When we jam non-fiction into our fiction

My post Shouting into the Void a few weeks ago got a bunch of interesting responses. I’ve been processing them ever since. To sum up:

I observed that in Christian fiction, God is silent. All the other monsters, gods, and mythical creatures talk, though, whether it’s Medusa, a dwarf, or Percy Jackson’s deity problems.

This actually flies in the face of the Bible itself, where God scoffs at the other gods, who are fake and made of stone and don’t talk.

But we’re writing fiction, right? If we want to have God or a talking lion or a couple of ravens that give prophetic dreams, we can write it. We’re writing FICTION.

Ah, but that’s where things get sticky. It’s all fiction until it’s non-fiction.

Let me explain.

Christians aren’t the only ones who launch into sermons in the middle of their books. Eoin Colfer waxes eloquent about the plight of the environment in Every. Single. Artemis Fowl book. Eventually you just start skimming when you see the rant coming. Heinlein spends the majority of a chapter in the Rolling Stones praising that worm in the mud that we all evolved from.

We’ve all encountered this. There’s nothing like reading along, enjoying a good story, when suddenly the author wallops you with their political views. Even if you happen to agree with them, it’s still annoying. If you don’t agree with them, sometimes you put that book down and move on to a different author.

The intrusion of non-fiction into the fictive dream is annoying and unnecessary. It’s the author saying, “My story’s not strong enough to show you the truth of my message, so I’m going to lecture you directly.”

Christians do this with God. As soon as He’s mentioned, we’ve stepped out of fiction into non-fiction. It’s not a story anymore–it’s apologetics. And often it’s poorly-written apologetics. If the author had stuck to fiction and used illustrations and different kinds of characters (even–GASP–gods) to prove their point, it would be a stronger story.

The sad thing is, usually they’re telling a redemption story. We LOVE redemption stories. Don’t we all wish that Loki would join Thor and fight for the good guys? As a kid, I wanted Catwoman to join Batman SO BADLY.

 

Mother of Cats by Michael Matsumoto

 

The good vampire and the good werewolf fill our TV shows and movies. The story of a bad person or creature who changed their ways and now fight on the side of Good: we eat it up. We love redemption, whether it’s self-improvement or one person saving another from certain death.

But this is where Christians stumble. I’ve complained before about authors who mess up the Hero’s Journey formula. Instead of the hero going on his quest and becoming a man, the hero is enfeebled by having to be saved over and over by the Jesus figure. It’s poor storytelling. It’s apologetics intruding into the fiction.

So, while we have all the elements of grand myth, we spoil it with too much non-fiction.

Sneak peek at Malicious

Ah, the Puzzle Box trilogy. It was supposed to be published, all three books, in one year. And then I got pregnant. Here we are, two years later, with the final book almost ready to launch. I’m aiming for November, since I’m still deep in revisions before I hand it off to my poor editor.

It’s a YA paranormal romance trilogy that I wrote after reading way too many paranormal romances. I was tired of the girl never having any inkling that vampires or werewolves existed until her new, alluring boyfriend flashed a fang. I mean, really? How can a girl exist in this world without ever having seen a vampire on TV?

So Libby, my heroine, is what they call genre-savvy. She plays videogames and reads fantasy books. She pegs Mal as a vampire straight off, even though he’s a different kind of monster. (White skin – check. Super speed – check. Unusual strength – check. Never seems to eat food – check.) Later on, when she finds out that he’s a lich, she knows what that is because of videogame knowledge. Same for other monsters like revenants, ghouls, zombies, and so on. Mal is always astonished at her knowledge. And all she does is play videogames.

Mal is a lich. That means that he’s only sort of undead. His soul has been removed and stored in a container called a phylactery. He still has his mind and spirit, but the human part, with all positive emotions, are in his soul. Without it, he’s a creature of negative emotions: anger, hate, loathing, all that jazz. It also gives him massive death magic powers. But Mal never wanted to be a lich, and is desperately seeking a way to return his soul. So he keeps specially-bred bees that collect life magic from flowers and store it in their honey. By eating their honey, he can simulate human life, which keeps his death magic in check.

And then there’s the Necromancer, who is intent on turning Mal into a proper evil monster who can follow in his footsteps.

Book 1 is on sale right now at all retailers. If you’ve already read the first two books, here’s a sneak peek at the beginning of book 3, after the devastation that was the ending of book 2.

Shouting into the void

Controversial topic ahead. About religion. You have been warned.

Okay, so, I’ve been reading some fantasy from Christian authors. I used to read Christian fantasy all the time as a teen, simply because that’s all I knew how to find. Our library didn’t have a lot in the way of juvenile science fiction and fantasy in the early 90s. (Boy, it sure does now!)

Anyway, once I started reading adult fantasy/sci-fi, I stopped reading the Christian stuff. I especially got into urban fantasy, where gods and monsters ride motorcycles and eat greasy Chinese food on the weekends. In this brand of fantasy, if you need to interact with God, you do it very respectfully, usually through an angel. All the other gods and monsters dislike messing with Heaven, because God is the Big Boss.

The angel, by The Rafa

So I’ve been reading some Christian fantasy, and I’ve run into something that bothers me. These characters pray all the time, and I do mean all the time. They attribute everything that happens to God’s will. When bad things happen, they spout platitudes about God’s mysterious ways.

But they’re shouting into a void. God never answers. There might be a coincidence now and then that is attributed to God, but God himself is absent.

After spending so much time in other branches of fantasy, where the gods not only intervene in daily affairs, they all bow to the high God, who also intervenes on behalf of his worshipers … this leaves me scratching my head. A lot of these books are written by non-Christians, as far as I know. So why are the Christians the ones the most distant from their own God? God talks to people all the time in the Bible. He’s talked to me quite clearly in my own life.

Even Cthulhu will answer if called to long enough and hard enough.

So why is God silent in Christian fantasy?

 

Making art again

So I’ve been trying to make art more often, now that I have a new tablet. The littlest ones are old enough to sit and watch videos while I draw, which means I actually get to focus on my doodles.

I recently discovered the joys of texture brushes. They make painting a lot of little things, like leaves, a lot more pleasant.

Or chains.

I thought it might be nice to try a matte painting tutorial. The one I found turned out to use a lot of stock photos that you have to buy first, and my attempts to Google comparative images was hit and miss. I gave up, but produced this.

However, I learned a few things, I tried my hand at speedpainting a mountain scene. It’s more a study in values and atmospheric perspective than anything–both things I need to study up on.

Here’s the painting I did today, using these cloud brushes for Photoshop. They’re kind of odd and blocky, but they stack well with themselves. It was also fun to paint a dragonish creature there in the foreground. I’m super rusty, though. I need to get back into the swing of art.

So there you have it. My super-productive week. :-p