Writing with religion

A number of fiction novels touch upon the subject of spirituality, religion, and faith. Some make a point; the author using his story as a soapbox to share his views with readers. Others use the element of religion to flesh out characters, or a people.

I remember the story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. (The movie Bladerunner was based on this book). He included a unique take on adding religion in the form of futuristic sci-fi where people ‘plugged in’ a world where they join a man and his suffering called Mercerism. Mercer is this messiah like character. You can read more about it here..

What I found fascinating was the idea of experiencing Mercer’s suffering, like Christ on the cross. The plot touches upon humanity and empathy; that plugging into Mercer’s experiences,  you gain empathy. Since the novel’s protagonist must hunt down androids, the main test to discern man from machine is empathy.

While one story might offer religion as something to hold the hero together, to guide him/her through their hardship, another author might use religion as a vehicle for the villains to persecute others.

While playing the video game, Dishonored, they have an interesting character known as The Outsider- a neither-good-nor-evil supernatural god-like being that ‘gifts’ the main hero, Corvo, with his mark. This enables Corvo to use abilities to achieve his goals. How Corvo accomplishes this is up to you, however. The Outsider doesn’t seem to mind if you use the gifts for good or evil.

Another aspect of spiritual belief you can often find how it reflects the environment in which a people live. Harsh environments often give rise to unforgiving gods, while abundant environments often lead to generous, loving gods. All reflect humanity.

What are your thoughts on religion in books? Do you add spiritual beliefs for your characters, or avoid it? Post in comments.

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So many stories…so little time

I’m not sure if other writers have this problem but this past week, I’ve had some issues with figuring out which story to write.

It reminds me of how you throw more than one ball to a dog, and it doesn’t catch any of them. Yeah, kind of like that.

Organizing is helping, but I’m a typical Libra who waffles between decisions trying to find the best choices. Should I go with the short story, the non-fiction, or should I finish the stuff I already started?

I suppose I should let the Creative Muse decide for me; this way, I’ll be bursting with words. Or one would hope. She often abandons me without warning.

So far I organize with the following tips;

- I setup each novel with its own folder. All notes, character biographies, and plot outlines get stuffed in there.

- Any file I want to work on, I add the ! (exclamation point) in front of the word. For instance, !ThisBook. Why? Because it puts this at the top of the alphabetized list.

- I don’t always write from the beginning. When I have issues where I’m not entirely sure where the story beings, I just start writing. Eventually, the plot will reveal where the story starts and where it will end.

What are your tips? Post in comments.

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More on my journey

I have been incredibly remiss on sharing my personal story about writing and getting published. I hope to remedy that this month by posting regular updates.

My daily vlog for April showed me that I can complete a challenge, so this month, I will be writing regularly and posting on this blog to let readers know about my journey, my frustrations, my successes (hopefully), and even setbacks.

What sort of story can I make of myself? I often wonder if I were a character in a book, would ‘she’ be a hero or villain? Would people care to follow along in her adventures? Does she even tackle her problems to overcome adversary and find her destination? That sort of shook me a bit.

No more excuses. Its go time! Carpe Diem! Tally-ho! And all that. I need to share more about my writer’s journey, and let my readers hop aboard to join in the ride.

I haven’t decided on details on how often to post, or what I’ll be posting exactly, but I will share more in future posts.

Wish me luck!

“Sharon mentally took inventory of the proper grammar, story lots, characters, and other tools she’d need on her journey. Time, creativity, and other abstracts intermingled with the inner editor, unceremoniously shoved into the inner pocket. His muffled protests went unnoticed, while the creative muse sat on the top, close to the ear, to whisper ideas and share her magic.

Taking a deep breath, the would-be author set fingers in the proper placement on the keyboard. “Let’s begin.” She whispered….”

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Chapter by Chapter program

In my “Daily Vlog Challenge”, I talked about the Chapter-by-Chapter program I use for compiling a novel. Its works similar to a ‘master document’ but without the bugs and issues, and helps organize scenes/chapters into single documents that also works with  ‘find-replace’ function for all files.

This program is free, works with MS Word 97 and later, and can work with Super Notecard as well.

Here is my video-

I’m thinking of also doing a video on the yWriter novel writing program I’ve used in the past, in case readers might be interested. If so, post in comments, or mention a program you’d like to see, or another topic.

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Wednesday Writer: Christina Nelson

Two of the things I look for in sites I share for Wednesday Writer is;

1) They have to do with writing in some sort of fashion. This could be either their personal experiences as an author, or sharing about the writing process.

And 2) have some sort of element of entertainment. This site has a bit of both.

Christina Nelson’s site includes a number of blog posts where she shares about her personal experience as a writer on the road to publication, with some amusing videos on the day to day stuff, too.

She includes videos from her YouTube channel.  There’s something very helpful in listening to the personal experiences she shares on her process, with the off-topic videos she shares to lighten things up.  I enjoyed her Hiding video, where she admitted to hiding from her novel, as well as The Novelist Rises to Defeat NaNoWriMo.

Leave her some nice comments and encourage her to write!

Do you have web sites or authors you’d like to see as the Wednesday writer? Post in comments.

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Games for Writers

 Here are a few games you might enjoy that helps writers come up with ideas, to break the writer’s block issues, and should spark some creative juices;

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The Storymatic includes two sets of cards that when put together randomly sparks potential stories and ideas. You could also collect your own and start your own deck of cards to build ideas.

 

Rory’s Story Cubes comes in various types from adult to even children’s versions. The concept is similar, except the dice rolled include pictures. You can lay them out in a plot, or use the cubes as the elements of a story such as characters, theme, conflict, and so forth.

 

The Amazing Story Generator is not so much a game but does something similar as the story cubes. Instead of pictures or cubes, you get a flip book broken up into three sections to randomly pick elements of a story. 

You could also use the card game Munchkin to provoke ideas for storytelling, in particular, fantasy, role playing type stories.  Draw cards to add characters or story elements.

 

Iphone, Android, and tablet apps also offer some fun prompts. I use Writing Prompts for the Iphone to randomly view prompts, scenes, even pictures. You can then save to favorites.  You can also add your own prompts as inspiration hits you.

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