Where do the unexplored countries lie, as far as LDS writing? What could we be doing better, as a people?
Whew! That’s a can of worms waiting to be opened. My biggest complaint with LDS fiction is when a moral is forced into a story simply because it’s being published by an LDS publisher. They can’t simply publish good works about LDS people struggling and living life, it seems—they have to learn a Sunday school lesson as well. That’s changing, I think, and is one of the trends that I’ve liked about the market.
However, a larger problem isn’t with the writing at all, but with the way the publishing industry works in Utah. I think it’s a huge conflict of interest to have the retailer ALSO be the publisher of most of the fiction, and beyond that to have the Church directing both. I don’t think that method serves the authors or the public very well. The monopoly doesn’t thrill me either. (Though, to give a thumbs up the same direction, I think the Shadow Mountain imprint of Deseret Book has been handled wonderfully.)
But, that’s all business. You asked more about the writing. So, in that case, I’d come back to forced morals trumping good writing. However, I hesitate to point fingers. The truth is, I don’t write in this genre—so what business do I have trying to tell LDS fiction writers what to do? Plus, you can point at ANY genre and find works that don’t seem to focus on good storytelling. (At least in a given person’s perspective.)
So, I’ll leave it at that, and say that I’m curious to see where both LDS fiction and cinema go in the next few decades.
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