Writing Christian Fiction: How the Author Creates Intrigue
by Blog Contributor | July 4, 2024 | Writing Tips | 0 Comments
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Christian fiction is a rising genre for the lessons it offers. However, writing Christian fiction isn’t an easy feat for everyone. How do authors manage?
The Bible contains hundreds of captivating stories brimming with lessons for people to enjoy. It’s composed of varying genres with equally distinct characters that, despite being written to promote faith and devotion, don’t shy away from excitement and intrigue.
The Bible as an Excellent Source
The Bible is filled with evocative stories resonating with everyone, every verse captivating their attention, lessons beckoning their hearts. Although it’s crafted with religion as an integral theme, its narratives aren’t sappy or relative to propaganda. Instead, they remain embellished with elements that make them gripping yet inspirational and timeless.
This is why some of the most impactful classic tales come from the Bible. From the story of Adam and Eve to the prodigal son, the scriptures are a perfect ground for collating great stories not only for people to learn from but also for authors to explore. It’s easy to take inspiration from the scriptures and craft fictional tales. Given how imaginative and powerful these stories can be, modernizing them into contemporary fiction can be quite easy.
Take it from author Joseph Descans, who took it upon himself to bank on a Biblical tale to craft his first Christian fiction.
What Defines Christian Fiction
From its label alone, writing Christian fiction means creating a fictional story about Christianity or religion. It draws from specific Biblical stories and modifies them to expand their dialogues, character arcs, and settings to better suit the modern audience. Christian fiction may have been birthed from the realization that although Scriptures are moving and powerful stories, they may still lack the relatability to drive people to listen to what its pages attempt to convey.
Christian fiction is considered a subgenre of historical fiction because it banks on historical events portrayed in the Bible. However, unlike the latter, writing Christian fiction encourages authors to focus on honing events and people so their audience can learn something. With the scriptures as inspiration, authors must still pay respect to what actually took place in their references.
To better understand how authors write the genre, let’s tackle Joseph Descans and his debut publication, Hosea: The Prophet Who Married a Prostitute.
How to Get Started Writing Christian Fiction
Joseph Descans’ book is a Christian fiction at best, depicting Hosea’s love story with a prostitute in a modern setting. Like every author in this genre, Joseph incorporated Biblical facts into a story to ensure he didn’t stray far away from his reference while managing to create intrigue.
Writing Christian fiction wouldn’t work if authors strictly followed what the Bible says—that would only be considered plagiarism of the first book. Not to mention, doing so would make the story unattractive to the modern audience. Instead, authors would have to balance honoring the Scriptures with making the story appealing. This means playing with historical facts by incorporating modern elements.
In the case of Joseph Descans’ Hosea, while the story is fascinating on its own, the author’s literary prowess still enhances the storyline. For authors still in the beginning stages of their Christian fiction journey, here’s how Joseph and you can create intrigue in your story.
Find a Good Ground
What’s excellent about how Joseph has written his book is that it’s banked on a good foundation. Joseph Descans hit the jackpot by utilizing Hosea’s story in his book. Not only is the book interesting, but it is also a worthwhile story with an excellent lesson.
In writing Christian fiction, authors must consider which story the audience would be fascinated to read more of. This is especially important because of the Bible’s nature. It’s a book almost everyone has grown up with. For Christians, the tales told in its pages are something they’re taught in school, so reading about them again wouldn’t catch their interest. Hence, authors would have to find a great story and incorporate an even better alteration to it.
Find and Deliver Something Authentic
Although the story is fictional, this doesn’t mean authors shouldn’t write something authentic. They should still appeal real to readers, even with half the situation being fictional. The characters should be put in authentic situations and be crafted to portray realistic reactions. Sure, they may be Biblical figures, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong or be subjected to questionable actions.
Authors should think of them as normal people rather than Biblical characters. This way, they won’t have a problem incorporating an ounce of authenticity when writing Christian fiction. Let them mess up. Give them something to sin about. Don’t be afraid of tampering with their goodness.
If you want to know how Joseph Descans wrote his book, grab a copy of Hosea now!
