Ventriloquy and Belief

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I finished a book the other day.  (Surprise!)  The Daughter of Time was one of those books that crept up on my consciousness for several months before I got around to actually buying it, and from buying it to reading it.  I don't think I had heard about it before this year, but I understand it is a pretty popular and famous work: a landmark book in the mystery genre, in fact. It is, I think, either the last or the second-to-last book in her Inspector Alan Grant series, the most celebrated, and takes place entirely within the walls of a hospital room.  (Which, by the by, gets quite old.)

The main character is a Scotland Yard Inspector, laid up for several weeks after an injury incurred on the job.  To keep him engaged while he's lying on his back staring at the ceiling, a friend brings him a collection of portraits from historical cold cases - everyone from Mary, Queen of Scots to Louis XVII, the boy-king.  Only one of them, however, catches Grant's eye: a painting of Richard III.  Intrigued by the story of how the wicked uncle murdered his innocent nephews, Grant begins to conduct a police investigation from his hospital bed.  An acquaintance assists by conducting all the research, and the story progresses methodically through back-and-forth conversation between the two men.

Unsurprisingly, this also gets old.  It would be bound to get old in any story that takes place within the same four walls with - let me think - one main character and only about five other people who regularly drift through to talk.  But I realized not far into the book that part of the oldness had to do less with those factors and more with the story not actually being a story.  It is a vindication of Richard III, plain and very simple.  Now, I happen to take an interest in Richard and could follow Tey's arguments with relative equanimity; but even agreeing, I was extraordinarily peeved by the authoress' tactic.  Because it becomes apparent as soon as Richard III's portrait shows up that what you, reader, are getting is Tey's opinion en toto, as articulated by Character 1 and Character 2 with occasional prompting from Random Other Peoples.  It isn't a novel, it's just, well, historical preachiness.

The Daughter of Time is an extreme case, and I would go so far as to wager that Tey intended for it to be.  The trouble, however - the trouble of an invasive author, if I could put it that way - is one that crops up and should crop up before every writer.  We've all heard books described as "too preachy."  It's usually applied to Christian fiction, and it is all too easy to stick our noses in the air and determine that people only say that because there is no longer a belief in objective truth.  Which is very probably the case, but does nothing to alleviate the issue as far as good writing is concerned.

We all have, or ought to have, core beliefs.  If we think we don't, it is only that we don't know what those core beliefs are; and at that point we had either better not write, or better keep our writing private, for the world doesn't need anymore hem-hah-ing and prevaricating.  So I'll start with the statement that we all have beliefs, and that on some level, we desire our writing to reflect that.  We hardly want readers thinking we condone abortion, or adultery, or marriage between believers and unbelievers, when we think just the opposite.  And oftentimes we not only don't want readers getting the wrong impression, but we also have an overdeveloped desire for them to get the right one.  As in, I-must-cram-the-Gospel-Jesus-and-the-Bible-in-if-I-want-to-honor-God-SOHELPME.

It is not a wholly unreasonable wish, and I am not here to tell writers exactly what balance to strike.  But if we desire to write a good story (which, I believe, is just as God-honoring and perhaps even more so than working in the Gospel inappropriately), we must be more attune to the characters themselves and not so quick to override their individual personalities.  We must let them be who they are.  Sayers mentioned this several times in regard to her famous character Lord Peter Wimsey, whom her Christian readers badgered her to "save" - and she ignored them, because it was not part of the character.  In a lesser sense, this is also true whenever a character of ours begins talking, especially about anything theological or philosophical.  Obviously we don't want to be seen as wrong ourselves, or propagate wrong-thinking, so we are more likely to switch into the mode of writing exactly what we believe to be truth in as clear a way as possible.  We do a little ventriloquy act through our characters, and an astute reader can tell.

Too often we think that in our writing we've got to try to evangelize not just the characters, but the readers - even though it is biblically clear that God ordained that work to be done through His Word preached, not through fiction.  Our business is to craft a good story, to let the characters think and say what they would think and say "if free-moving and placed within the literary field."  If that means that they think and say something wrong, well, then they shall.  It is my opinion that our core beliefs will show through the story in some manner; it just shouldn't be through ventriloquy.

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”

g. k. chesterton

Trinitarian Writing

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Some while ago, during her Friday Tidbits series, Anne Elisabeth Stengl wrote a post on the Rule of Three.  In it she talked about the frequency with which we see patterns of three cropping up in all forms of art: the triangle format in painting, drawing the eye in toward the main subject; the famous threes of literature, from three disturbing blind mice to Goldilocks and the three dinosaurs bears; and the three-pronged repetition in a story's theme.  She made the point that if something is mentioned only once in a story, it will seem of little importance; if it is mentioned only twice, it will seem a coincidence, a mistake on the part of the writer; but if it is mentioned three times, it becomes fixed in the reader's mind as a theme.

Since this is an aspect of writing I find particularly intriguing, her last point caught me most and has stayed with me longest.  Subconsciously, it was something I had recognized before; it appears in my own writing, both in themes and in foreshadowing.  And, upon consideration, it makes sense.  I have done several posts already on Sayers' The Mind of the Maker and won't bore you with yet another, but though I am not generally one for numerology or anything of that sort, it has occurred to me more and more since reading that book how often cycles of three do come into our writing.  Perhaps a very bold parallel cannot be drawn, but I do think there is a sense in which writing is trinitarian - little surprise, since we are made in the image of God. 

Anne Elisabeth's post and, more recently still, a reading of David Copperfield brought these thoughts out with greater clarity - for Dickens, consciously or not, was a master at conveying themes.  I can think of two instances in the book that followed the trinitarian cycle, the first exactly, the second with some latitude.  The first is when David tells his aunt how thoroughly he is in love with Dora, and Betsey Trotwood, knowing his foolishness, shakes her head and says, "Blind! blind! blind!" - which, of course, is also a repetition of three.  It springs to David's mind again at the end of that chapter.  It occurs for the third and last time when David, having lost Dora and being a little wiser now, realizes what he forfeited by his foolishness and recalls his aunt's words.

The second instance, I admit, is a little fuzzier.  There is a moment when the reader is given a glimpse of Steerforth asleep, "with his head upon his arm," as he used to lie at school - this is really a second-time occurrence, since it evokes the memory of the school-days.  It is brought home powerfully again after the shipwreck, when David is brought down to the beach and sees his old friend for the last time.

"But, he led me to the shore.  And on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children - on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered - among the ruins of the home he had wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school."

You don't like Steerforth, since he's a cad, and yet the way the scene is evoked and the repetition of that line still manage to break your heart.  And that, I think, is one of the most interesting elements of a theme: if it is right, if it is true to the story and the characters, it gets down to the reader's heart.  It doesn't have to follow any particular rule - it's visceral, as most writing is - but I do find it fascinating how, in it, the pattern of three consistently reoccurs.  And I wonder, too, if it appeals to us so much because of that image of God. 

what do you think?  have you noticed the pattern?