This past week, I’ve immersed myself in developmental editing for my novel-in-progress, Age of Prophets—and since the double-spaced printed manuscript is 460-some pages, disappeared might be a more accurate verb than immersed.
Among other recurring editorial issues, I’ve repeatedly encountered passages of excess moralizing . . . which is ironic, since that is one of my biggest annoyances as a reader (but hey, that’s what the editorial process is for). Seems like it should be an easy fix—I can just cut those passages, right?—but unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. On the one hand, I don’t want to moralize in fiction. On the other hand, if I’m moralizing, at least the story is moral . . . right?
I think what this question really comes down to is the purpose of fiction. If the primary role of fiction is to teach morality, then authors should absolutely moralize in their stories. But if its primary role is to entertain, then authors should cut out all moral themes and just tell the most exciting story possible.
It may sound like circular reasoning, but I believe that first and foremost, the purpose of a story is to be a good story. And when you stop and think about what elements your favorite stories include, this statement begins to make a little more sense.
One of my personal favorite books is The Lord of the Rings (predictable, I know). And while The Lord of the Rings was not written for the moral instruction of the reader, Tolkien also doesn’t throw morality out the window. He couldn’t have even if he had wanted to—morality in fiction is too intrinsically tied to plot.
In real life, most of what we learn is through trial and error. As a child, you were likely told to obey your parents, but that lesson probably didn’t fully sink in till you disobeyed them and realized that listening to them would actually have ended with far better results.
Likewise, the plot of a novel is essentially just trial and error on the character’s part. Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo puts on the Ring when the Ringwraiths attack, and is gravely injured because of it. The moral lesson? You aren’t always as strong as you think you are, and should heed the advice of wiser people (like Gandalf, who told Frodo not to wear the Ring, but did he listen . . . ?).
But Tolkien never states that in the book—he doesn’t have to. Readers are smart enough to grasp the point from the narrative itself. And Tolkien never forces the narrative to make a moral point. Instead, he allows the moral lessons of The Lord of the Rings to arise naturally from the story he tells.
In a previous blog post, I used the analogy of food in talking about choosing books to read and having a healthy literary “diet.” That analogy is once again applicable here. If I’m babysitting my four-year-old sister and she asks for a snack, I’m not going to tell her, “Bananas are high in potassium, Vitamin C, and Vitamin B6, so that would make an excellent afternoon snack for you.” I’m just going to hand her a banana.
And likewise, if I’m looking for a book to read and I go, “Let’s see, lately I’ve been struggling to find courage to do difficult things, so I’d better read The Lord of the Rings,” that’s a flawed approach to literature. As C. S. Lewis wrote in An Experiment in Criticism, literature is meant to be received, not used. Excessive moralizing in fiction swiftly becomes a utilitarian approach to art that diminishes its true value—as art, not a sermon.
Admittedly, the moral stance of a novel is something to be aware of as readers (and certainly to be intentional with as authors). I’m currently on a very restrictive diet for medical reasons, and so I’m reading the nutritional facts of just about everything I put in my mouth. And likewise, I’ve had seasons of life where I steered away from certain kinds of fiction and towards others instead.
But typically, the job of a story is to be a good story, and the job of a reader is to enjoy that story (or ditch it and find something you enjoy more). Stories have an incredible capacity to shape our hearts and imaginations, and we shouldn’t take that lightly. As an author, I take that responsibility seriously, and as a reader, I encourage you to be conscience of what you feed your imagination with.
The good news is, there are a lot of excellent stories out there—classics like The Lord of the Rings, modern Christian fiction like I review on this blog, even many modern secular works. But since I know there’s no such thing as too many good books (I own eleven boxes of them myself, currently stored in a cupboard under the stairs), back I go to my editing, hopefully to emerge from my 460-some double-spaced pages with a finished novel before too much longer. . . .