The Art of Fabrication

In the fiction writer's world, the art of fabrication is otherwise known as writing great fiction. In the past couple of years, since deciding to take my writing from the hobby arena to the professional arena, I have been learning volumes about great writing.

I've been brushing up on my grammar, building my vocabulary, researching marketing techniques, leading and participating in critique sessions, developing creative writing sessions, networking with other writers, and studying great works of writing. Through the Christian Writer's Guild, I have been and will be learning about all different kinds of writing (news articles, magazine articles, personality interviews, poetry, devotionals, screenwriting, non-fiction, and fiction) as well as writing techniques and tips. And the list displaying my preparation for a career in writing goes on and on. But for my non-writer readers, I will not bore you with the interminable details.

Academically speaking, I guess you could say I'm covered.

But for a writer, especially a fiction writer, there are two things that you must have that all of that academic preparation just isn't going to fully provide.

Imagination and a curiosity about the human condition.

And the real challenge is the ability to tie the two together. If you write fiction, that ability is the art of fabrication - to be able to weave a completely plausible lie that throughout and in the end implants something in the reader that they just can't let go of.

It's easy to determine if you have a curiosity about the human condition. It can be as simple as wondering why someone is the way they are. For example, recent news made me ask this question: "What would make a 15-year-old girl murder her sister's 9-year-old playmate?"

In my last post, "Did Jeffrey Meet Jesus," I wrote, "I probably should have been a psychiatrist because I've always been interested in what makes the darkest of the dark in humanity tick." My friend Stephanie left a comment that read, "I've found the same traits that would have made you a good psychiatrist also make you a really good writer. It's a fascination with our fellow human beings and the human condition." Thank you for your comment, Stephanie, because that response has tumbled around in my brain for the past few days and made me realize something about writing I hadn't considered before. The result is this blog.

Curiosity also shows itself in your heart and mind through something as simple as a look. The deep crevices chiseled into the leathery face of a street-stained homeless man. The apathetic countenance of a neglected child. The artificial joy frozen on the face of a woman who carries a reflection of internal torment in her eyes.

Words and body language can also give a fiction writer a shot of creative caffeine. Driving in my car one day, I once wrote an entire poem in my head when I heard the word "tragic" in a song. The word combined with a situation going on in my life, and I simply couldn't stop my brain. I later turned the poem into a six-page short story - it was fiction but fiction stimulated by observations of the human condition. And although it's rare, sometimes that human condition I observe is my own.

Add imagination to a curious nature, and it sparks fireworks that explode in the mind of a writer. When I have trouble getting my imagination to soar, I read books by writers who have bold and brilliant imaginations. C.S. Lewis is probably my favorite, but there are so many others depending on what you like to read. Cormac McCarthy is a dark writer, but his imagination is so vast and rich. If you like poetry, it may be the most prolific way to jump start your imagination - especially romantic era poets like Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron. A couple of great modern day poets who write great visual poetry are Stellasue Lee and Ramon Presson. Books of great short stories can also give you a quick imagination high.

I constantly remind myself not to limit my imagination. I used to love to read vampire books, and they all basically followed the Brahm Stokers list of vampire rules - until I started reading Anne Rice. She broke all the rules and created super vampires. Things the other vampires couldn't do, her vampires could. And why not, the characters are only limited by the writer's imagination. I still battle with limiting my characters, but I'm healing, and I like to think eventually I'll be cured of this yield in my creativity.

So, take something you observe about the human condition, combine it with your imagination, and voilà - you have the art of fabrication. Put it all on paper and BAM! you're a fiction writer.

Of course, all the academic stuff certainly helps you assemble it all together, but no matter how well assembled it is, no one is going to read your writing if your imagination doesn't reveal something thought provoking about the human condition.

So unleash your thinking, and pay close attention to the world around you. There's a story waiting to be fabricated everywhere you look.

I Was a Fifth Grade Plagiarist...

...or so it was alleged. Here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth -- so help me God:

When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher gave my class a poetry writing assignment. When she passed out the graded assignments, my poem was not graded. Written at the top of my paper, in big red letters, were the words "SEE ME".

When I went to see her she said, "Where did you copy this from?"

I had done nothing wrong, but her accusation scared me a little. I cowered and squeaked a reply. "From my head."

"Well," she said, waving me off, "when I find this poem, you're getting an F."

That poem had indeed come from my head, but it never occured to me, until adulthood, to be flattered by the fact that she thought my poem was that good. At some point during that school year, my paper was uncerimoniously returned to me with an "A" written at the top.

A good teacher might have apologized and said, "your writing is good - maybe we should try to develop it further" or "keep writing, I think you could do something with this." Even a simple "good job" would have been nice. But my paper just appeared among a stack of papers, and no words were ever spoken about it.

It was, however, the conception of something deep inside of me that wouldn't start to spread it's wings until almost thirty years later.

