I have never kept it a secret that I’m a faith based writer. I write stories that thrill me as a fiction reader – and also have a strong spiritual emphasis. Sometimes it’s overt, others more subdued. An example is my Star Trek novel – while it seems like a strongly militaristic novel of war, there are strong elements of redemption. This is a consistent theme in fiction, running throughout Lord of the Rings and many other great novels.
One of the questions faith based writers must face is this – what elements may I use in my writings as a person of faith? There are three conventions commonly advocated by faith based literary agents – and apparently I run afoul of one of them.
Language
Profanity is unwelcome in faith based fiction. If you’ve got a gutter mouth, work strongly on curbing that for your writings. There’s a great deal of examples in which your protagonist can spew profanities without listing them. I don’t need to give too many examples here – phrases like “cursed up a blue streak” etc. As a writer, be ingenious with how you avoid using profanity. Try to avoid borrowing how someone else has done it! I make no excuses for being strongly influenced by Heinlein and how he avoided it. The fact is, I read everything Heinlein wrote that I could find – and that especially included his 50’s-early 60’s years. Alas, most of that was in years past extremely difficult to obtain.
Adult Situations
Adult situations and Relations is not welcome in faith based fiction – at all. This is the third rail of faith based fiction. You cannot and should not cross this boundary. I was surprised to find that the most common type of faith based fiction was romance novels, which really surprises me (Faithlife has recently added materials by faith based publishers to their library, and a number of them turned up recently as free novels for the month of April – I don’t read romance, so I didn’t get any). Perusing faith based literary agents and faith based writers blogs has turned up a number of people asking how far they can push this – not a question you should be asking. If you personally feel a need to include this in your writings, then seek traditional genres and publishers.
Violence
To my surprise, this has been a universally voiced subject that should not be present in faith based fiction. I’m dumbfounded, because a great deal of what is written in the Bible deals with violence and violent situations, often described in graphic terms. In just one chapter I’ve read in the last two weeks, a teenager throws a rock from a sling so hard at a man the rock embeds itself in his forehead. The man is beheaded a moment later.
That’s pretty graphic. As a writer, I’d depict that carefully, because I want the reader to see that. A fourteen year old boy facing a Philistine of gigantic proportions in a life or death dual. He’s heavily armored, the boy is not. The boy spins his sling as the nine and a half foot tall man charges him with a roar, hefting his spear… BANG! The rock smashes into the giant’s forehead, embedding itself into bone. The giant spins and drops to the ground, insensate.
That’s really difficult to write without dealing with the violent content. However, in a writers’ group I was part of until recently, a Christian literary agent repeated emphatically that he did not consider graphic violence to have any place in faith based fiction. He actually was so offended by my discussion of it that he stopped participating in that group, which I feel very badly about.
I can argue that, but here’s the bottom line – he’s a literary agent. He reads manuscripts and determines whether or not he wishes to represent that writer and try to get their manuscripts sold to publishers. This leaves me one of two options – remove the violence from my novels, or self publish.
The Left Behind series did not shy away from violence. A character that makes his appearance halfway through the series uses martial arts to fight his way to freedom. Several people are shot to death. There’s death and destruction based on earthquakes and other miraculous events, sometimes graphically depicted. But the consensus seems to be this – violence has no place in faith based fiction. I am the lone dissenter.
How you can help
Since several of my novels contain violent matter (they are action novels), I’d appreciate feedback from readers. Tell me what you think I should do – should I go through and surgically edit out all the violence from my novels, or should I resort to self publishing? What do you think? What choice would you make?
