Q & A: "Writerly Questions"--Part 3

I'm departing from the format I've used for the other two "Writerly Questions" entries by answering only one question this time. I think it's an important question, but the answer is lengthy. Actually, this response is updated and revised from a blog entry I wrote some time ago when the subject came up. This particular question seems to come round fairly often, mostly, I suspect, because of reviews, contest entry critiques, and other blog entries.

Q. Could you please explain to me what "sentimental fiction" means? I've seen this used in book reviews and it was also, in a very negative way, used to describe one of my books submitted in a contest. 

A. The term "sentimental fiction" is almost always used in a negative way, because the inference is that the writing is mawkish, opinionated, and employs excessive, affected emotion. There's a legitimate case for this criticism with some fiction. If you read carefully, with an eye open to ways the author "works" to evoke certain emotions in you as a reader--sadness, love, sympathy, elation, outrage, etc.--you might detect certain deliberate attempts to squeeze out the feelings the author is hoping for. Most often you can spot these ploys by a character's emphasis on his/her own feelings. Instead of writing in such a way that will bring the reader into the character's world and her life, an author may effect a dramatic stream of emotional thoughts or dialogue, telling how the character feels, or "showing" those feelings by the use of florid prose or scenes with overwritten, turbulent emotion.  

You may already be aware that a novel doesn't necessarily have to contain "too much emotion" or "false emotion" to be considered "sentimental fiction" by the critics. Faith fiction seems to be a favorite target. One almost gets the impression that the less real emotion, the better. Seldom, if ever, do you see this criticism hurled at a "literary novel." That's because in many literary novels,  emotion is deliberately kept always on the periphery, if it exists at all, and the reader is kept at a certain distance from the charaters. 

Unfortunately, over the past few years we've seen a trend toward an indiscriminate use of this phrase. It seems that it's become all too easy for reviewers and critics to pass this judgment on a whim. There are certain elements that will almost automatically evoke the label of "sentimental fiction," especially in regard to "Christian fiction" or "genre fiction" (a term that sometimes is used more to belittle than to categorize). For example: devotion (as in the devotion of the faithful or religious); romance (especially the "light" romantic story or the love stories depicted in inspirational novels, as opposed to an explicitly sexual, often dark story of destructive passion); morality; and patriotism. (The latter is one that's almost guaranteed to touch off a particularly wild-eyed censure.)

Frankly, I find the truly unemotional, dispassionate story–-no matter how extraordinary the writer's technique and style happen to be--deadly boring. If a novel's characters feel nothing, react to nothing, care about nothing, then I find myself leaning toward the conclusion that there is nothing in this book I care about reading ... and go looking for a better book.

But that doesn't mean I have any patience with the author who deliberately tries to wring emotion from me, whatever emotion that might be. Let's face it: when you've been writing (and reading) for years, you can see those efforts to manipulate your emotions coming at you, and it's annoying, at the least. I do, however, believe that genuine, natural emotion in the hands of a skillful, compassionate writer is a good thing, a necessary element and vital to our enjoyment of fiction.

So what is genuine sentiment in fiction? How can a writer avoid the too-obvious attempts to make readers feel what we want them to feel? Write with compassion as opposed to sentimentality. Learn to love your characters. Strive to respect them as people, as individuals, so you can honestly care, and care deeply, about what happens to them. Even our dark characters, our antagonists, deserve to be developed fully and realistically. No matter how unlikable or even despicable they may be, they still deserve our understanding, our honesty. In order to reach that kind of connection with characters, we have to know them--really know them, however long it takes. Until I know my characters well, I don't begin writing the story.

Instead of trying to purposely kindle sorrow or elation or indignation or frustration or any of the other emotions familiar to all readers, we need to develop characters in whom these emotions will come forth naturally as the characters work through the events of their lives. In this way, we allow emotion to exist and be revealed in and by our characters. We bring characters to our fiction who are so alive that the reader can feel the breath of those characters on her face as they pass by.

That won't necessarily eliminate criticism of our fiction, especially if we're writing novels that include hope and redemption. There is simply no way, no matter how brilliantly one may write, to avoid negative reviews from the critic who refuses to allow a place for the Christian worldview, who disparages that worldview. But if our characters are so real, so alive, that we can follow them through their world and their lives with understanding and respect and compassion, we can offer our readers the opportunity to do the same.

We need to remember that readers don't care in the least about reviews or criticism of our work. They care about the reading experience we can give them, the story–-the temporary world they can enter through our skill and artistry as writers, and perhaps what they can bring out of that world as a grace or an idea or an insight.

BJ