(pause) - *I can't believe I'm embarrasing myself like this, but see the bottom of this post to read my 5th grade poem.*

Even though I have never loved my writing, I have always loved to write... for myself. I have always had notebooks filled with poems, short stories, and journaling shoved into the nooks and crannies around my house. What had been conceived in childhood had been growing for thirty years, but I had no intention of ever letting it leave the nest. It was for my eyes only.

But then, God got in the middle of things.

I was saved in my late twenties, and it took a few years after that, but my writing began to shift. God was filling me with stories and ideas, and I soon realized that what I was writing was no longer for my eyes only. Then fear set in. I had no idea how to write for other people.

My vocabulary was weak, my language skills clumsy. Why would God call me to do this?

But I am obedient, so I did what anyone in my position might do. I began writing a novel. Yeah, I just jumped right in the deep end, knowing I couldn't swim. If nothing else, it would prove to God that I couldn't do what He was calling me to do.

My novel was, and still is, halfway through and yes, it was REALLY bad. But it showed me something I didn't expect. There was potential there. If I could just develop this and brush up on that and fine tune a few things here and there... but how?

I had decided on a writing program, but for two years God kept closing the doors to the one I had planned to take. I used that time to study grammar and strengthen my vocabulary. At the end of that second year, God closed that same door one more time, and I began to get frustrated -- maybe God didn't really want me to write.

One night, after meeting with my writer's group at Books-A-Million, I decided to pick up a writing magazine. I grabbed a Writer's Digest and sat down right there in the store and started reading it. I came to an ad for the Christian Writer's Guild. I had never heard of it before, but I had an attack of Holy Ghost bumps that instant and knew God was telling me something.

I spent a week learning everything I could about the CWG, and in that time God opened the doors wide for me to start the writing program. Then I knew, all at once, why He had been shutting doors for two years. The secular program I had planned to attend wasn't where He wanted me. He wanted me intensly focused on Christian writing - something I would have missed in the secular program.

We've all heard the saying, "God doesn't call the equipped, He equips the called." Well, that is definitely me. I am so completely a work in progress, but He is doing something amazing in me. I know because I have never been so at peace with any other task He has ever given me.

As soon as I started the Apprentice program at the CWG, I studied the scripture below during my quiet time. Anytime I become unsure of my abilities, I jump full force into this verse and I know God's got me covered:

To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. – 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

For humor purposes, here is my 5th grade poem that caused all the trouble. It's been in my head for years, and reading it written, I'm thinking my 5th grade teacher may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed.

Butterfly

Way up high, high in the sky
There flies a lovely butterfly

Yellow, orange, black, and red
Once a caterpillar, now has fled.

The prettiest one that you should see
Should be the one you choose for me.

But if it should fly a long, long way
We could just go outside and play

Until it returns, soon again, someday.

Writing From an Honest Place

I once took a poem I wrote and converted it to a short story. The story ended up being stunning and rhythmic. And because my poems tend to be more personal and written in darker moments of my life than my stories, it was the most honest and uncompromising story I have ever written. I loved the result.

I wrote this to a friend on the Christian Writer's Guild forum tonight and realized I gave myself some insight in the process. Lately, I've been burdened in my writing. I feel like I'm trying to squeeze myself into a style of Christian writing that isn't quite fitting. It's not from external pressure but from my own internal uncertainties.

What I'm finding when I write is that I am somewhat removed from my stories. There is a density there that I can't seem to poke holes in. I am making my own personal compromise in an effort to appeal to a Christian audience.

And yet, I am a Christian writer. I wouldn't even be in this writing place if God hadn't led me here and told me to write for Him.

Maybe my ideas of what a Christian audience wants are inaccurate. There are times when I write that I come to a split in the road. One way leads me on the straight and narrow, and the other explores something a bit more crooked and broad - maybe even dark at times. I almost always choose the straight and narrow because that's what Christians want to read... right? When I do this -- choose the path I'm less inclined to choose -- I sacrifice the passion, the honesty, the connection of my story.

The funny thing is, every time I take that straight and narrow path, something tells me I'm on the wrong road, but I persist because it's safe.

I have considered that maybe God didn't send me to this place to write to a Christian audience. I can be a Christian writer and appeal to a secular audience. What an incredible honor it would be to be sent to the writing field to speak to God's lost children. How does a Christian writer balance such a call? In this day, how do you meet unbelievers where they are and not compromise your Christian values and commandments?

Is it possible to appeal to both? Is a story that is not blatantly Christian throughout, but that you know is nothing but Christian in the end, going to hold the attention of a Christian reader until they realize its message? Is a story that isn't filled with graphic sex, morbid violence, or a multitude of obscenities going to hold the attention of an unbeliever long enough for them to be gripped by the possibility of Christianity?

I love thinking things out in a blog because as I read through what I've just written, something occurred to me. It doesn't matter which path I follow as long as it's the path that God is on. If I look ahead and He's not in front of me, I have to change paths. If I stay on the wrong path, then it's not actually His message I'm delivering.

Father, may I always write from a truthful, passionate, and connected place, and above all else, may I carry only Your message as I go. - Amen