Shannon Costello

I love stories, especially romantic fairy tales where the girl gets the prince. This means that I periodically revisit Mrs. Wick’s book. I am also becoming more intrigued with the question of what constitutes good writing, which means that I read everything analytically. Here I focus more specifically on what constitutes good “Christian” writing.

Problem 1: Designing a Plausible Plot

As children, my sister and I sought out plots for our games that our imaginations could seize on and develop. Each of us had control over a set of characters and could ratchet up the tension as we chose. Sometimes we would carry this too far, an escalation of the plot that would eventually destroy narrative flow.

A romantic tale with Christian elements has its own special set of challenges, often because plot complications typically arise from un-Christian acts. A favorite plot of Christian romance writers is the arranged marriage between two people who are not necessarily attracted to each other. I suppose it provides an acceptable way for the characters to have sex in an unsettled situation. Mrs. Wick attempts this plot in a modern context and generally succeeds quite well. How does she do this?

In the first place, she sets her story in a tiny imaginary European country. This lets her set up a monarchy anyway she chooses, for example with laws that state the heir must be married by a certain age. She handles the arranged marriage by having Prince Nicolai, through the death of his first wife, be in a position where he must re-marry but is still grieving too deeply to enjoy a search. He asks his parents to take on the task, and a friend of theirs brings Shelby to their attention.

While Mrs. Wick does not go to our youthful extremes (no cannibalism whatsoever), her plot does get a bit out of hand. The idea that the prince does not know what she looks like a week after their marriage, while great material for a dramatic scene in the kitchen, is not very plausible, even with the excuses provided.

Problem 2: Narrating Consistent Characters

What kinds of mistakes are acceptable for Christian protagonists to make? This is a tough question. If Nick and Shelby handle themselves perfectly, there is no story. I think Mrs. Wick makes the rather serious error of starting out with characters that are nearly perfect and very special to begin with, which means that their mistakes are harder to accept.

Shelby is the most convincing of the two. It is a minor problem that she is repeatedly described as shy when she readily enters into so many social activities, makes friends so easily (a few months into her stay at the palace she is already golfing with counselors’ wives), and is so comfortable with public speaking. I have difficulty as a reader with Shelby, a young woman who knows and articulates that she and Nick need to keep talking, choosing to conceal her pregnancy from her husband for so long, but at the same time confiding the secret to her parents. This is another example of an extreme ratcheting up of tension.

Nick is much more problematic. I question elements of his history. A man who is married at 20 can hardly be away at school, for example. Can he be well-educated? Other than this he is the perfect picture of the genuine nice young man, extremely mature, responsible and courteous even under pressure. Like Shelby, he has been a Christian for many years.

With his faith, his work, and his ultra-supportive family, I wonder (perhaps unfairly) at the level of grieving he is experiencing a year and a half later, a grief that leads him to bitterness. He seems to handle himself well up until five minutes after his marriage, when he doesn’t talk to or see Shelby for about six weeks. That is hard to accept from a character who is so polite and thoughtful.

Mrs. Wick does provide excuses for her characters. Shelby is upset because Nick is still in love with his first wife. Forced to “share” her husband, she refuses to share her child. Nick is grieving deeply and is sensitive that people may like Shelby better than Yvette.
Beyond providing excuses, she also designs her narrative to avoid the character that is behaving problematically. She centers the first month of the marriage on Shelby. When Shelby refuses to communicate with her husband, the narration follows Nick and looks at Shelby only from the outside. This is a relatively effective technique, but may result in a lack of depth.

The use of an omniscient third person narrator leads the reader to assume that all of a character’s pertinent thoughts are being reported. We are therefore confused when a character says something unexpected. We see an example of this early on, when Shelby demands to know why her parents have been acting as spectators as the possibility of her marriage to the prince unfolds. In fact, they have met with the king and queen and given their permission for them to talk to Shelby, with the stipulation that they be present. Later on, when Shelby shares her worries that the queen may be regretting the choice of Shelby as princess, or when she tells Nick she is fearful of even thinking about Yvette, the reader experiences the same feeling of having been unfairly kept in the dark. One is left feeling distrustful of the narrator.

Problem 3: Communicating the Christian Message

The time-honored method is to insert a sermon scene somewhere in the book. It is a dull method and Mrs. Wick chooses a different approach in this book, an approach that I see as a step in the right direction. Here she weaves the gospel message in a sub-plot involving a non-Christian child.

Peter is an 11-year old who does not share the protagonists’ faith. Most of Peter’s story is also handled well. His family has been befriended over a period of years, regardless of their rejection of Christianity. The characters are truly concerned with salvation as opposed to recruitment, though in a couple of scenes they do not come across that way.

In one such scene when Nick is lunching with his grandmother and Peter, the queen mother informs Peter that Nick always prays when they eat together. Nick then gives Peter the opportunity for a prayer request. “Is there anything you want me to ask God for?” Peter is “caught off guard.” I wonder if that is a fair tactic.

Later, Peter announces that he has thought about the gospel message and has rejected it. Nick then asks if Peter wants to break off their friendship, a question that panics Peter and strikes me as rather cruel. The book does seem to end without Peter accepting the Christian message, though his older sister does, a brave move on the part of the author- and a good one.

Problem 4: Communicating Well, or Miscellaneous

Even in a short story a writer may easily include contradictions, exaggerations, or repetitions that prove to be a minor annoyance to the reader. These errors are extremely difficult to correct without careful attention to detail (which would probably result in reduced output).

Individual sentences in this text are occasionally ambiguous. A letter is “not exactly shocking, but a surprise.” Even more puzzling is the following: “For so many weeks he avoided me and even apologized for it. Now he’s getting into my world, and I’m scared to death.” Does Shelby feel that the avoidance and the apology are each good things or bad? The phrase “and even” suggests to the reader that a worse crime is about to be detailed. The fact that it is not weakens the contrast the author is trying to make in the second sentence.

In real life, chocolate and engagements can be “great”, but in writing one should seek to differentiate in descriptive levels. The author’s words need to show the reader what is most important in the narrative. Therefore if we allow the time of “wonderful, warm conversation” we must certainly protest the “wonderful lettuce salad.”

Besides the idea that salads and friends are equally important, repetition of words, especially undistinguished words, may be obnoxious to a reader, even if there is a fair amount of space in between them. “Wonderful” and “huge” are favorites of Mrs. Wick. In addition expressions such as “rounded her eyes” and “eyes intent” are repeated in some form at least three times each in this book.

Conclusion

Writing this has raised important questions. Here’s one: How could such books do more to encourage the Christian reader?

I think the answer starts with what Mrs. Wick does with Shelby’s struggle to follow God. Some of it is well handled. Shelby prays, strives to learn about God, and when the time comes to make a decision, she has some idea of what to do. When Shelby arrives at the conclusion that she should marry the prince, she really has modeled for the reader what good decision-making should look like. I think that may be more important than the repeated references to Shelby’s church attendance and involvement. Christianity is about the living out of one’s relationship with God rather than following a set of rules, and the Christian writer should seek to consciously reflect that.

Shelby’s statement to herself that “fear is a sin” is thought provoking. What if Mrs. Wick had gone even further and designed her book around the problem of how a Christian should handle fear, creating a theme as recognizable as that of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? In such a case, the author’s aim should be for the reader be able to look back with Shelby at the end of the book and see with Shelby that she has grown through her difficulties rather than just gotten through them.