This week: Writing Spiritually Based Fiction Edited by: Lilli 🧿 ☕  
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In most cases, writing a book is a giant leap of faith. So, if you’d like to write stories that incorporate aspects of your faith, there are a few things that need to be considered.
Similar to writing mainstream fiction, the writer needs to create believable characters, realistic settings, and engaging dialogue; just to name a few.
This newsletter will, hopefully, provide some things to consider to help you get started with writing your faith-based story.
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There’s more to writing a faith-based book than jotting down your feelings and interpretations. These steps will help you take your idea and vision to the next step and write a good story about your faith and understandings of it.
 Convey hope in your writing.
The main difference between a book incorporating faith and other fiction books is not so much what is seen, but what is unseen. One goal of writing about faith is to convey hope to those who are hurting or searching. Pass hope to your readers with examples of how ‘faith moves mountains’.
Here are a couple of examples:
 Display your own or others’ struggles
Make a point to develop a full range of emotions by the “show, don’t tell” rule in writing
Focus your book to look on the bright side
Show the steps from struggle to hope so readers can understand how it’s done
Write a story, fiction vs. non-fiction.
The most popular faith-based books have story settings where people overcoming impossible challenges. Faith comes to life through stories, and those stories will be remembered longer than any list of does and don’ts. Not that I’m against lists; I’m writing some here.
While far from fantasy, Cori Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place reveals parallel worlds. Outwardly Ten Boom endures a brutal concentration camp while inwardly she lives in a world of faith. Faith, in this case, is essential to her survival. While the threat of death is ever-present, the main character and author find freedom against the ultimate antagonist. Fiction needs to be as real as nonfiction! The more implausible the story, the more you need to anchor it in details that make it seem real.
If you are writing a fictitious book like The Shack by William Paul Young, you can use the feelings you encountered in life, and exaggerate them to make your point. Can you remember needing a certain amount of cash on the first of the month and receiving near that amount in the mail, just in time?
Turn things from difficult to desperate in order to further your message and story.
Flawed, but not too flawed characters.
When it comes to stories like this, you want to make sure you never write it as anything being “perfect.” Firstly, no reader will want that type of character development or story structure as a whole because it’s not realistic and therefore, not interesting.
Here are some tips to avoid creating not enough or too many flaws:
Don’t make your faith hero too good. Nobody is perfect, and your characters should not be perfect either.
On the other hand, don’t give your characters fatal flaws. Some flaws are endearing while others are repulsive. Readers will easily forgive a woman who chews gum constantly while a man who runs over a puppy for the fun of it will remain beyond redemption to them.
Make flaws relatable. If your reader thinks, I do that, or if they know someone with similar quirks to your characters, they will most likely relate to your creations and enjoy the story.
Some of the most powerful lessons can be learned by those who have experience. To write about faith, you will need to exercise faith. Write about what you know and draw from your own experiences. |
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Spiritual: December 02, 2020 Issue [#10490]
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