Writing From Life

An interesting thing happened on my way back from a family reunion two weeks ago. At the end of a very long five hour flight (redundancy intended) between Baltimore and San Diego, a passenger left his seat as we were landing, ran to the front, grabbed the door handles and yelled, “Let me off this plane! I have to get off the plane!”

Oh yeah.   

What did he know that we didn’t?

Two male flight attendants tackled him and pinned him down as we all watched, dumbfounded.  It seemed like an eternity before the wheels finally touched down on the runway, but in reality, it all happened so fast.

What goes through your mind when stuff like this happens?  Initially, you can’t really believe what you’re seeing because you have no frame of reference for it.  It’s not every day that someone goes haywire on a flight and tries to get off before the plane has landed.  Fellow passengers glance around at each other, just as startled and nervous and disbelieving as you, seeking some kind of verification that it’s really happening. 

Like I said, it all happened so fast.  It wasn’t until I’d disembarked and medicated myself with contraband (Starbucks white chocolate mocha) that the reality of it set in.  Wow.  It could have turned out so differently if… no, we’re not going there.   But I wouldn’t be a writer, if at some point I didn’t shamelessly wonder how I could use this in a story.  Seriously, I did.  And after the dust settled, I bet you would, too.

We all write from life.  That’s what gives our stories authenticity.  We process our experiences through the thoughts and actions of our characters.  We hope they can make sense of it for us.  This should make us more observant, and perhaps it does.

Sometimes it’s not the big things that ground a scene or experience, but the small insights and observations that make it real.  Here are some things I remember:

• The young man didn’t struggle after he was tackled.  He grew docile and cooperative immediately.  Had he been subdued or was he biding his time?
• He looked like any other 20-something in shorts and a t-shirt. He could have been my son…or yours.  Tragically innocent or understatedly evil?
• The woman beside me in the aisle seat said that if she’d known he was coming, she would have stuck out her foot to trip him. She went on about how we all need to step up and be proactive about safety now. It brought out her inner ninja.
• Several passengers were gracious and wondered if he had mental health issues, rather than making assumptions of malicious intent.
• The young man was barefooted.  The security officer found his flipflops at his seat. If he’d been intentional about causing harm, wouldn’t he have slipped his feet into his shoes before running to the front? It seemed more likely that he panicked and reacted to some turbulence.
• The whole incident seemed to go on forever because all the window shades were drawn to keep out the heat and we had no idea how close we were to landing other than a vague sense of descent.  I remember thinking (praying, really) “ Come on, touch down!”
• It occurred to me how odd that all three flight attendants were brawny males.  When does that ever happen? In fiction, it would sound contrived, but in reality it was ordained, I think. 
• Even the babies and little children were quiet. There was a moment of silence – a black hole in time where we were standing outside looking in – before people started whispering and questioning.
• I realized that I hadn’t gotten up from my seat in five hours and I needed to (ahem) ‘go’. The five minute wait in our seats for the air marshal to show up was interminable.

The right story might not come along to use my experience, but what I observed in the reaction of such a large group of people to this situation was valuable. I know how a simple thing like altering the physical setting (having the shades drawn, adding some turbulence) can disorient the protagonist, slow down time and heighten suspense.  How one person can find her inner ninja while another sympathizes with a potentially volatile and dangerous character.  How something as simple as shoes left behind can suggest the difference between spontaneous or premeditated actions, a confused soul or a bad guy.

Every writer makes use of personal experiences, but if we fail to look past the obvious event and dissect the nuances of the scene and the reactions of those involved, we may miss the chance to incorporate them into story.

As a side note, when I had time to consider it all, I was deeply moved and grateful for the grace shown to us all on that flight.  God is good!  And I sent an email to the airline commending the flight attendants for the quick response.

How have you incorporated personal experience into your stories?  We’d love to hear!

Swift, Muddy Waters

Readers say they want reality. Publishers say too much reality is a downer and downers don’t sell. They say people who are in the midst of debt, depression, bankruptcy and loss don’t want to read heavy topics. Readers need something distracting and uplifting and the sales numbers bear it out. So we try to tell our stories in positive, uplifting ways but if the story subject is heavy to begin with, how do you even market the book? How do your write back cover copy that conveys both realism and hope – something that will make readers want to take a chance?

How much reality do people really want?

During the 30s, Hollywood produced movies like Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Captains Courageous, and Stagecoach to distract the public from the problems of the Great Depression. Escapism. These stories couched realism in fancy. A woman survives the Civil War, a girl learns she has power over her situations and another runs from her dysfunctional family. A boy learns what it takes to be a man, and a man becomes a hero. Let’s face it, these are great stories, regardless of the financial climate.

Latayne and Patti led us into some great discussions on authentic writing this week, and many of you shared from deep places in your lives. So much potential for great storytelling! And while there are wonderful, authentic stories in the Christian market that require us to wade with the protagonist through swift, muddy waters to the shores of spiritual growth, there are others that simply distract us from our problems for awhile. A bit of escapism is okay, too.

For those of us who prefer the swift, muddy waters, it is quite possible that we are not the target audience of Christian fiction. If so, where does that leave us as readers and writers? Tell us what you think.

Authenticity

I just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Israel and Jordan. It was not your typical tour of the Holy Land because the emphasis was on history and archaeology. The forty-two of us on the tour tromped around the major excavations including Hazor, Tell Dan, and Tell El Hammam (the newly-discovered site of Sodom.)



One day in Jerusalem we went to the site that people traditionally identify with the tomb of Jesus. Now, I’m staking my eternal soul on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, emerged from some tomb outside Jerusalem. But from an archaeologist’s point of view, the tomb I visited is in the right place but probably several hundred years off on the dating of it. I suppose for that reason I felt reverent there, but not emotional at all.



Where did I become emotional? At the synagogue in Capernaum, first excavated early last century. When I realized that it was built by one of my personal heroes (the centurion of “astonishing” great faith in Matthew 8:5-13), and that Jesus had taught in the very synagogue this Roman man built for his Jewish neighbors, I trembled. I took a picture of the actual floor tiles where Jesus once stood to teach. I had someone take my photograph standing right next to where Jesus did.

I let myself yield to emotion there because I knew my feelings could rest securely on an authentic foundation. I could enter that story. In fact, I knew I must enter that story as I stood there.


I wondered about why some Christian fiction rings true, and is helpful and nourishing—and why other books that may mention religious things leave us feeling uneasy and dissatisfied. Could it be because we don’t feel we have a reason to believe the story? Like me respectfully standing before an open tomb and thinking, “This cave is like where Jesus was laid, but almost certainly is not the actual place,” I wonder if sometimes readers think similarly:

“This is like real life, and the characters are very close to authentic, but I’m not buying into their situations because both author and reader know it’s just a story.”



Now, a good book doesn’t have to re-tell a Bible account to be true. But if there were a formula for writing authentic Christian literature, it would be a priceless commodity indeed. And yet we know it when we see it, the story that has a foundation as solid as two-thousand-year old stone pavement.



What are some of the characteristics of such authenticity? Can you share with me any books you’ve read recently that were authentic in just the way I’ve described?