There is a fine line between fiction and non-fiction, but I tread that fine line with every story I write. I write parables.
What are parables? Stories within a story. The storytelling element and character-building elements of fiction with the life lessons of truth that you’ll often find in non-fiction books. (You know the ones, in those corners of the non-fiction shells called self-help, which I don’t really like as a title because if you’re reading somebody else’s advice, you’re not really self-helping at all.)
Why write parables? Apart from being called to, there are a few reasons.
The first one is I think they’re a really good way of making a point. The reality is we communicate truth through stories. We always have responded to stories. Entire cultures have built a heritage on sharing stories.
Stories personalize truth. When I wrote The Baggage Handler, I had a lot of people email, message or just have conversations about how the book had helped them identify what they were dealing with in their lives. What they might have been carrying but not even knowing it. This was the central premise of the novel and in that moment, we weren’t having conversations about the concept of dealing with baggage you’re carrying or handing it to the baggage handler for him to deal with it with and for you.
Instead, people personalized that abstract concept into not talking to their sister for 20 years or their family being estranged or still smarting from that rejection back in college or university days.
I’ve often said one of the things that I admire about the words of Jesus in the Gospels is the way he managed to connect with people through making the abstract personal. He wasn’t talking to a crowd by the side of a lake, delivering a lecture on forgiveness or generosity. Instead, he asked crowds if they ever lost a coin or a sheep or asked them to consider a man who had passed the injured other on a dusty road.
The second point is I like having deeper conversations. My breakdown as a writer – and a person – is: part creative, part deep thinker, part conversation starter. I like to talk about issues as a way of improving or helping others to do the same. I like to ask people how their day is and hang around for their answer.
The creative side of me helps to shape that into a story which is not just a sermon. Trust me, I’ve read enough fiction which is basically a three-point sermon dressed up with a few characters that I really don’t care that much about because there’s not enough storytelling or creativity in it. I flick through the pages where it turns from fiction into education-for-the-uneducated at best. Most of the time I put the book down.
As a writer, that’s not what I’m trying to do. What I’m trying to do is give my reader something to think on while they’re reading my novel and something take away after they’ve finished it.
I’ve had a number of people tell me that after they read The Camera Never Lies they started thinking about their own relationships and maybe the things that they were downplaying or even hiding. Or they saw friends or family in the story and started conversations with them.
To me, that’s what my stories do. At the end of the read, it’s not to move it from the To Be Read pile to the To Be Reshelved pile. Instead, it’s ‘what do I do with that?’
So that’s why I write what I write.
It makes it hard for me to fit into a pigeonhole. I’m more genre fluid than that.
But I’m really looking forward to sharing with you the title and the pitch and introducing you to the characters that flesh out the next book. The question I’ve based Novel #4 on is ‘can you simply start again or will your past catch up with you?’
So I’m looking forward to introducing that question to readers as they think more deeply about life.
David Rawlings, Author 