Jesus’ reaction is “To what shall I compare this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to each other: We played the flute for you, but you didn’t dance; we sang a lament, but you didn’t weep!” He then goes on to express his frustration, contrasting the public reaction to John – who did not eat or drink – with the reaction to Jesus – who did the reverse. John comes in a spirit of mourning, so to speak, and was accused of being demon-possessed. Jesus comes in a spirit of celebration only to be accused of gluttony, drunkenness, and associating with sinners (which made him one by proxy).

Then he says, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

And afterward comes Jesus’ call to throw your burdens on him (in Matthew), followed by the famous moment with the woman who breaks a jar of oil and anoints him with expensive oil and her own tears (in Luke). “He who’s forgiven much, loves much; he who’s forgiven little, loves little.”

I could probably spend all day in the text, there’s so much to glean out of it, and this is but a poor, cursory version out of some church brat notion I should at least give some semblance of the original intention; but where I really want to spend our time is on Jesus’ frustration: Whether he calls his people in a spirit of celebration or comes weeping, they reject him. The plea is to stop being so impossible to please, to be satisfied with him.

As entertainers and communicators, I think we can all relate to that one way or another. You pour countless amounts of time, energy, and emotion into something, and sometimes it just feels like no matter what, you can’t please the audience.

I remember an intermediate fiction writing class I took. For my first assignment, I wrote in a very surreal, symbolic light – almost magical realism, maybe. No one got it. It confused everybody, and the only thing they could agree on was the setting, which was identifiable only because everyone in the room knew the location and therefore could figure out the location with only a scarce description. So, for my second, I took the reverse approach and imparted only one symbol and used a trope setting and situation. This time it was cliche, but they did figure out the symbol. Frustrated, I still had one more story to write for this class. This time I took a story a friend told me and simply wrote the events as he told me with no embellishment. And, this time, they read more symbolism into that simple little story with no layers whatsoever than I thought possible.

I also recall a time that a woman flipped out on me because I wrote the word “godforsaken” and another time when a fellow writer lamented how “sterilized” Christian fiction is.

Insatiable.

Unappeasable.

I wrote a tale for you,
but you didn’t listen;
I journeyed life and death and all between,
but you didn’t join me.

He came to his own, but his own didn’t know him.

I gave you my heart, but you wouldn’t take it.

So what do we do? Dance with one audience, we lose another. Play the flute for another audience, lose the one. Maybe the truth is we can’t please everyone, so we please no one. Maybe we pick which we’re going to ostracize. Maybe there’s another answer we haven’t seen.

“Choose the audience you have to offend.”
~John Maxwell

So it seems that I stirred up a little bit of discussion two weeks ago with my odd little pyramid based on something I learned from the “story of my heart,” a tale of aliens searching for grace that I call The Leader’s Song. This is the story that launched my journey toward publication. This was the story that I (erroneously) believed would be my debut novel. And it’s also a story that helped me stumble upon two lessons.

I talked about the first lesson two weeks ago by saying that we should maybe give a little more weight to criticisms and suggestions given to us by publishing professionals such as agents or editors. Several of you disagreed with me (and that’s okay!). Since I mentioned that I learned this lesson at the first ACFW conference I attended, Fred Warren wondered which industry professionals had given me advice (since many of the attendees at ACFW are not . . . how shall I put this diplomatically? . . . friendly to spec fic in general). When I revealed that it was Jeff Gerke, Steve Laube, and Andy Meisenheimer, Fred then asked the very good question:

I’m curious to hear about the problem they found in your story, and why this persuaded you to set it aside.

Okay, Fred, since you asked, here are the sordid details (and it’ll help explain the other piece of advice I got).

Like I said two weeks ago, when I started writing The Leader’s Song, it began as one long story consisting of two connected plots. For the purpose of this discussion, I’ll refer to these plots as the “Modern Plot” and the “Ancient Plot.” If I were to create a ridiculously bad graphic to illustrate the general structure of the story, it’d look something like this:

In this not-at-all-to-scale graphic, the Modern Plot is in red and the Ancient Plot is in blue. As you can see, the middle third of the story consisted of one gigantic flashback, consisting of most of the Ancient Plot.

