Thinking about doing a few posts over the next couple of weeks focusing on words. No, don’t start yawning. I’m not talking about parts of speech or a grammar review. More to do with the way we use words in fiction, especially in "Christian fiction." "Faith fiction." "Inspirational fiction." (It’s difficult to get the description right these days, because it varies depending on who’s discussing it.)
One of the subjects that just won’t go away is this issue of more "realism" in Christian fiction. Seen and heard these days around Christian discussion groups, book clubs, the blogosphere, etc. are rants and rumbles about the use of profanity in books released by, but not limited to, Christian publishers. Incidentally, this is an issue that more often than not seems to go along with the use of violence in books produced by Christian publishers. Probably one reason they’re often mentioned hand-in-hand is because of their shock value in faith fiction. Many readers are shocked and/or disturbed if they run into either profanity or strong violence in a book marketed as "Christian fiction" or "faith fiction." The feeling is that it doesn't belong.
So what’s the problem? If writers want to write the more blatant, explicit stuff, let them publish in the general market. If, on the other hand, they prefer to not use profanity or gore, then they can be comfortable in the Christian market. Seems simple enough. Right?
If only.
Some writers--and publishers, albeit few--are bothered by the "boundaries" set up in Christian fiction. They find them restrictive and inhibiting. They believe they prohibit realism in our fiction, and they’re determined to break out, to go beyond the pale, to write "authentically" and "realistically." They argue that they can’t have a main character who’s a New York City policeman saying "shucks" or "doggone it" when he’s confronting drug dealers and murderers on a daily basis. And that’s true. But there are other ways to depict such characters realistically without having them turn the air blue every time they open their mouths, while still staying true to a readership that counts on Christian publishing to refrain from dishing up trash talk in their books.
Before I go any further with this, for those of you who just can’t help wondering what a Christian author knows about profanity and violence anyway...she’s probably some little old blue-haired lady who would storm the library if she ran into a curse word in her own nightmares...let me clear that up. I’m an Irish cop’s daughter who grew up in the narrow community of policemen and their families. You can assume that I know about profanity and violence.
The concern of some authors and their publishers seems to be for the sake of making our fiction realistic enough to appeal to those outside of Christ. Again and again ad nauseam the rationale comes up that we can’t hope to establish any credibility with readers--especially those outside the CBA marketplace--if we can't deal "realistically" with "reality." In other words, if a character would swear in real life, then how authentic is it to sanitize his words in our fiction? Let him be real. If a character is having an affair or struggling with being gay or addicted to pornography or drugs, then give him the lifestyle and the vocabulary that will make him real to the masses.
There’s a not-so-quiet rebellion going on among a few who resent editors and publishers "watering down" their fiction, bleeping out the profanity or graphic violence, and some seem to harbor an equal measure of resentment for the booksellers, even though those booksellers are in a much better position than we writers are to know our market and understand the readers of our fiction .
Pointing out that there’s a place for the kind of writing and publishing they apparently want to do, a place that permits the kind of "pull out all the stops" fiction they seem bent on writing doesn’t seem to register. It’s true though: in the general marketplace, they’re not likely to find their fiction bleeped or diluted. But they insist that the barriers in faith fiction need to be broken down--even though very few of the readers they’re trying to reach will be found shopping in Christian bookstores.
It’s been observed fairly often that there are Christian authors--and authors of other faiths or of no particular faith--who publish in the general market, where, although they certainly have the freedom to write as much profanity and graphic violence as they wish, don’t. John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, and Jan Karon come immediately to mind, but there are many others as well. Their books don’t contain enough profanity or ugliness to raise the eyebrows of our grandmothers. Are their stories realistic? Well, millions of readers seem to think so. Readers who are buying their books, not in Christian bookstores where the content is supposedly "monitored," but in mainstream bookstores where they could just as easily be buying pornography and vampire lit.
"Darker," "edgy," and "unsafe," are words that apply to some of the fiction considered "realistic." Now it’s no secret that the CBA publishing market has never been the place for that kind of fiction, and despite the push that every now and then surfaces with the accompanying controversy, most likely will never be. But each writer has the freedom to write what he wants, and I certainly recognize the satisfaction in doing just that. What I don’t seem to get is this resolve to continue to work in a market that may never accept one’s efforts.
