One of the earliest installments in this series covered how to write about false religions, those that aren’t even real within your world. But today I want to cover the separate issue of how to write about religions that are designed to reflect the truth of who our God is within the context of a fictional world.
As always, this is intended to be food-for-thought, not the one proper Continue reading “How Should Christians Write About… Allegorical Religions?”
Defining the purpose of your fictional world is a foundational and yet often overlooked step of worldbuilding. Leaving your world’s purpose indefinite and vague opens the door wide to overwhelm, lack of direction, and frustration with the worldbuilding process. But defining a world’s purpose can feel limiting–and how do you effectively frame the purpose of a world, anyway? Hence often overlooking or ignoring this helpful step.
Today I want to look at how defining the purpose of your world will aid you in the worldbuilding process and how to frame your world’s purpose effectively.
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“Why do it? Won’t outlining my world’s purpose just limit my creativity and the scope of my world?”
Yes and no.
Defining your purpose with a world limits the scope of Continue reading “Defining the Purpose of a World”
The topic of hospitality is one I’ve wanted to touch on in a worldbuilding context for a while, and it seemed particularly appropriate to tackle now that I’m newly married with a home of my own that I’m able to invite guests into. So let’s look at homes, hospitality, and how Continue reading “Homes & Hospitality in Fantasy”
Worldbuilding can present a number of challenges—often different for each author—but one that seems to be a universal struggle is the challenge of knowing how much worldbuilding to do before you start a writing project. Whether you’re an author who gets sucked into the worldbuilding and has trouble getting into the actual writing process, or an author who leans into the writing process and finds later that their worlds don’t have as much depth as intended, hopefully this post will be a help and encouragement on the subject of worldbuilding for the sake of drafting.
You don’t need to know everything before you start writing.
Those of you who prefer to dive into Continue reading “Worldbuilding for a First Draft”
This is the first of a couple posts I have planned on controversial topics among Christian authors of fantasy. Beyond this post, I want to write one about writing magic and I might add one about writing God’s speech (or the speech of an allegorical God figure). They won’t be consecutive, but they will all crop up eventually.
Do note that while these are titled “How should Christians write about xyz,” these are all topics I think are dependent on personal conviction and spiritual maturity and my goal is more to present my thoughts and provide food for thought and biblical insight than to say “This is the one right way to do things.”
With all that out of the way… How “should” Christians write about false gods?
Some Christian authors will say it’s never a good idea to write about false gods, whether because it’s idolatry, it detracts glory from God, it could mislead readers, or for some other reason. And some of these are valid concerns (certainly any of them can be depending on Continue reading “How Should Christians Write About… False Gods?”