Fiona Veitch Smith

This is the first session in my six-week course on Writing as Worship & Witness for Christians. This week we will look at:

• God the Storyteller
• Finding your own style
• Creativity and art

You may do this course on your own or you might like to join up with other writers for discussion. Feel free to post comments or ask questions at the end of the post.

God the storyteller

If you ask most people why they want to write they will say it’s because they have ‘something to share’. And it’s not surprising, because that’s how God made us. God himself had something to share when the Word became Flesh (John 1:1) in the form of Jesus. It’s no coincidence, I believe, that the Word in this case is a translation of the Greek word Logos that means ‘living word’. This is the ‘word’ that created all life when it was spoken by God in the beginning (Genesis 1:1).

So the use of words, whether spoken or written, is a creative force. Ideas are spread through them, relationships are forged with them and our personalities are manifest through them. The corollary is also true. Words can bring death, so they need to be used wisely. And all the more so when those words are given permanence on the printed page. A spoken word may soon be forgotten, but a written word may be there forever, multiplied every time it is reprinted. God chose to use the written word as a record of his communication with us.

Exercise 1:
Take your Bible and divide the books into the following cateogries. There may be some overlap.

• Poetry
• Allegorical storytelling
• Drama
• Apologetics
• Non-fiction memoirs and history

God used poetry (Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes), allegorical storytelling (Genesis 1 – 3, Job, Jesus’ parables), drama (Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelations), apologetics (the epistles), non-fiction memoirs and histories (the history books of the OT, the Gospels, Acts). It reflects all writing styles and all reading tastes. I doubt St Paul would have been comfortable telling parables, or the writer of Job explaining the theological background to the theme of atonement.

Finding your style

Some people are more suited to writing poetry than prose and some people do well at both. A poem is a snapshot of a moment. It’s a literary picture painted with words. However, if you can’t rest until you know what happened before and after a moment or event, then you’re probably a natural storyteller. A story can be allegorical (reflecting a message), but it doesn’t have to be; it can simply be ‘art for arts sake’. (We will be discussing the pros and cons of message-based writing next week.) If you are interested more in what people say than the surroundings they’re in, you may be a dramatist. If you feel uncomfortable dealing with the imaginary or made-up, you may do better at non-fiction. If you have a compulsion to explain, defend or teach principles from an event or moment, you are probably an apologist.

Discussion:What is your natural writing style? What have you written before? What genre would you like to try that you haven’t?

Exercise 2:
Take a picture that attracts you and write down 20 words that come to mind. You may struggle to find 20, but get as close as you can. The first 10 will come easily, but it’s as you grapple to find the obscure and rare that you will unearth some gems. Do not at this point try to form them into sentences.

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Exercise 3:
Now take those 20 words and form them into a

• poem
• story
• scene from a play

Exercise 4:
Choose another picture and explain, as if to a non-believer, how it reflects God’s love. Now explain the same concept by using a story from your own life.

Click to enlarge

Discussion: Which of these exercises from 3 and 4 came the easiest to you? How does it relate to your earlier discussion of your natural writing style? Which piece of writing expresses the essence of your chosen picture/s best?

Creativity and Art

What is creativity? The Collins dictionary defines it as ‘the ability to cause something to exist’. Without getting into too much of an existential discussion, I would say that with every thought that is expressed, something has been created. It was Descarte who said: ‘I think, therefore I am’; well I would add, ‘I think, therefore I create.’ But how do we express our thoughts? Sometimes we do it verbally, other times by body language and still again through what is loosely termed ‘art’. Art takes place when a thought is expressed and fixed in such a way that other people may experience it on an aesthetic level - through music, writing, painting, sculpture, choreography and so on.

Many artists say that their best work takes place when they ‘by-pass’ the thought and simply express the feeling. This may be true, but for writers, who use a verbal medium, a feeling must first be converted into a thought before it can be put into words. Don’t over analyse the thought before you express it, as this way you can ‘channel’ the purest interpretation of the feeling, but some cognitive process needs to take place. Some writers prefer to mull over a thought and give it form before they put pen to paper - I’m one of them - but it’s good practice to try and switch off the ‘editor’ at least for the first draft. First response trigger exercises are useful in this regard and can release some unexpected words and images.

Exercise 5:
Write down your first response to these words or phrases:

• Blue ball
• And that’s when the sadness came
• Coffee

The first task of a good writer is to convert feelings into thoughts and then into words. This is the raw material that can then be converted into something more permanent. Some writers refuse to toy with their first drafts, believing their creativity will be diluted; I disagree. Allowing your critical mind to improve a piece of writing is where the craftsman meets the artist. Something produced only by the former will lack soul and something by the latter will lack form. Good writing is a combination of art and craft.

Don’t forget to join me next week for message-based writing.

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