It’s all about choice. CBA or the general market.
Too often the Christian publishing industry is viewed as a training ground. It’s not. In truth, it's really not the best place to go to get in shape for the general market. It is a place where you can be free to include your faith element in your fiction without fear of having it removed by a non-believing editor. It’s also a place where you can give your readers what seems to be less and less common in today’s general market: a good story without the need to include the obligatory profanity, graphic gore, and gynecological, clinically detailed sex scenes.
It’s not that we don’t address controversial issues in our novels. I’ve been involved with CBA and Christian fiction now for over twenty years, and I’m not sure I could think of any subjects that haven’t shown up in our fiction, especially over the past ten years. Yes, I’ve heard you: it’s all in the way we’ve handled them. We haven’t done them justice because of the lack of realism. Yadda yadda.
But up until a few years ago, few seemed to find it necessary to include profanity, raw violence, or deliberate and detailed sensuality to deal with these subjects "realistically." True, different topics have been addressed in different ways by different authors with different publishers. And, yes, we have a couple of publishers now who seem surpisingly comfortable with the idea that we need to break down all the boundaries and go for stark and unabridged "realism," especially when writing about relationships--all in the name of "raising the bar" for Christian fiction, of course. (I’ll admit that I can’t help but question the motivation behind that mind set, in part because I’ve sensed no similar push toward showing more graphic depictions of the personal hygiene habits we would hope are a part of these "realistic relationships.")
I have a question: let’s just assume for a moment that we do shift or completely remove the boundaries, tear down the walls, scale the mountains and conquer whatever obstacles have been holding us back from the kind of "realism" proponents of this "edgier" fiction are demanding. What will be accomplished that hasn’t already been accomplished in the general market? And at that point, what, exactly, will define "Christian" or "faith" or "inspirational" or "moral" fiction? What will make it any different from all the rest of the fiction on the shelves?
I’ve long believed, as do many other writers far more accomplished and much wiser than I, that hosing our fiction with profanity or gore or overt, graphic sexual situations amounts to nothing more than lazy writing. It’s so much easier to fall back on the cliched rather than employ the imagination and make the effort to find more creative ways to express a scene, a situation, or a character’s emotions. Otherwise, you’re wasting your gift. Words in vain. The careful writer won’t succumb to the easy way out.
Edgy novels. Safe novels. Dark novels. Unsafe novels. Reality fiction. Cotton-candy fiction. Good books. Bad books. So many epithets, when indeed fiction–Christian or otherwise–is meant to tell a story. That’s the basic, the fundamental reason for its existence–tell a story. I liked what Mark Bertrand said the other day at The Master's Artist about safe fiction and unsafe: Safe or Good? Redux
"When I read a good book, I tremble. The goodness of it calls me out. It exposes me. It pushes me and dares me to push back. In spite of that, I delight in it, because I was made to delight in goodness, truth and beauty, as alien as they are in their purer forms to my everyday life. I tremble because that goodness recalls to mind God's goodness, the destabilizing power behind all manifestations of good. I don't want to write safe books, but I don't want to write unsafe books, either. My calling takes me to a different level, a place where there are more options than those two."
Might it not be worth considering that the One who understood reality more clearly than anyone else...the One who indicted the Pharisees...who struck out in anger at the money lenders in the temple...who told the woman at the well all about her sinful lifestyle...who moved in and out among the people of the world, including those of different faiths and those of no faith at all...who managed to shine the light on truth and show the path to real life versus the death and eternal damnation fostered by the lies of Satan--did it all, changing hearts and saving lives, by focusing not on ugliness and brutality, not by cursing the sinful, not even by giving a blow-by-blow description of sin, but instead by speaking words of gentleness and giving examples of goodness and grace, purity, compassion, and love?
Think, too, on this: is it our calling to be so consumed by realism that we mar the beauty and dilute the power of a good story, a story that deserves to be told in the finest, most eloquent way possible? A story the worth and goodness of which will ultimately be judged, not by the bookstore owners, not even by our readers, but by the One who summed up the greatest mystery of the ages in three words: "It is finished."
My two (maybe twenty) cents worth.
BJ
Sometimes ... God gives us our dreams. But often not in the ways we might have hoped for. And that's a good thing, because His way is always better. 