When I was done with the first draft, I realized that my “novel” was waaaaaaay too long (at the time, I guessed it was approximately 3/4s the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy). So I figured that I would split the bigger book up into a trilogy. Great idea, right? I found two “natural breaks” in the story and basically took a chainsaw to it, resulting in this:

Again, not to scale. The astute reader will immediately see the problem: none of the books were self-contained stories. Worse, the Modern Plot ends abruptly at the end of the first book, only to have the Ancient Plot take over. And the Modern Plot doesn’t return until the end of Book Two.

It was a mess. And while the authors I spoke to (and I can’t remember who exactly) said that it wouldn’t be a big deal, the industry insiders I mentioned all said that this wouldn’t work.

I remember that when I went into this conference, I was feeling pretty confident in my abilities. I figured I’d find someone to buy my trilogy right away (ah, the naivete of a rookie author), only to find out that no one was interested and that my books were a mess. I crashed pretty hard, convinced I had made a major mistake in pursuing this writing career. Then I had a small group session with Deb Raney and Colleen Coble. While they didn’t say anything about the plot, they both liked my writing and was very encouraging. So when I left the conference, I felt a little better. I had created this mess. I would find a way to fix it!

Over the next two years, I wrote another book (a secular fantasy I called The Return of the Mourning Dove), but I kept returning to the story of my heart. I wanted to find a solution. I had to find one. This was the story of my heart, darn it! It had to work!

As near as I could figure, I had two options. The first was to interweave the Ancient and Modern Plots together, tell part of one in a chapter and then tell part of the other in the next. Sort of like what Diane Duane did in Spock’s World. After considering it, I rejected it (and I won’t go into details now).

Instead, I decided to reorganize the whole structure, putting the plots in chronological order. I would expand the Ancient Plot and mash all of the Modern Plot into the third book. In short, it would look something like this:

Simple, right? And awesome to boot! I would get to revisit the characters I loved so much! I could do more world building! So I spent some time reworking the first book, expanding it and tuning it up so that, when I went to my next ACFW Conference in Minneapolis, I’d be sure to sell the story of my heart! So I signed up for the conference, ready to pitch my heart out. Book One was ready to go. I hadn’t fixed up Books Two or Three yet, figuring I shouldn’t get too ahead of myself.

Since the conference was in Minneapolis, just a few miles from my house, I volunteered to pick up people at the airport and shuttle them to the conference. You can imagine how excited I was when I saw that one of my passengers would be Colleen Coble! She had lifted my spirits so much two years earlier and I never had the chance to thank her. So when I picked her up, I fairly gushed. I reminded her of our small group critique session, telling her that her kind words had really helped buoy my spirits. She smiled very graciously and asked me what I was going to pitch at the conference this year. And I enthusiastically told her, “The same story I pitched two years ago!”

That’s when she gave me a great piece of advice. Very gently, she suggested that I move on, that maybe the time had come to shelve my trilogy idea and come up with something new. She pointed out that we learn a lot when we start from scratch and that I’d probably benefit from putting together new ideas.

I was stunned and a little hurt. Shelve the story of my heart? No! I had worked on it for years. Years! How could I leave it behind?

And yet, at the conference, Jeff Gerke pointed out another problem with my “great solution.” And yet, while people seemed interested, there were no takers. When it was all said and done, I had the story of my heart and a decision to make: Should I keep on tinkering with it, hoping that I would stumble on the solution that would make it all work out? Or should I move on?

I chose to move on. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have spent time writing a Christian space opera called Numb. If I hadn’t, I might not have written Failstate, which will be my debut novel in just a few short months.

See, here’s the thing. As speculative fiction authors, I think it’s easier for us to get bogged down in the “stories of our hearts.” We get an idea and we absolutely fall in love with it. And we have to do a lot of extra work to get everything set up, world building that writers in other genres don’t have to do. And I think that can give us tunnel vision sometimes. I know it did for me. I became so wrapped up in The Leader’s Song that I’d probably still be tinkering with it even now. If I hadn’t given Colleen Coble that ride from the airport, there’s a good chance I’d still be in the “not published” camp.

