How To Write Better Fiction

The Revd Dr Peter Leithart argues at:

http://www.credenda.org/issues/18-2liturgia.php

that if Protestants are to write good fiction, they need a better understanding of the sacraments. It’s a little while since I hastily read the article, but the gist is that modern evangelicals tend to have a Zwinglian approach to the sacraments, seeing them as mere (empty) symbols, pointing to something rather unrelated to themselves. In contrast, a richly sacramental view of the world allows for the idea that actual things in the creation (or in stories) can be truly themselves but also have a real significance beyond themselves. Evangelical authors are thus prone to fall into flat literalism or unreal allegory rather than seeing the meaning in, with, under and beyond things in the world (or in the stories they write).

So, to write better fiction, get a better grasp of the sacraments, signs and the things signified.

Somewhat related, no doubt, is stuff about affirming creation and incarnation, and not separating the sacred and the secular, or the physical and the spiritual, nature and grace.

We might also think that great fiction requires at least a quasi-sacramental view of the power of words: we have to allow for words to have real meaning beyond themselves, to have genuine significance and to effectually work on the reader so that he is moved and changed by what he reads.