Writing Advice from C.S. Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors and, although I don’t usually read fantasy, I love the Narnia series. As a writer, I especially enjoy the insights from C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, which was compiled by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead. The following advice is quoted from Lewis’ June 26, 1956 letter to a child named Joan. The numbering, the italics, and the rest of the text are taken directly from the book.

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1.     Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure y[ou]r. sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2.     Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3.     Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4.     In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me.”

5.     Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

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All writers should take this advice to heart. Unfortunately, I fail sometimes because I’ve still got a lot to learn.

But I’m trying.

An Accidental Literary Tour

 

Roland and I just got back from a tour of Ireland. It was supposed to be more of an overview rather than following a particular theme, but it turned out to have a number of literary connections.

Dublin was full of them. Our first day there, we walked almost to the Samuel Becket Bridge on our way to EPIC, the emigration museum. While there, we noticed a display with a query about C.S. Lewis. Most people think of him an Englishman because he spent most of his life in England, but he was born in Ireland and spent his early childhood there.

These two photos show the Samuel Becket Bridge and the C.S. Lewis display.

On our second day in Dublin, we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, was the dean there for many years. In those days, it was popular (among those who could afford it) to make a death mask to remember the deceased by, and Jonathan Swift’s death mask is kept in the cathedral. That’s it at the head of this post. We also learned that people tended to fall asleep during his sermons, so he had someone build him a mobile pulpit that he could use while walking around among his congregation.

James Joyce is Dublin’s favorite son. His novel Ulysses follows his hero through an ordinary day in Dublin, and his short story collection Dubliners also shows his love for the city. While I don’t have a photo about him specifically, the next one shows a typical street in the city he loved.

The entire country claims William Butler Yeats, but he considered County Sligo to be his childhood home. The next photo is from that area and shows the scenery that he might have grown up with.

When we got to Belfast, we learned that Anthony Trollope had written his early novels while working for the Irish postal service, and part of that time he was headquartered in Belfast’s customs building. That building is the final photo.

So as you can see, our tour of Ireland turned out to be a literary journey after all.

2-4-5-6-3-1-7

The other day I was talking to a woman who is reading C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series with her daughter. If I remember the conversation correctly, they started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because that is the one everyone talks about, but the woman wasn’t sure she was doing it right since those events aren’t the first in the Narnia chronology.

So she planned to read the rest in chronological order. She and her daughter had already started reading The Magician’s Nephew, but I hope I talked her out of continuing that way.

Among Narnia fans, the big debate is whether the books should be read in chronological order or by publication date.

Chronological order puts them this way:

1.     The Magician’s Nephew

2.     The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

3.     The Horse and His Boy

4.     Prince Caspian

5.     The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

6.     The Silver Chair

7.     The Last Battle

If you read them by original publication date, however, they go like this:

·       The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

·       Prince Caspian (1951)

·       The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

·       The Silver Chair (1953)

·       The Horse and His Boy (1954)

·       The Magician’s Nephew (1955)

·       The Last Battle (1956)

Chronologically, that’s 2-4-5-6-3-1-7.

So why does it matter which way you read them? First, certain events create a sense of wonder if—but only if—you have read a previously published book that comes later in Narnia’s timeline. At the end of The Magician’s Nephew, for example, we learn how the lamp-post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came to be there and where the magic wardrobe came from, but those particulars mean nothing at the time unless you have already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Then there is the matter of character continuity. There is a character from our world who appears in both The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician’s Nephew, but you don’t make the connection until the very end of The Magician’s Nephew and probably wouldn’t make it even then if that was the first book you read.

If you read them in publication order, however, the four children who entered Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reappear in Prince Caspian. The youngest two show up again in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and this time a cousin tags along unwillingly. That cousin and a friend are the protagonists in The Silver Chair. The Horse and His Boy doesn’t have the same character thread, but by then you are so interested in Narnia that it doesn’t matter. (The original four children do show up in The Horse and His Boy, but they are secondary characters there.) As I mentioned above, we have already met the protagonist from The Magician’s Nephew in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Then all of the characters from our world except one show up in The Last Battle.

