\u00a0<\/p>\n
II. This talk will have three parts.<\/p>\n
III. If there is anything that is clear, it\u2019s that writing is more than any other art form, an attempt to communicate in an articulate way. The sole color on the pallet of the writer is words. Great writing moves immediately from being a rambling monologue, and becomes a dialogue with the reader\u2019s heart and mind. The pictures you create with your words get matched to the reader\u2019s memory and imagination, and he or she begins to edit and highlight and fill-out what you offer from his or her own experience. This happens more or less according to whatever level of history the reader brings to your work.<\/p>\n
Having said this, I am not sure I believe I the idea of writing for a demographic. I do basically permit the idea of using fewer and more simpler words and plots for young children. But beyond that, if you are too concerned with writing \u201cfor a particular kind of person, you run the risk of pandering. (Except in certain kinds of very specific non-fiction situations: A book for recovering adult alcoholics, or a book for teachers, or a book on how to be a better gambler.)<\/p>\n
It would be an interesting meditation to consider what Jesus would find if he walked in to the average Christian Publishing House.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood Morning. Welcome to Faith House. We Save Your Stories So You Can Save the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you. My name is Jesus. I\u2019d like to speak to an editor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay. Which editor would you like to see?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat kind of things to you write?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMostly stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor whom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor whom are your stories meant?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUm, humans?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me one of your stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, okay. Well, there was a man who had two sons. Now, the younger son \u2014\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, that\u2019s young adult fiction. That\u2019s Larry. First door down the hall.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, the Lord walks down the hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello, Mr. Jesus, isn\u2019t it? So I understand you have some stories for us. Tell me one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay. One day, a man set off on the road to Jericho. But on the way, he was set upon by thieves. They beat him, stripped him and left him for dead \u2013<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoa! Just a sec. This is a bit too much for the young adult market. What else do you have?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I have one about a man who owns a vineyard that he had leased out to tenants. And when he sends his son to collect the rent, they kill him and \u2013-
\n\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cWait, wait, wait. There you go with that violence stuff again. It\u2019s a bit too much of an edge for us. Do you have any stories where people don\u2019t get killed?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yes. I guess. I have one about a woman who loses her gold coin \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat, great! That\u2019s Family Stewardship!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then, she sweeps her whole house to \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n
This is Women\u2019s Devotional. That\u2019s Laura down the hall.\u201d<\/p>\n
IV. Start with clip from a movie that demonstrates this \u201cwriting to the human person\u201d because it speaks to the whole broad audience out there. Tell me, who do you think is the audience of this piece? Here is the opening of \u201cUP.\u201d<\/p>\n
V. If an editor tells you to write for a certain demographic, I would nod my head and conclude that they are asking me to be intentionally narrow in my focus. Narrowness is not a descriptor of great writing. (I don\u2019t know about your church, but in the last thirty years mine has gone through an exhausting experimentation process of trying to make special services for \u201cyoung people\u201d. We\u2019ve been dragged through the antechamber of musical and liturgical hell in pursuit of crowds of keening teenagers who might some day all proclaim with one enthusiastic voice, that this or that service is \u201ccool.\u201d Invariably, the young people demur and if pressed will shrug with a touch of embarrassment that the \u201cContemporary Worship Service music is kind of, well, lame.\u201d We need to give them more credit that if kids are in Church, they are there as part of the Body of Worshippers and they are willing to join themselves to however the other sheep are bleating. We have a Gregorian Chant revival going on in the Catholic Church\u2026.<\/p>\n
VI. Idea for this talk came from working with our Act One students \u2013 the \u201cproblem of commerciality.\u201d Good editors always tell you two seemingly contradictory things:
\nA) Write what you know, AND
\nB) What you Write Must Be of Interest to the Market
\nC) These are not really contradictory<\/p>\n
VII. Write What Your Heart Knows
\nA) What do they mean by, \u201cWrite what you know?\u201d I was a nun. I worked in a fish market for a Mormon minister fisherman. I lived in the servants quarters of the Marble House in Newport. I have worked in Hollywood for ten years. I have a family member who is an alcoholic.
