How Does Grace Happen?
A literature professor at GFU, Guadeloupe Garcia-McCall, recently published her fifth novel. We had a free moment before a faculty senate meeting, and I congratulated her for the publication—and I said she would have to give me advice about writing, since I want to work on fiction after I retire from full-time teaching. Without hesitation, Guadeloupe pulled a book from her bag: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody. So far, I’ve read almost half of “the last book on novel writing you’ll ever need” (the blurb on the book cover). I’m learning! And I’m grateful to Guadeloupe.
Brody says a good novel must have more than “fun and games,” the adventures or plot elements that usually appear on the back cover: “a recent college graduate takes a job with a twenty-first century ‘witch’ and combats international sex trafficking,” or “alien technology snatches a monastery novice to a distant planet—and the middle of a war.” We often categorize stories in these ways: mysteries, adventures, coming of age stories, horror stories, love stories, and so on. When a would-be reader first picks up a book, it’s the “fun and games” that probably induces her to open to page one. But most readers won’t keep reading, Brody says, unless there is something deeper.
Readers need to care about the story’s hero. Brody claims we want protagonists who need to grow or change. If the hero enters and exits the story without learning anything or losing something or overcoming great challenges or something—if the hero is exactly the same before and after the fun and games, we lose interest. The action elements of the story may draw us to the book, but it’s the people, especially the protagonist, that matter.
As I say, I’m grateful for the book. I need to look more critically at the characters in my stories. I’ve devoted most of my story writing to “fun and games”—the politics, trade, and magic in The Heart of the Sea or alien technology and the sci-fi setting of Castles. Brody is forcing me to look more carefully at my characters. I want readers to root for my heroes; not in the sense that things turn out well for them (not all stories need a happy ending), but in the sense that the hero encounters and overcomes an existential or spiritual problem. This is a weakness, I think, in Buying the Bangkok Girl. Eleanor Urquhart is “little Miss Perfect,” as Ron Mock complained about her; she’s smart, pretty, athletic and always in charge. The story needs more of a sense of danger. Not danger from bad guys; Bangkok Girl has plenty of that. But there needs to some kind of incompleteness in a hero so she can grow, even if the growth is only in a deeper understanding of herself or her relationships.
I want to write good stories, in a double sense. I want readers to enjoy the stories, maybe even be thrilled; but I also want my stories to display the good. Morality is everywhere in our world, because human beings are moral creatures. We are also often stupid and evil. A “good” story ought to display real moral conflict. A good story should invite and provoke the reader to root for good over evil.
Though not a Christian, Iris Murdoch often referred to Christian theological ideas. She said that “grace” can come into a person’s life in strange disguises. Most often, she wrote, the enemy in the moral life is the “fat, relentless ego.” It’s not that people are deliberately wicked or cruel. They just see the world as revolving around themselves. As I’ve often said in class lectures, human beings often see other people as furniture in our lives. But other people are not furniture. As long as we see them that way, we see them falsely. The great thing, and almost impossibly hard thing, to accomplish in the moral life is to see other people accurately, fairly. This is where Murdoch brings in the notion of grace. Something happens to break a character out of egocentricity. It may be success or promotion, but often it is death, disease or disaster. The change forces its way into a person’s life, and if the character responds to the change rightly, it helps her to see her neighbor and herself a bit more truthfully. It’s as if God sends the disease or disaster in order to help the hero see. Murdoch didn’t believe in God, but she did believe in grace, the unexpected nudges that may (or may not) move the character toward the good.
Brody helps to make all this more explicit in my thinking. After I retire, I want to write more fiction. I hope to incorporate Brody’s lessons about the internal plot into my work. I’ve written “fun and games.” It’s not easy, but I can do it. Going forward, I need to build the inward side of my characters. I want to show some grace.
