Book Review: A Novel Idea

Those of you who read here regularly know I’ve been working on reading A Novel Idea: Everything You Need to Know about Writing Inspirational Fiction a bit at a time in-between other books. I felt I’d get more out of it that way than reading it all at once. I finally finished it this week!

This book is a treasure trove for anyone considering writing Christian fiction. A multitude of published authors, from well-known names like Karen Kingsbury, Francine Rivers, Robin Lee Hatcher, and Randy Alcorn, to authors I’ve heard of but haven’t read yet, to some I’ve not heard of at all, have all contributed chapters that make up this book.

The chapters cover just about everything you might like to know, like how to map out the plot, how to develop characters, point of view, finding your own “voice,” the characteristics and nuances of Christian fiction, how not to make it “preachy,” all the way down to writing proposals and networking.

If you click on either the linked title or the book above, then click “Additional views” and then “Next,” you’ll see a list of the table of contents along with the author who contributed each chapter.

It would be impossible in one little review to give you an overall flavor of the book since it covers so much material by so many authors, but I wanted to bring out just a couple of morsels that particularly stood out to me.

In Robin Lee Hatcher’s chapter “How I Felt God Calling Me to Write For Him,” she shares that she had a career in the secular market, but as she contemplated writing Christian fiction, she wondered, “Can’t I reach more lost people with a Christian worldview in my secular books than I can writing for those who are already Christians? Isn’t writing for the Christian market preaching to the choir?”

The answer she sensed from the Lord was, “Yes. And the choir is sick.”

Very true. I know in my own life, not only do I read for fun and enrichment, but Christian fiction has convicted and instructed me as well.

Ron Benrey has some great thoughts in his chapter “Distinctives of Christian Fiction,” especially a section about unrealistic Christianity and Christian characters.

An especially intriguing chapter is Athol Dickson’s “Evil in Fiction.” One charge I’ve heard against Christian fiction is it’s not being gritty or edgy enough (though I think most of it that I have read does well enough), but Athol reminds us “of the novelist’s most powerful tool, the reader’s imagination” (p. 221) and the need to avoid “[becoming] part of the problem we set out to solve” (p. 225) by including too much evil or too much detail. Yet evil must be included both to be real and to provide plot and motivation. But Athol advises:

To the extent that evil titillates or revolts his readers, the author has failed. Titillation makes his readers a friend of the very thing the author wants them to oppose alongside Christ. Revulsion shuts down readers’ imaginations, because when they look away, the novelist has lost them (p. 224).

Instead, he advises, aim for “hatred of the evil and a deep desire to see it vanquished ” (p. 223). And remember “A writer shows the deeper truth of evil best by shining light most brightly on what is good, while never letting readers forget what waits within the shadows” (p. 222).

Good stuff.

This book is filled with good stuff, and it is going on my shelf to be referred to often.

If you have any inclination toward writing Christian fiction, this book is an invaluable tool. And some of the chapters, like that on evil, might even be enlightening to those who read Christian fiction without a desire to write it.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)