The Center Of The Human Heart

Editor's Note: Robert Whitlow was a successful attorney with a big law firm in Atlanta who never had any aspirations to be a writer – when suddenly, several years ago, a story came into his head. It was his wife who insisted he write the book, which ultimately became his first novel, “The List.” His second novel, “The Trial,” recently won a “Christy Award” for excellence in Christian publishing. Since moving to Charlotte, he has joined the law firm of Sellers Hinshaw Ayers Dortch and Lyons, has been instrumental in forming a non-profit organization dedicated to helping Christians resolve their conflicts outside the court system, and is a member of St. Gile's Presbyterian Church. Charlotte World publisher Warren Smith recently spoke with Whitlow about his books, about Christians in the arts, revival and culture, and other issues.

Warren Smith: Your books have been described as a Christian version of John Grisham's books. How do you feel about that comparison, and do you feel it's valid or accurate?

Robert Whitlow: I am perfectly comfortable with the comparison. I didn't pattern my try writing after anybody in particular, but there are a lot of similarities in background between myself and Grisham. We are both attorneys and we are both from small southern towns. We came out of a similar cultural background and those common influences have probably in some way created some similarities in our writing.

WS: Interestingly, Grisham claims to be a Christian as well. Yet we don't think of him as a Christian novelist. Though the last book, The Testament, I guess was a little bit in that direction. You have, however, published your books with a Christian publisher. You recently received an award from a Christian organization that honored Christian novels. Is the label “Christian novelist” a false distinction? How do you feel about being labeled a Christian novelist as opposed to a novelist who happens to be Christian?

RW: I like what C.S Lewis said about it. He said that the world does not need more Christian writers; it needs more writers who are Christians. So my desire is to create a work that is as excellent as possible, yet at the same time incorporate into the story the spiritual realities that we believe exist because we are Christians.

WS: What are some of those realities that lend themselves to the form that you have taken on? The reason I am asking is that you have chosen a particular genre, the thriller or suspense novel. There is a tradition of Christian mystery writers. I think about Eliot's plays, or Dorothy Sayres, or even some of Lewis's novels are essentially mysteries or suspense novels. Is it a natural that the suspense or mystery genre lends itself to talking about Christian ideas because Christianity is ultimately a mystery, and the story of history is in many ways a thriller?

RW: I think that Christian ideas can be communicated in every style of story, in every kind of writing. I kind chose to go the suspense route and my purpose is that I want to create a plot that has sufficient interest to hold readers' attention, whether they are Christians or not. Then, in the lives of the characters, the spiritual aspects surfaces part of the context of the story.

WS: The suspense form is a form that is heavily dependent upon plot. Some would say more dependent upon plot than characters.

RW: People say that, but I really make an effort to have characters with some substance. A little quirky. Things about them that will hold the readers' interest.  

WS: Do you think that is one of the reasons your book was singled out for excellence by the Christy Awards judges?

RW: Yes. One of the reviews -- I think it was in Publishers Weekly -- characterized the development of the characters as one of the outstanding aspects of the book and I think that was one of the things the Christy judges were looking for, in order to try to encourage writers to produce things that don't have flat stereotypical characters.

WS: Is that what is wrong with a lot of Christian fiction these days? Are Christian writers so focused on trying to make a spiritual point that they don't get into the heart of the character?

RW: Yes. I think that is accurate, and I think that has been one of the criticisms that has been leveled against inspirational or Christian fiction. It was preachy and sentimental and it failed to rise to the level of technical quality that was in the secular marketplace.

WS: Of course, those characteristics are hard even for the experienced writer. You seem to have hit a stride in your writing career after only two novels – unless you've been writing for years and not telling anyone about it. 

RW: No. This is the only fiction I have ever written. I started “The List” in 1996.

WS: But surely you had an interest in fiction?

RW: No, I had no ambitions. No desire to see my name on the cover of a book. Everything I had written previous to this involved teaching materials that I use myself. Historical articles. I am very interested in revival -- revivals of the past, the Welch revivals, the revivals in Scotland and England. And the personalities that were involved. I was just a lawyer and I got the idea for “The List” in 1996 and was a complete and total novice, but talked to my wife and she said you need to write this and so that is where is started.

WS: What gave you the idea for “The List”?

RW: I had thought about the spiritual dynamic that I had seen worked out in so many people's lives. The way they are influenced by the past generations of their families -- both for good and for bad. Some people can trace their own spiritual pilgrimage and they give credit to a grandmother who prayed for them. So there is a positive side to that as well as a negative. But you have heard of so many people that have a problem with alcohol and their father had a problem with alcohol.

So I thought it would be interesting to trace the generational influences back to the time of the Civil War for a particular family and show how the good and evil played out in the life of a contemporary character. Good and evil is the greatest theme that exists in literature, because that is the ultimate struggle in the universe.

But the story begins without any clue about those dynamics. I came up with the idea of the secret society that started back in the Civil War time that had the appearance of something good, but had a seed of evil within, because of the greed of the people and their decision to trust money as their security instead of God.  

WS: From a marketing point of view, the book tapped into a strain in the Christian community that almost wants to believe that this kind of list exists. Was that going through your mind?

