Nova
New Member
Posts: 37
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Post by Nova on Feb 28, 2009 1:01:29 GMT -5
I spend alot of time writeing and overall exspanding on my world. A huige part of my story is around religion. The story is about a world that was once filled with prophets who pessessed supernatural abilities (there alot like old testement prophets with alot of fantasy elements included.) Now ability comes from Adonisis the one true God of the story. Theres are people in the story that have other powers sourced by dieties of a demonic persasion.
Now the question is should i have a Messiah like figure in the hostory of the world or should i not. My problem is i can be very sheepish about Christian parralells in my writeing im always afraid that it will be to mucha real world copy or ill create some huge sin against God. Has anyone else ever had this problem if so how do you overcome it? I have no problem depicting the false faiths, I want to make the faith of God in the story be unique however understanable.
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Feb 28, 2009 8:33:40 GMT -5
Hi, Nova, and welcome to The Anomaly! Good questions here.
A lot of it depends on who you're writing for. If you're writing for non-Christians, then maybe you want to avoid too much of a 1-to-1 correspondence between your story and the Bible. Many non-Christians can smell a "tricky" or disguised sermon a mile away.
If you're writing for Christians, they may be more comfortable with direct connections to the Bible in your fiction. On the other hand, as we've been discussing lately in another thread, sometimes us Christians don't want tricky or disguised sermons either.
As for including a Messiah figure, that's up to you. There's no right or wrong. I've read Christian fiction that takes place in a modern world but one in which God's Son has not yet come to the world. Sometimes that fiction will simply operate in that pre-Messiah time space. Or sometimes it will depict what it might be like if Christ were to come to us for the first time...today.
I think you're probably safe on the fear of creating a huge sin against God. He judges your heart. If you are meaning to explore the creativity He gave you--and He loves it when you do--and you're meaning it as an act of worship, then you're probably going to be pretty safe from sin.
Jeff
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Post by mongoose on Feb 28, 2009 15:53:23 GMT -5
I concur with Jeff's comments, especially on the part about potentially sinning against God. Some have said God will let you know, by His Holy Spirit, when something you're trying to do is wrong. That's how the prophets you speak of operated, and still operate today, after all. Listening to God and doing what He told them. Cultivate that discipline in yourself, and your prophetic characters will be all the more realistic and believable as you write what you know.
I'd like to add something about determining who to add to a story, whether a messiah character or not, and what they should do. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating. Though I've yet to be published, I am quite confident in my ability to craft a good story. For me it's not the story that's the problem, just the mechanics of it, as described in Jeff's "Tips of the week" and the corresponding threads on here. So how do I make that determination?
I don't even write a story, not a title, not an introduction, not an outline, not a character profile (these are all step 2 and on) until I know in my head what the story is about. I need to know the theme I'm trying to communicate first. What is your theme? What's the point? Sure, the scenario that you've got a very spiritually active world with prophets and false prophets in it is interesting, but why write such a story? Surely you have somewhere you want to go with it. Some ending or parallel or point you had in mind that you want to communicate to the reader.
Whether or not you include a messiah figure, then, would depend on whether or not a messiah figure would assist in the communication of that ending, parallel, theme or point.
that's not to say that you have to be preachy. I read a story of passable quality where the theme was a physical battle between a mutated man-beast and an expert tracker/warrior in the north country. The story was, quite simply, about the chase and the fight. But the author must have started out with an idea for a story about an epic chase and fight in the north country, and that theme was the source for the creation of the man-beast character.
Or in my own writing, I don't have a Native American soldier just because I wanted a story about a Native American Soldier. No, I began with my theme: God takes those who are despised and rejected by others, and raises them up to be leaders when they devote themselves fully to His service. So I needed someone who would be despised and rejected by others. I could have chosen any ethnicity or regional or cultural group, but I also wanted to re-mix the story of the shepherd David in modern times. My theme demanded someone raised in a rural area, despised and rejected, rising through military ranks as a special operations soldier to ultimately lead many to righteousness as he served God. It made sense for him to be a Native American, especially as I'm more familiar with certain Native cultures than I am with other cultures.
So that's just two examples of how the theme of a story can dictate what characters should be active in it, and what they should do, whether or not you intend to be preachy with it.
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Nova
New Member
Posts: 37
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Post by Nova on Feb 28, 2009 23:21:06 GMT -5
It really helped just to mention my problem as tonight i sat down and completely mapped out the religious background of this world. I'm very confident about it now.
I'm not completely sure yet as to if it will be for Christians and non Christians. Were I'm now probable leaning more for Christians. I'm by far in the "i want to read a book not a sermon" boat, there are similarities with Christianity. However although i may use elements of Christianity i want to make the faith system as unique as possible, while still making people wonder were they heard something like this before. Its more background then anything, to write my characters i need to understand what they believe. My story deals with allot of issues of clashing cultures and cultures have different belief systems.
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