Brandon Steenbock and the Grand Narrative: Not Just a Starving Author Wearing a Cardigan

Postmodernism rejected the idea that there is a big story, a grand narrative that explains the world.

The current generation knows that is a bunch of codswallop, and I can prove it to you: Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars.

Do I need to say more to prove that people love grand narratives?

I am convinced that we are moving from the era of postmodernism into a new era of thinking, which really means that for the first time in seven decades or so we’re going to be facing a radical shift in the way people view the world.

From the Beginning

I grew up in the Cascade foothills of Washington state, and spent most of my childhood wandering the woods and hills and imagining I was traveling the worlds of Middle-Earth, Narnia, Prydain, and Krynn.

I started writing my own stories in about fifth grade and decided that whatever else I might do with my life, in my heart I was a storyteller.

In high school, I threw myself into all the creative writing and english composition courses my high school offered, and then went to University of Washington-Seattle to study Creative Writing. But UW wasn’t kind to my soul, and other plans I’d made for my life fell apart one by one, all to the end that the one road that seemed wide open to me was ministry.

(The only other option was live with my parents and be a starving author, wearing cardigans and sipping lattes and whining that I was just waiting for recognition).

I’ve never lost the storytelling urge, though. Instead, I’ve found that storytelling can be a powerful means for communicating the Gospel.

Stories about Scripture

Whenever Jesus wanted people to know what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, he told a story. There’s a Native American proverb that says, “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

I’ve served in ministry now almost 13 years and have increasingly incorporated storytelling into my methods. I love the really weird stories, the times when people do bizarre things, and the odd coincidences in life.

The more I dig into Scripture, the more I see that God is using all of human history to tell a big story, and there are some amazing hidden connections that jump out when you look at Scripture and the world through that lens.

There are also some baffling, astounding, and downright nutty things that happen in Scripture, and I love talking about those moments. There are people who have done the most outrageous things for the sake of Jesus, and I want to tell their stories.

Sometimes I run into people who are just so fascinating that I can’t help walking away and inventing an entire story to explain their behavior, and sometimes those stories end up arriving at a truth I never expected.

Inspiration

I absolutely love Speculative Fiction (which is the fancy term for all things science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, etc. – but I don’t like those terms because is any story really entirely one of those categories?).

I’ve never read a non-fiction book that drove me to tears. Not once. But I have shelves full of books that can produce wracking sobs. I don’t know if I’ve ever yet written a story that had that effect on someone, but I certainly hope to someday.

I’m probably most influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton, but I would have to include as side-characters in my biography Madeleine L’Engle, Fred Saberhagen, Ernest Hemingway, Andrew Peterson, Alexandre Dumas, and Jonathan Rodgers. (Not to mention Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Brent Weeks, and Orson Scott Card). I could seriously go on for quite a bit more naming authors that I love reading… Andrew Osenga. Beta Radio. Alan Burt Akers. William KamKwamba.

My kids love trying to “out story” me – we get into running jokes where we compound some silly story we’re inventing on the fly. It always leads to lots of laughter and actually has been the inspiration for stories I’ve written.

Beating Writers Block

Changing mediums. Most of the time when I write, I use a computer, because only typing is fast enough to keep up with the thoughts once they start spilling out of my head. When I hit writer’s block, I pick up a notebook and a pen, or tape a piece of poster paper to the wall and start writing in crayon, or go to a coffee shop and open a napkin and write with a sharpie (and then they kick me out because the sharpie bleeds through and ruins their table – but the joke’s on them! They just got a masterpiece on their table without knowing it!).

When it comes to storying the Bible – which is a major part of what I want to do for Bread for Beggars – a lot of times I’ll just read the story over and over, toying over the weird parts, the phrases that don’t quite make sense, trying to picture what’s actually happening in the story.

Eventually, I find that one moment that hits me as the center of the story, and I write that, then fill in the details around it.

If all else fails, I go for a walk and start describing out loud everything I see in whatever details I can, and then just keep rambling until I come up with something that cracks the puzzle I’ve been working on in my story.

I will be sharing all sorts of smaller stories under the greater theme of Kingdom Stories.

Final Words of Wisdom

Two of the most often repeated and cliche sounding pieces of writing advice, that are actually essential to good writing: Show don’t tell. Kill your darlings.

Really, if someone wants to get into storytelling or storywriting, the most important encouragement I can give is this: Every writer needs to know that good writing is 10% talent, 93% craft (which can be learned), 94% hard work, 76% good editing, 99.8% a good editor (not you), and -230% math. So just write. Write some more. Read a ton. And write.

The question is posed, “How do you safely ‘story the Bible’ while upholding the absolute truth?”

Listen to Brandon’s explanation on the Hearts and Hands episode 008.