RW: Those particular things were not. I was aware of that, but what I was going after was something that was plausible. In fact, after I started writing “The List” I learned that toward the end of the Civil War Jefferson Davis came through Mecklenburg County with the Confederate treasury, and their desire was to try to get it overseas to continue the fight. Of course, you know the gold didn't make it out of Mecklenburg. There are myths about what has happened to it. But it is likely that Confederate soldiers just took the money as back pay. But none of that inspired the idea behind the story. I was just trying to write something that was plausible, but had an element of drama and a heightened sense of reality.

WS: You mentioned your interest in revival, and obviously you have had a bit of a turn in your own life – from lawyer to novelist, but not all the way to evangelist. What is the relationship between revival and culture?

RW: Well, I do speak on revival, to the extent that God gives me opportunities. But when I talk about revival, my desires and expectations are beyond just a series of evangelistic meetings. I am in favor of that, but I am interested in something that has an impact on the society. In the old days the revival would come and the bars would close and the jails would empty and the people would spend their time loving God and one another. That is my interest in revival.

One of the things that has become my real passion in the books is to portray characters who will encourage people to have a real dynamic life of prayer and to believe there is a reality in that kind of interaction with God. I have a pretty simple theology. I believe God is real and that he is not a cosmic clock maker. He wants to be dynamically involved in our lives on a day to day basis, and that is what I portray in the stories.

WS: The characters that are less spiritually mature in your books behave like pagans might behave. Do you feel any self censorship, or the possibility that a Christian publisher might not have wanted to publish your book if you were more direct in the way you portrayed the non-Christian characters in your book. In other words, are there limitations writing for the Christian genre or Christian audience or did you feel all the freedom that you needed did you do all the things you wanted to do in that regard?

RW: I am glad you asked that question, because that is something I thought about a bit, because I toyed with the idea on the first book of not even writing it for the Christian fiction market. But it became apparent to me quickly that that's who I am and to the extent I can communicate something real it needs to come out of who I am and what I believe.

As far as portraying characters in their lost condition, I will do that, but I will not use some of the graphic language or explicit language or graphic detail of sin that other books would. Of course, most of those things take place in secret in real life. There was a greater expression of art, in my opinion, before we had these graphic depictions of sex and violence. There was more subtlty.

Also, I believe there is a place I can go and other Christian writers can go that nobody else can go because we have a understanding of a kingdom of God and the ways of the spirit of God in the lives of people.

WS: Has there been anything surprising about the reception that you have gotten from either the Christian or secular community? Did you think that Christians would embrace it more or the secular press wouldn't embrace it more?

RW: I don't really have a reference for that. I was writing “The List” for two years and I didn't know that it was going to be published. I wrote it for my wife. I wrote that book to bring her pleasure. I just said, “Lord, I believe you want me to do this and I am going to do it.”

WS: Someone once told me that you should write not for an “audience” but for a single reader.

RW: That probably helped me with that book. And then I also enter into a relationship with my characters. They become real to me. I don't write from a detailed outline. I am what an editor told me was an “organic writer.” An organic writer creates a scene and introduces characters, not fully knowing what they are going to say or do, and then just allow that scene to develop.

Sometimes I have an idea about where things are going and sometimes I don't, but I really enter into an emotional relationship with the characters. In the first book there are two women who are strong prayers. One is the landlady for the main character, and the other is a lady that helped raised him. I remember one day writing a scene where one of them was engaged in prayer for this main character and I just turned off my computer and got up and said, “God, I realize that these are made up characters, but I want to be like this myself, to have that kind of relationship with you that I can pray with this kind of specificity and be on point with what your will is with this person.”

WS: How do you feel you have grown as a writer from the first to second book?

RW: My technique is better. 

WS: Did you learn that in the writing process or did your editor help you with that?

RW: I learned it in the writing process. And I got this book called “Self Editing For Fiction Writers” and that book changed my life because things I knew intuitively I now know cognitively. I was able to apply that in the writing process.

WS: What else inspired your writing?

RW: Well, the greatest influences on modern writing are Ernest Hemingway and the television. Hemingway wrote from a journalistic perspective. Ever since he came on the scene that has been a general trend. Show, don't tell. And, of course, that is what television does.

WS: So as a southern man you didn't read Faulkner?

RW: Yes, I did read Faulkner, and other famous writers, but I can't say any of them had a great influence on my writing. What had more of an impact was visiting my relatives and wanting to hear my uncles tell stories.

WS: Since you have an interest in revival, I understand there was a major revival that took place in this part of the country in the 1800s that started in the Triad area and spread throughout the Carolinas.

RW: Most of the things that happened around 1800-1805 I kind of associate with the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky. 

WS: We are now celebrating the 200 year anniversary of these events. Do you think that kind of revival could happen again here?

RW: Yes. I have asked the Lord for that. I would like to participate in some way in a genuine visitation like that in my lifetime.

WS: What's next for you? Are you working on another novel?

RW: I am almost finished with the third book. It's about prayer in the school and the violence of the school issue. It's set in North Carolina in a fictitious town outside of Charlotte. You can have metal detectors -- there is wisdom in taking those steps. But as a Christian I believe the greatest response we can have is prayer, because the dividing line between good and evil is in the center of the human heart. That is what the book is about.