\nB) They mean at one level \u2013 DO YOUR HOMEWORK. On this level, editors are bemoaning the writers who literally haven\u2019t earned their place at the table. The writer\u2019s job is to do the research. It is to fill out a new world, or to add fresh details to a world we thought we knew so that we now see it in depth. Research is always doable. It helps me to set a script in Newport, RI because I have already done the research. Don\u2019t set a script in a scuba diving school near the Great Barrier Reef unless you have done your research in the kind of people who become divers, intricacies of scuba gear, diving education approaches, ways divers die, how cool the underwater thing is, Australians, and the Great Barrier Reef. SO, WRITE WHAT YOU HAVE COME TO KNOW ABOUT.<\/p>\n
C) But editors and their ilk mean more than this too. Write what you know is an appeal for you to basically write what your soul knows. I was tempted to say \u201cheart\u201d here, particularly because it sounds nice to say \u201cWrite What Your heart Knows,\u201d but I mean more than just your emotions. Animals have emotions. Your soul, in the classical sense, is where your intellect, will and desires reside. Your soul is the place where your humanity lives. Write from that place. It is where you brood from \u2013 as opposed to just reason. It\u2019s where you dream from. It\u2019s where you suffer from. It\u2019s where you feel remorse from. It is where you choose from. It is where you love from. It is where you pray from. If you write from that place, then you are speaking soul to soul with your reader. Not to \u201cyoung adults\u201d but to \u201cyoung souls.\u201d Not even to children but to \u201cbaby souls\u201d. Speak to their fundamental condition not to their particular situation. What is it they yearn for? Of you write to kids as if they are yearning for the newest skinny jeans, or the latest iPod, you are dehumanizing them and they will disdain you. Rightly so. These are not truly the things for which a human soul yearns.<\/p>\n
D) You speak to human souls through beauty. Using words to achieve wholeness, harmony and radiance are the primary task of the writer. We have to remind ourselves over and over, with Dostoevsky, that it is Beauty that will save the world. Not cleverness. Not cuteness. Not the mere witness to God. (I am going to give a talk this afternoon on What is the Beautiful.)<\/p>\n
E) The philosopher Etienne Gilson says that beauty is in more than just wholeness, harmony and radiance. He says there is also style, originality and universality. Style has to do with talent. Originality has to do with a new thought. Universality has to do with the fact that it speaks to thoughtful people beyond their time or culture. Don\u2019t write a jealous character until you have something unique to say about jealousy. Or at least, a fresh way of showing us how it looks when it is asking for the salt shaker at dinner. Don\u2019t write about the power of art. Write about the way the purple paint feels on the fingers of the three year old as she smears it with wonder across the new white carpet in the living room. Don\u2019t write about friendship until you have something profound to say about friendship. Or at least, how it looks on Joe\u2019s seven year old face the first time his \u201c Mike\u201d best friend opts to throw the ball to Matt the fourth grader instead of Joe.<\/p>\n
VIII. What is Mass Appeal? My sister and her husband stand at the movie theater. They look up and read the movies. \u201cWhat\u2019s playing?\u201d \u201cWell, there\u2019s an indie movie about two sisters who were abused\u2014\u201c What else is playing? \u201cFire and Ice\u2026\u201d \u201cThat sounds interesting.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s about two guys on a cooking show who .\u201d \u201cWhat else?\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s that new drama , House of Love and Pain.\u201d \u201cWhat else?\u201d \u201cMe, Myself and Irene.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d It\u2019s a comedy \u2013 about a guy with split personalities. And they are both in love with the same woman.\u201d That\u2019s funny. Let\u2019s try that.<\/p>\n
IX. Commerciality \u2013 that is the quality that makes an editor shove other editors out of the way to have lunch with you, is found in the intersection of \u201cWhat Your Soul Knows\u201d with the most pressing cries of the world of this moment.<\/p>\n
X. What is the cry of this world? Maybe start by asking what was the cry of the world in 1968? What were the mantras of the age? What are the mantras of this age? \u201cWhatever.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t trust anybody over 50.\u201d \u201cMy mother is my best friend.\u201d \u201cThe American Dream is dead.\u201d \u201cThat is so five minutes ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
XII. Having said all the above about opposing narrow demographics, it seems to me to be perfectly appropriate to size up the souls who are out there, so that you can address them with intentionality. We are living in a moment of generational change. Nobody is perfectly defined by their generation. They are defined by the choices they have made. It tells me almost nothing at all about him if you say that your character, Johnny is the son of a serial killer. In the same way, it tells me nothing if you say Suzy is the daughter of a pastor. You begin to tell me something about Johnny when you note that he generally slips his snack to the poor kid in the class.<\/p>\n
XIII. I am thinking a lot about the choices made by many people in the Boomer Generation, and from a pastoral sense, what they need to hear now so that they will cleave to God in their final years.<\/p>\n
A) The Boomer Soul reality: Disillusioned. They say things like, \u201cI long for unconditional love, but it doesn\u2019t exist. Life is a cruel joke.\u201d \u201cI wish I hadn\u2019t had that choice.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t fret! Life begins at 70!\u201d Many are coming around to tremendous guilt. Many are without real bonds of family because of divorce, abortion, various kinds of disassociation and clamoring after unfetteredness. What looks like being free in your vigorous years, looks very much like loneliness in your twilight years. Still outraged. Still fighting against the man. Probably, having their stored up riches jerked out from under them. Hence, very angry at how unfair it all is.<\/p>\n
B) What do they need to hear? \u201cWhile there is life, there is hope.\u201d There is still time to be the elders. Accept that death is coming and prepare for it with grace and generosity. Don\u2019t try to compete with those who have youth. Be unfashionable and slower and sicker and tired. Be gray haired and a little dry. Learn to pause and sit, and stop having to be looking to be recreating the Woodstock thing every other year in your life. Realize that it isn\u2019t all about you, but that there is a lot of joy in making life about the people.<\/p>\n
XIV. A) The Millenial reality: Worried. Unmotivated. Resentful. Entitled. Under-educated. Lazy. Impatient. Paralyzed. They are a generation that has been bred on having easy, fast solutions. (Airplane story.)<\/p>\n
B) What do they need to hear? Perseverance is possible. Commitment is possible. Suffering is not the worst thing that can happen to you \u2013 the loss of your humanity is much worse. The best things take time. Think abut it. At a certain point, we are all equally unlovable to each other. We are only worth it to each other because we are worth it to God. Family is something that lasts through effort. Babies haven\u2019t changed, even as mommies continue to change.<\/p>\n
XIV. In conclusion, I would say that as writers, we shouldn\u2019t try so hard to be relevant as if that was something outside of ourselves, over there on a shelf. The fundmental relevance is human nature. What it longs for. What it is innately directed towards. Your Our effort should be, as JPII expressed it, to create new epiphanies of beauty that will remind your readers what it is to be truly human. And make them long for their true nature. And love it in a way which will be gratitude to the Creator.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[NOTE FROM BARB: Here is the outline for a talk I gave this weekend at the San Diego Christian Writers Guild Conference. Several people asked me for the notes, so I told them I\u2019d post them.] Who Is Your Audience? Writing What Your Soul Knows for the San Diego Christian Writers Conference September 25, 2010 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n