The Values of Good Fiction
By Kathleen McCleary | August 21, 2019 |
Flickr Creative Commons: John Dyer
Many years ago, the magazine I worked for decided to do a special issue on “Values,” and we chose a handful of key values and interviewed people who exemplified those values. Chris Fields, the firefighter who tenderly carried the baby killed in the Oklahoma City bombing out of the rubble, talked about COMPASSION; Cal Ripken, Jr. (who broke Lou Gehrig’s record for most consecutive baseball games played) talked about PERSEVERANCE; Mary Fisher, an artist (and later activist) who contracted AIDS from her husband, spoke about TOLERANCE. Everyone who worked on that issue, from the assistant photo editor to the sales reps, said something to me about how good it made them feel to be part of that project, what it meant to do something that felt meaningful and true.
And I find that the stories that resonate with me most in fiction—from The Story of Paddington Bear to the Lord of the Rings trilogy to the brilliant BBC series “Shetland”—are those with characters who exemplify strong values, who struggle to live by a code of conduct that rings true whether you’re a dwarf or a recently widowed police inspector. Figuring out the values that you want your work to convey can be as essential as developing plot or character or a climactic scene. A value system is an essential part of the fictional world you create, and it’s worth it to take some time to understand the values that matter in that world.
With each of the novels I’ve written, I’ve tried to explore essential values. In my third novel, one of the major characters has an affair with her best friend’s husband. It’s a terrible betrayal, and one that I tried to use to get at the heart of what it means to have integrity—not just in the sense of being honest, but also in the original sense of the word, what it means to be whole. Exploring THAT helped me get at the universal experience of why we all make mistakes, or do things that violate our own moral codes.
How do you figure out your novel’s value system? Start by making a list of all the values you can think of that matter to people (they don’t have to be your personal values, because your characters may have different values). In addition to the obvious values that come to mind (honesty, patience, resourcefulness, love), push yourself to think of other values that drive human behavior, such as patriotism, religion, the desire for financial gain and/or power. Then look at your list. Pick the top five values that matter most to your characters. How have they developed those values? What jobs, life circumstances, people, setbacks, successes have shaped those values for them? What insights have they gained from the struggle to learn or live those values?
Having a few key values as the underlying force in your fiction helps create stories that resonate on the most visceral level with readers. There’s the clear-cut good vs. evil dichotomy of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, for example. A Game of Thrones portrays an even more complex values system, with some characters driven by the desire to protect family, some by the need for power, some by fanatical religious belief, some by the need for revenge, some by the belief in freedom. But knowing what values are essential to your characters can serve as a guiding star for you as write.
Do you think about a value system when you write? How do you get at your character’s values?
[coffee]
Kathleen McCleary is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She was a journalist for many years before turning to fiction, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and USA Weekend, as well as HGTV.com, where she was a regular columnist. She taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing to kids ages 8-18 as an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit. She also offers college essay coaching (https://thenobleapp.com), because she believes that life is stressful enough and telling stories of any kind should be exciting and fun. When she’s not writing or coaching writing, she looks for any excuse to get out into the woods or mountains or onto a lake. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.
Hi Kathleen, great post! I absolutely agree that the fiction that remains with one long after the last page is read expresses a system of values at its core. In my novels, I have explored many of the subjects that have troubled me in my life. Being a true G.R.I.T.S. (Girl Raised in the South) who is a person of faith having grown up in a deeply segregated Jim Crow South, the hypocrisy and bigotry I observed broke my heart. I have also explored how we define family, friendship, and citizenship. My work-in-progress explores cultural clashes and placing devotion to others before self. Values matter in fiction and in life.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Linda. Your fiction sounds terrific and right up my alley. I love that you’re tackling issues that have resonated for you—I know from experience that that can be cathartic, but also very, very difficult. Kudos to you for writing about what matters.
Hi Kathleen. Thanks for your thought-provoking post.
As a writer, I am many things, but the two that come to mind after reading your piece are pantser, and pragmatist. I don’t outline or use charts, lists, diagrams or software to help me see my story before I write it. The story unfolds as I work. The pragmatist in me is a firm believer in the whatever-works-is-good philosophy. If making a list (“Pick the top five values that matter most to your characters”) helps a writer to better grasp what her characters do and mean, that’s all to the good. In my writing-workshop-of-one, I do my best to be my characters. If I have a solid sense of them as persons, their values are part and parcel of their thoughts and actions. As they encounter experience, they think, say, and do accordingly. Were I to work from a list of values, and then see to it my characters lived up to those attributes–or failed–I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work. At least not for me.
Kathleen, stories usually begin for me with a character in a pickle and me asking how, what, where, when, why. Always the why. Why do these people do the things they do? I keep asking an eventually I get to their core values. I usually have an idea of how a story will go but I love it when the characters themselves take over the story–they’re always better at showing what really matters. In my novel, Bound, I started out with an adoption story, but it ended up so much more than that–about people who are disabled, the value of each and every life, what it really means to love, and to forgive.
What I think is as important as defining a protagonist’s core value, is testing it.
That means temptation. It may mean failure. It may require consequences, recognizing wrong, self-acceptance, forgiveness and moving on.
In workshops, I also show that it’s possible to *instill* a value. Change has emotional power. The method is to choose a value that’s important, then create a character who embodies the opposite value. That’s the character who will change. Think Scrooge.
Good values may be in conflict. Poor values may compete. Who we are comes down not only to what we believe, but how we act and it is actions–choices, mistakes, standing up, changing–that have narrative force.
Great topic. Our fellow WU contributor David Corbett has a new book coming on the moral compass of characters. Should carry us even deeper into this subject.
I’m interested in the part where a character needs to become aware of his own, for lack of a better phrase, wishy-washiness, and find himself faced with consequences and the effects of changing his own attitudes and behaviors to overcome it.
We call that ‘growing up.’
The values were built in from the very beginning – because the whole of my debut trilogy is about whose values do we uphold – the most comfortable ones for society, or the ones that treat all members of that society, including the ill and disabled ones, as equals.
It is even hard because the person with the most to lose knows she’s bought into those values, and doesn’t have the energy to challenge them – so she buries her own needs and wants.
Many novels seem to have no core values at all but entertainment. Stereotype characters will do for that.
But if you want something that will twist deep into the psyche of readers, your characters have to battle over values, sometimes without even most of them realizing it. You don’t want preaching (telling) because it is too easy for a reader to skip, skim, or turn that off while reading. You need to make readers feel (showing) the arrows burrow into their own flesh.