What makes a good story? Is it the rebellious protagonist, the hero-saves-princess plot, the intense world-building? Is it themes of sacrifice, loss, and love? Is it the well-done romance sub-plot or the carefully plotted character arc?
What we read impacts what we think. What we think impacts how we live. And how we live impacts our eternity. Reading bad literature has the potential to negatively change, influence, and direct our decisions and actions. Reading a book radically means reading it through the lens of Scripture. It means viewing stories differently than the world views them. We want to read radical literature with a radical mindset. This takes work… which takes a lot of practice.
So where do we start? Do you go to your local library, pick up the first book on the shelf, and start trying to figure out if it’s a good story or a bad one? If you don’t know what a good story is, then you’re going to have a really hard time trying to figure out what makes a good story good, and what makes a bad story… well… bad.
After analyzing hundreds of fiction novels, I’ve narrowed it down to three parts – secrets, actually – of a good story. They are noble characters, a captivating plot, and an elaborate world. Take these three, braid them together seamlessly, and you have a good story, a radical story. But why are these three pieces secret? And why are they the foundation of a radical story? Let me show you…
Secret #1: Good Stories Depict Noble Characters
Culture celebrates the rebel – the defiant teenager, the runaway princess, the renegade hero. They are the ones who fight to escape from the shackles of responsibility, evade the consequences of their disobedience, and break free from the prison of conscience and duty.
Modern literature has romanticized rebellion, justified disobedience, and cheered when a character follows their own heart. In glorifying defiance, we have forgotten noble heroes – those who fight for the happiness, future, and freedom of others… often at the cost of their own lives.
In a good story, the noble characters – radical characters – direct attention away from themselves, assume the role of command quietly, and fight in the hardest lines of the battle. They take the blows, pay the price, and emerge victorious.
Noble Characters Fail
What do you think of when you hear the word ‘noble’? Stingy? Dry? Boring? Or maybe you drift to an image of a knight in shining armor atop his white horse. If this is what you envision, then you’re not uncommon from hundreds of thousands of other people out there.
Noble means choosing the right thing. It means to be above anything that could cause dishonor. It’s not perfection, but a choice to stay away from the darkness. Noble characters choose to be noble. Even when it hurts, even when it goes against everything they want, even when it costs them something.
Noble characters are not perfect characters. They’re flawed humans (or flawed creatures if the protagonist is an animal). They make mistakes, they fail, they fall.
Noble Characters Rise
But noble characters don’t stay fallen forever. When hope seems impossible and the enemies are winning and the dark seems at its darkest… they rise. They drag themselves out of the dirt, they grope for strength when strength seems unreachable, they pray and cry and bleed. Noble characters see the glimmer of light when the moon is covered by clouds. They fight for the truth when the lies have polluted everything. They sacrifice for those who hate them. Because that is what it means to be noble.
Noble Characters Triumph
In the end, the character wins. No – I don’t mean that they defeat the enemy or eliminate all the darkness. I mean that they win; truly win. The truly triumphant character is the one who overcomes their own failures. They triumph over their laziness, their insecurities, their desperation. They defeat themselves.
But of course we all love the good story where the character does triumph over the bad guys. Sauron is defeated by two brave hobbits. The White Witch is killed by the Lion. Apollyon can’t stop the power of the King, and Christian arrives at the Celestial City. Those are the stories that we love, the characters that we adore. But characters are only one piece of a good story. The adventure is the second part…
Secret #2: Good Stories Unveil Captivating Plots
To captivate means to make you feel what the character feels, to enchant you in the world the author has swept you into, and to enthrall you with the hero’s brutal struggle. Have you ever held a book with trembling hands, turned the page with frightful anticipation, or sucked in a painful breath when the heroine is finally rescued, only at the expense of the hero’s life?
A good story – a radical story – pulls us into the adventure. We feel the character’s joy, sorrow, and heartache as our own. We cry when sacrifices happen because we know that justice, even in the real world, demands a painful cost. And we laugh when long-awaited joy finally appears because we know that even after heart-wrenching struggles, this world won’t stay broken forever. Radical stories make us yearn for peace to finally come, for the characters to finally reach the end of their struggles, and for the world to finally be at rest.
But not every book is a captivating story. You’ve probably read those stories that make you want to fall asleep at every turn of the page, your eyes burning with every boring word strewn carelessly in printed type. This is not a good story because it doesn’t have a captivating plot. And here’s why:
Captivating Plots Acknowledge the Darkness
What good is a story if it lies to you the whole time? No one wants to read about an always perfect, fairy tale world because that’s not the real world. In the real world, we struggle, we fight, we get angry. Life isn’t sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows all of the time. There’s pain, destruction, heartache. And good stories acknowledge that.