C.S. Lewis didn’t object to reading the series in chorological order, and even endorsed it, as you can see in this quote replying to a boy who was having the argument with his mother. (The boy thought he should read them chronologically but his mother disagreed.)

I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote [The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe], I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote [Prince Caspian] as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader] I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. I never kept notes of that sort of thing and never remember dates.¹

I don’t normally question an author’s take on his or her own works, but I believe C.S. Lewis is wrong. The reader’s wonder and the continuity from one story to the next are stronger if the books are read in publication order.

That’s my opinion, anyway.

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¹ C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead, Editors, pgs. 68-69.

Give the Devil His Due

I haven't dressed up for Halloween in years--not until Saturday, when my writers' group read at the Lake County Library. None of my writings fit the theme, so I volunteered to get Edgar Allan Poe to emcee the event.

On the way to the library, I tuned into Christian radio station WMBI and listened to the host and his guest discuss whether Christians should participate in Halloween. Nobody asked that question when the guest was a child or when I was growing up. My brothers and I always dressed up and went trick-or-treating on Halloween, and my minister father never called it a pagan holiday or worried about its effect on our young minds. It just wasn't an issue in those days.

I admit it. I let my children dress up and go trick-or-treating when they were young, and I hand out candy every year. For me, it's still a non-issue.

In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them." So yes, we do need to give the devil his due. But what is his due?

My edition of The Screwtape Letters includes quotes by Martin Luther and Sir Thomas More. According to Luther, "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." And to shorten the Thomas More quote, "The devil . . . cannot endure to be mocked."

Are we really showing an unhealthy interest in the devil when we let our children go trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or even when we dress them in red suits with horns and a tail and give them a pitchfork to carry? If it has any meaning at all (and for most people it doesn't), isn't it closer to scorn and mockery?

Yes, Satan is a force to be reckoned with, and both Christians and non-Christians should be on guard against him. But his influence is more subtle than what occurs on Halloween.

Christians give the devil too much due when we forget that there are three things he is not. He is not omnipresent (God allows Satan to walk this earth but he cannot enter heaven without God's permission); he is not omniscient, or he would have known better than to enter Judas and bring about his own defeat; and he is not omnipotent. God, and only God, is in control. When we view Halloween as a threat, we take Satan too seriously.

So give the devil his due--but no more.

Believing is Not Seeing

Science tells us to believe only what we can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. Even emotions are observable as electrical brain activity. Yet most of us know that the world is broader than our experience and that our personalities are more than a mathematical equation based on heredity and environment.

I just finished reading Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, and it got me thinking about how much we rely on the five senses to shape our individual worlds. Since some of you may want to read the book, I won't give away the plot or the ending. However, I am going to share one of the many insights I got from the book.

Till We Have Faces is billed as a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, but the main character is neither of those two. The story is told by Psyche's older sister, who labels it "a complaint against the gods." Orual's narrative shows us the war within her as she waivers between her tutor's Greek philosophy (seeing is believing) and her nation's religion (which requires faith in things unseen). And as the book progresses, the reader realizes that Orual cannot even see what she experiences; she is blind to her own motivation and the effects of her actions. So how can she judge the gods?

I'm Orual. Not only am I blind, but I also lodge complaints against God. "How can You let a good Christian friend get cancer?" "Why haven't you convinced a publisher to accept the novel I wrote to glorify You (and, okay, to glorify me, too)?" "Can't you make the Cubs win the World Series before I go mad?"

The gods answered Orual's complaints. And God answers mine in His words to Job. Since the entire passage in Chapters 38-41 of Job is way too long for a blog post, here are some highlights.

- "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." (38:4)

- "Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare if you know all this." (38:18)

- "Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth?" (38:33)

- "Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane?" (39:19)

- "Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?" (40:8-9)

Or, to put it more simply, God's answer is, "Trust me, I know more than you." (Lots more.)

I am clearly unqualified to second-guess God. Instead, I must learn to trust in what I do not see.

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Have you ever read a book where you identified with a character so much it convicted you of your own faults? Leave a comment and tell me about it.