Mormonism and writing a novel

[Anonymous]

Joanna Brooks’ blog – http://askmormongirl.com/ – has a couple of excellent posts on the question of the Great Mormon novel.

Now here’s the rub, your very own SamBee is furiously scribbling away at this very moment, trying to write a novel. Not a “Mormon novel” (whatever that is!), but a novel nonetheless, written by someone who is somewhat Mormon (or somewhat not, judge for yourselves from my posts!).

Although I had some of the bones of it down already, I’ve written most of the novel since joining this board. In the last three weeks in fact.

I’ve heard many people say that they’re writing a novel, but few get anywhere with it. Therefore I’m spending two-three hours a day typing, transcribing, and noting etc, so that I can get a something which is of a decent length. Considering that the aim is something two to three times longer than anything I’ve ever written before, it’s tough. But I want to have a proper novel down on paper – even a bad one is better than nothing. (A friend of mine has no less than FORTY books on writing, but has barely written a thing. He has been on about a novel for ten years. I have been sitting down and doing it. I believe I have written more in three weeks than he did in three years.)

But is it Mormon? Erm, yes and no. There is actually a massive spiritual aspect to it, which runs from start to finish. The main character has a severe alcohol problem, and the novel is about alcohol abuse (amongst other things). It’s not a Temperance novel, but it’s based on some of my real life experiences with certain people. On the other hand, none of the characters are LDS, and one of them is downright coarse. How do I represent someone is foul mouthed and crude, without actually using foul language?! The main character’s also a homosexual, or at least bisexual. I don’t write of that completely disapprovingly, but I also don’t lend promiscuity much support. I won’t be having any sex scenes, thank you very much, but certain things will be hinted at, and I wonder if some people will interpret the main friendship as a homosexual one. I don’t see it that way, but if it ever gets released into the wild, people will have their own interpretations of the story.

I’m dealing with some quite thorny issues I suppose. How can I write about them without compromising certain church ideals?

Regarding the foul mouthed character… As some people have read here, I have been struggling with the issue of swearing myself. It’s something I do all too often, and am trying to give up. But it’s very much part of our milieu, and I can’t really write about what I know without at least hinting that it’s going on. He’s actually a decent person, but his language and attitudes towards women leave something to be desired. He provides a counterpoint to a slightly pretentious and effete main character.

Whether I can write or not is another question of course, but my relationship with the church is raising some interesting questions.

[Anonymous]

SamBee, I know this is a late response, but I hope you don’t mind my two cents.

As a fellow writer, I’ve struggled with some of what you’re describing here. I’ve published fiction, actually, and I understand how fine the line is. How to write truthfully without compromising church ideals is definitely tricky. I think what any writer would tell you, be it Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), O.S. Card, or even Mormon (!), is to just be honest. If you have a character in your head and he/she is gruff and foul mouthed I don’t think you necessarily need to polish them up like a scruffy pair of shoes. I heard a famous author once say that the writer is the filter of the story – the story exists as a whole and the amount that gets written is up to the writer. So if you have a foul mouthed character, let him be! Does he have to use the absolute worst words you’d hear on the street? Of course not. Perhaps we get him on a better day where ‘sh*t’ is the worst thing he says. But forcing a character to be more ‘trashy’ than necessary, or conversely cleaning one up for appearances does a disservice to both the story and you, the author. I’ll point out that they certainly didn’t clean up (at least not much) the gory bits in the BOM! However, if you want Deseret Book to be your publisher, disregard everything I’ve said.

And FWIW, Orson Scott Card, who has a column in Mormon Times (so no one’s blacklisted him yet), wrote a book called ‘Lost Boys’, (I think) in the mid 80’s that featured a very interesting main character: a faithful LDS man with a bit of a swearing problem. He didn’t go so far as to use the dreaded ‘f’ word, but I remember reading it as a teen and being very surprised that it was written by an LDS person.

Good luck!!!

[Anonymous]

Well, funnily enough, one thing it has made me realize is that it is highly unlikely Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, at least on his own. I can’t see it. Alright, they had more free time in those days, but even factoring in major possible plagiarism – and there are a number of chapters directly out of the Bible to be fair – we still have to work out how he cobbled it together in long hand. So while there are problems with the BoM, in terms of archeology and the like, hmm…

Swearing, I think that there are creative solutions whereby it can be hinted at.

The sexuality of the main character actually seems to have played relatively little part in what I’ve written, other than his attitude towards women, or the fact he barely notices them.

I’ve got about forty thousand words down now, out of my target of 70,000 +, which I think is doable.

I expect that there are probably other similar problems for LDS artists of other kinds, in terms of visual art, cinema and song writing. I don’t quite buy the argument that everything must be uplifting. Not everything in the scriptures, or indeed life is.

[Author]

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