Captivation means that you feel what the character feels. And maybe sometimes you can understand the happiness and joy and excitement of the character, but most often you sympathize with their pain and loss. A good author writes for their reader and writes for the world the reader lives in. This world isn’t always happy, isn’t always joyful, and isn’t always exciting. Most of the time, it’s the total opposite, and a good story – a radical story – understands that.
Captivating Plots Encourage the Reader to not Despair
But a good story doesn’t just leave you in the darkness. There are rumors of the resistance that may arise, whispers that Aslan is on the move, and dreams of a better home. What use is a story if it doesn’t impact the reader? What use is a plot if it doesn’t provide some encouragement to not despair? Captivating plots should enthrall you with the hero’s struggle, but they’re also going to teach you, as the reader, that desperation will never win a battle. They’re going to show you the power of strength, hope, and longing.
Captivating Plots Provide Hope
And that brings us to the final part of a captivating plot. A good story – a radical story – always ends with hope. The darkness might be one step away from obliterating the hero. The kingdom might be on the brink of destruction. The nation is on the point of losing everything. But there’s hope that something better will come. There’s hope for a brighter future, a brighter tomorrow. Because that’s true and good and beautiful. The darkness won’t last forever.
Secret #3: Good Stories Breathe Life Into Elaborate Worlds
Once upon a time, Laura Ingalls set out with her family to brave the wild frontier of Narnia. And on her way to school one day, Anne Shirley happened to stumble across Mount Doom as she tripped through Mordor.
What’s wrong with this example? The simple fact that neither of these characters belong in those worlds. Whether it’s Wisconsin in the 1800s, Narnia, Prince Edward Island, or Middle Earth, every author has painted a world with their words. And disrupting those worlds creates endless confusion.
No world can ever be perfect, but elaborate worlds always accomplish three things. They show the beauty in the mundane, they show the beauty of life, and they show the beauty of words. A story isn’t worth reading if it doesn’t have a good foundation. And a story isn’t radical if it doesn’t have an elaborate world.
Elaborate Worlds Show the Beauty in the Mundane
How many of us have visited Mount Doom after a painful and heart wrenching journey through Mordor? How many of us have stumbled through a wardrobe into a fantasy kingdom where we would become kings and queens of a magical throne? Unless you are a hobbit, or one of the Pevensie children, then you probably never have. And you’ve probably lived your quiet, simple life with not many tastes of adventure.
A good story shows the beauty of the simple. It shows the adventure of the mundane. It shows the excitement of the quiet. It’s something that our culture has slowly been losing since most people’s attention only lasts during visually engaging gun fights, car chases, or superhero antics. A good story shows the simple moments, the mundane moments, the quiet moments. Because that’s life and it’s beautiful.
Elaborate Worlds Show the Beauty of Life
I hate stories that glorify death. If you’ve ever read Ancient Greek literature, then that’s pretty much all the heroes are doing. They kill because the death of their enemies gives themselves glory. It’s prideful, it’s arrogant, and it degrades one of the most precious gifts God has given humanity: life.
Good authors show life in their stories. They show thriving ecosystems, beautiful sceneries, and living, breathing creatures. They don’t paint life as something to be destroyed or threatened, but as good, true, and beautiful. They show life as worth protecting, worth fighting for, and worth paying any cost to redeem.
Elaborate Worlds Show the Beauty of Words
Elaborate world-building isn’t just about describing a book’s setting. It’s about seamlessly tying the characters and plot together, twisting foreshadowing and metaphors and imagery, and using black and white letters to evoke feelings of heartache, love, loss, and victory. That is an elaborate world because it imitates this complex world and the Author who created it. And by reading stories with powerful word-choices and strong world-building, we will be proclaiming the truth of a God whose power strongly rivals our own, and whose creation can never perfectly be replicated.
In Conclusion
Why are we so drawn to radical stories? Why do we love adventures with sacrifices and heroes and good triumphing over evil? Because a good story, in all its power and beauty, echoes the Greatest Story – the story of the ultimate sacrifice, the perfect Hero, and the greatest triumph of good over evil ever told. Inside, our souls long for the ending of this Story, for the day when every trace of darkness will be gone, every villain will be destroyed, and every glimpse of brokenness and heartache will be shattered.
Every story is merely a copy of another Story. Every hero is merely a reflection of the Greatest Hero. Every world is merely a facade of this elaborate world. Good writers imitate the Greatest Author, God, and their stories are at best cheap reflections of His Story, the Bible. We read books with noble characters, captivating plots, and elaborate worlds to remind us of the noblest Character, the most captivating Plot, and the beauty of this world that God has created.
Good stories – radical stories – ignite a spark of hope in our hearts, encourage us to press on through the battles of everyday life, and force us to grapple with the powerful truth that one day evil will be eternally vanquished. Good stories – radical stories – change us, comfort us, and captivate us, leaving us forever transformed by the truth, goodness, and beauty they reveal.