The purpose of fiction

One of the questions that most frequently rattles through my head is, "What is the purpose of fiction?" Actually, I wonder this about all art, but quickly dart into the fiction corner for fear of overwhelming myself. A related question has to do with the place of story. Story is not always fiction, and for me that's where things get a little muddled. Story lets us experience the life, the thoughts, the existence of someone else. The most effective stories welcome us in to such a level that they move us as we observe characters' actions and feelings. Many things can do this and some are extremely specific to the reader. Nostalgia, poignancy, and shared experiences jump out as examples of this. A reader's and a writer's cultures also affect this process greatly. Nevertheless story has always been a bedrock of each people-group and culture throughout history.

I understand, at least more than I do with fiction the importance of story. But fiction is a crazy concept. Here's why: It starts with a drive or urge inside someone to express an idea, an urge strong enough to compel that person to spend a long time thinking, planning, evaluating, and finally writing something down. Through the miracle of creativity, once vague or disconnected observations coalesce to form a coherent, meaningful, and hopefully understandable piece of work. This piece of work is unified throughout and is inextricably tied to the writer's world-view. In addition to all that, when well done, it can be a thing of beauty. That astounds me. The creative process runs its course and results in a beautiful contribution to the voice of humanity. That God would allow beauty to stem in such a way from a corrupt people is truly amazing.

But that's not even the best part. Take this beautiful labor of love and consider that it speaks to the experience of another soul who reads or hears it. A work of fiction can be paradigm shifting for the reader. The ideas, the flashes of insight, and the questions that percolated in the writer are able to effect change, stretch ways of thinking, and challenge the world-views of those who read it. Lives have been changed by reading fiction, both for good and for evil. Well written fiction can be terribly powerful, able to alter the course of a life, or even of history.

Fiction can also touch the emotions of the reader. Not only that, it should. A writer feels the joys, the sorrows, and the frustrations of the characters and that should translate to the reader. The context of emotion is the same for the reader and the writer since they both share a fallen humanity and a soul that longs for more. But what is startling here is that, in some way, the well drawn character can also share that seed of emotion. It is not the writer that a reader connects with, but rather the characters that the writer creates. Somehow, in God's marvelous purpose, he allows ink on a page to hold a spark of what makes us human. In fact, sometimes fiction is effective because the characters on the page are so accessible, so open and bare, that the reader can connect with them, or at least understand them more easily, or on a deeper level than the guarded peers at work or school.

This spark of life translated from the writer to the character must have been given to us as an example of the image of God translated to a lump of dust. As such, we see why fiction can be so powerful; it calls out to the core of our being and reminds us that there is someone who conceived us, reads us like a book, and knows us both intimately and completely. It is no wonder, then, that in 'Scribbling  in the Sand,' Michael Card says that good art only stems from a deep connection with the Father. Creativity is His territory, not ours. As such, we participate in it best when we experience Him.

This all brings me to the question that I started with, "What is the purpose of fiction?" The standard answer is that it is meant to communicate the human experience. I know it's cliche, but I both agree and disagree. The purpose of fiction is to express one's experience of humanity. We cry out to be known, so the writer writes. We cry out to find someone who has made sense of, or at least has made it through the storms, so we read. The human experience, or the way that people taste, cope with, or embrace life, is diverse. A farmer in Nepal who spends his days digging rows, teaching his sons how to plant, and providing for his family's survival has a vastly different experience of life than a professional baseball player who spends his days fine tuning his muscle memories and reflexes. Add to this the gap in years that fiction spans and diversity multiplies. We have fiction from millennia ago that we cannot begin to understand until we know new geography, customs, traditions, and ways of living. Fiction allows all of these vast experiences to find a voice in the cacophony of humanity. And we are fascinated to read and understand different experiences. We delight in them.

But the human experience is also remarkably uniform. While the individual experiences may differ, the underlying questions and longings rarely do. The farmer and the baseball player both seek meaning in their lives. They have both faced loss, the prospect of failure, and the desire for status. The question of why they exist likely plagues them both, and the elusiveness of the answers is equally frustrating. At our core, we are similar: fallen beings who have lost our way and purpose, and who try to cope with that problem in various ways. We cling to each other's joys, hoping they will someday be our own. We weep at each other's losses, knowing them firsthand. And out of this, we produce fiction with all of the power and miracle mentioned above. Our fiction reaches out, probing the world. It embraces, offering a perspective that we hope speaks to anyone who reads it. In short, it communicates the human experience to other humans.

But we have to be careful because there are at least two problems with that answer. The first problem is that it elevates the human experience to the point of ultimate ends. In other words, it conveys the impression that the best, or most important thing is the 'human experience.' If the purpose of fiction is all about humanity, then we will look no further than humanity in our writing and reading. The human experience is not the ultimate end, or meta-purpose, of life. I realize that most people believe that it is, and that is why they answer the question of the purpose of fiction the way they do. But to accept that answer is to run the risk of idolatry. Story is not exclusively about the human experience. It is also about the divine. And that is the second problem with the answer: it leaves no room for the divine interaction on the human experience. I realize that one could justifiably say that the human experience of the divine is still the human experience. If that was included and assumed in the answer then I would have no problem. But most of the time it is not. Because it is not assumed, it needs to be explicitly stated in the answer. Human experience alone can create beautiful, poignant, even moving fiction. But that experience will never communicate all that can be said. Or perhaps it would be better to say that, experienced apart from God, the human one is less than it should be. It may be rich or profound, but it will never be so as much as it could and ought to be. So fiction must overtly show the human experience in conjunction with divine interaction. This does not mean that stories must be 'redemption stories' for this to happen. They do not have to be 'religious' or have God in them. They don't even have to be written by believers in God. (Blind squirrels and all...) But they must point in that direction. They must hint at something better that is behind the veil of the human experience. They must point out that humanity by itself is not everything, or even really anything. Ultimately fiction acknowledges that it is borrowing from God's creation and must seek to explain how we experience life  not just as lumps of dust, but as bearer's of His image.

Works that got me thinking about this piece: Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card; Scribbling in the Sand, Michael Card; Intruding upon the Timeless, Gregory Wolfe; Art and the Bible, Francis Schaffer.