How to Write Good Catholic Fiction

Part 1: Let Your Faith Be a Leaven

In the Catholic world, there is an infinite supply of non-fiction reading.  Any Catholic subject that has ever been conceived has got a book written about it.  The Inquisition, Mary’s Perpetual Virginity , whether or not Adam and Eve had belly buttons; there’s a book on all of it.

There are Catholics out there, however, who, though they love to spend every moment reading about the tiniest minutiae of their faith, sometimes just like to read a good story.  A made-up story.

There are many, many made-up stories published every year in this country.  I realize this.  But these Catholics are looking for made-up stories that won’t send them to the confessional two chapters in on account of the indelicate subject matter.  They are also looking for made up stories not permeated with nihilism.  Something that’s getting difficult to find even in children’s fiction.

If one is lucky enough to happen across a novel from a Catholic perspective set in modern times, there’s a high likelihood that perspective is from a Catholic that doesn’t much care for the doctrines of the church.

This leaves a bit of an untapped market.

How has nobody else noticed this? one asks. I think people have noticed it but they then run into a couple of problems tapping into that market.

1. Big Publishers don’t have a lot of interest in morally Catholic novels right now.  They follow the trends in the culture hoping to make lots of money by cashing in on what’s hot. And the current trends are a torrent gushing against the faithful Catholic who is trying to cling to the Church and not add to the deluge of debauchery that is our society.
2. Catholic publishers usually only publish non-fiction.
3. When Catholic writers decide to try to write that Catholic novel anyway, despite having the publishing odds stacked against them, they end up: 
   1. neutering the book of all it’s Catholic substance belying the whole point of writing a Catholic novel
   2. or they try too hard to make the book Catholic and end up with a mawkish, overly sentimental plot in which the Catholicism is ramrodded into every pore of the story.

How can it be done then?  How can a market of good, Catholic novels be created against such insurmountable odds?

Easy.  Just write your novel.  Don’t think about it past that.  Don’t try to make it less Catholic-y to appeal to mainstream publishers and don’t try to make it more Catholic-y for Catholic publishers.  Write the novel from your heart and it will come out right. 

Your faith is not a garnish to dress up or hide from your work, depending on who you think is going to read it.  Your faith is part of you and should naturally come out in everything that you do.  As Christ said, it’s like a light.  Don’t hide it under the bushel basket and keep it from readers.  But also, don’t set it in front of a magnifying glass to burn their eyes out.  Let it shine through your writing as it shines through your everyday life as if itś just a matter-of-course.  

God is the author of beauty and originality and joy, all of which make great reading material and will attract a soul-hungry audience.  Just write the novel that God put on your heart and you’ll eventually come across someone with which it resonates.  (In God’s time, never your own.)  

Before you can say “Benedict Option”, we’ll have a whole new generation of Chestertons and Lewises and Tolkiens and Houselanders and O’Connors.