I’m not saying that I’ll never come back to The Leader’s Song. Every now and then, I catch myself puzzling over its structural problems. Maybe someday I’ll screw on enough courage to delve back into it and finally find the right solution. Until then, it’s staying on a shelf, gathering dust. And I’m okay with that.

Now I can’t tell you what to do. Maybe you’re doing better than I was. But I wanted to pass this advice along to you. Maybe the best thing for you to do right now is shelve your book idea and try a new one. You never know what might happen.

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?

Special thanks to all those who participated in Spec Faith’s Shredding, Round Two, the critique of novel openings. If any of the volunteers who made their manuscripts available would like to own their work and make comments, please feel free. The only reason we adopt the “anonymous” tag is so that those commenting will feel free to respond without any bias ( e.g. Aw, so-and-so is such a nice person and I know they’ve been trying so hard, so I’ll limit my comments to just the positives).

Of course, those who vote in the poll (still active for one more week, if memory serves me correctly) and those who comment make this little exercise useful. But I couldn’t help but think as I read through what everyone had to say, how vital it is for writers to hear from readers, not just other writers.

True, writers have experience and can perhaps explain the why of our opinion based on writerly rules and principles — all very helpful, but at the same time, writers also tend to think in terms of our own writing style. It’s hard to divorce ourselves from “this is what I would say.” The truth is, what I would say has no bearing on what another writer should say. My style, my voice, my understanding of the writing craft are … well, mine, and our writing, like our fingerprints and our DNA, is uniquely individual. What we say, how we say it, and how we sound when we say it reflect our personality, history, worldview.

Based on this last point some might think a critique exercise is futile then. Not at all. A couple factors make them vital. First, there’s a utilitarian factor involved in writing — writers can break any “rule” (those that don’t actually exist) they want, as long as what they write works.

J. K. Rowling’s speaker attributions in the Harry Potter books serve as a good illustration. Over and over I’ve read from contemporary writing instructors, and heard from others at conferences, that writers should not fill their work with adverbs, those pesky –ly describers used to prop up weak verbs. Especially writers are warned away from adding them to the “so-and-so said” line identifying the speakers in conversation, the reasoning being that the context and dialogue should be strong enough so as to render the adverb redundant.

Along comes Ms. Rowling, though, and peppers her books with attributions like “said Aunt Petunia promptly,” “said Aunt Petunia rapturously,” “said Harry tonelessly,” and “said Uncle Vernon nastily.” (Examples taken from pp. 5-6, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).

Bad writing, bad writing — she’s breaking all the rules, many writers cried. (I was one of them.) The thing is, readers obviously didn’t care. Ms. Rowling’s use of adverbs didn’t cause them to stop reading. It didn’t yank them out of the fictive dream or disrupt their enjoyment of the story. I daresay most readers did not even notice.

The point is, though Ms. Rowling’s style in this area flies in the face of conventional wisdom, it worked for her in her Harry Potter books. Therefore, who’s to say it was wrong?

But this point might seem to favor the view that critiques are meaningless. On the contrary, writers think what they put down is good writing — otherwise we wouldn’t have it there. Only readers can tell us if it actually does work. Here other writers who have been schooled in the contemporary wisdom aren’t so helpful. They will tend to think less about whether or not the phrasing works and more about whether or not it conforms to writing instruction.

There’s a second factor. Writing fiction is an art form. Not only does it convey a story, it aims to do so in a way that is creative, imaginative, original, and beautiful. Rarely can an artist fairly judge his own work in those respects. Of course what he writes feels ingenious and fresh — most writers don’t set out to write tired, hackneyed stories that put people to sleep. Where would we be without readers to hold up a mirror and steer us away from the poor application of our story’s make-up — that which does not beautify but draws attention to flaws?

One final point about critiques from readers and writers alike. Part of the reading process is writers putting down what they intend, and the other part is readers getting out of it what they understand. Unless a writer receives feedback, he doesn’t really know what it is readers are taking away from his story — perhaps more than he realized, perhaps far less. Without critiques to guide his writing, he has no way of knowing if he’s close to accomplishing what he wishes in his story.

In short, writers need readers … and fairly obviously, readers need writers.