: Re: Sympathetic portrayal of devout, rule-abiding characters I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader

@Alves689

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While you might personally have issues with the three items you listed, calling religious belief arguably arbitrary and irrational and letting that viewpoint seep into your writing is going to make your task very difficult. You yourself need to learn to sympathize with a religious viewpoint first. You don't need to accept it, but you need to believe that someone can be fully using their mental, emotional, physical, and other capacities and still believe in God/gods/reincarnation/the spirit world/what have you. If you can't get yourself past this issue, you should reconsider the character.

I'll walk through the three situations that you listed as difficult and describe how I write the character:

A person who gives up on the chance for a romantic relationship with somebody whose religion is different than his own.

First of all, don't make this an easy, obvious choice. You could write this character many ways. Take a conservative Christian character, perhaps, who winds up in a romantic relationship with a committed agnostic who, while not opposed to her beliefs, is confident that he will never share them. The Christian might remember days in her self-assured youth where she could never imagine herself dating (or, to be very conservative, courting) anyone but someone who shared her views on God and Christ. Then she might remember being totally bowled over by the experience of this guy - all the amazing things about him. Make the decision agony. At the same time, you have to make God and her belief in him compelling. Show what she loves about her faith - the fact, perhaps, that she can rest in God working all circumstances for good in her life and his unconditional acceptance of her. If you were to write such a conservative Christian character, you would need to find out what Christians love about their God, or at least their church. You can certainly put in pressure from a legalistic family or church, but while that's realistic it's far less likely to be sympathetic than a young woman who cannot imagine going against what she believes God has told her.

An Orthodox Jew who can't join his friends for meals because their food isn't kosher.

Think about the character Danny in The Chosen. We readers initially see Danny through the unsympathetic viewpoint of Reuven. However as Reuven gets to know Danny, he finds out things that make this character sympathetic - the coldness of Danny's father, the voracious mind Danny has, etc. Reuven even comes to respect Danny's cold, extremely conservative father Reb because of the congregants great love for Reb and the sense that Danny's cold father really loves his son. Chaim Potok, the author, does an excellent job of bringing us inside motivations and showing the cost of following one's beliefs.

So in the case of an Orthodox Jew keeping kosher, make kosher matter. Associate it with good memories of family, tradition, and G-d (to use the Jewish form of respect). Also explain the friendship and make it matter, perhaps more to the Orthodox Jew than to his friends who won't eat kosher for a night to allow him to join in. You can even make this character noble, someone who is true to his values and deserves respect. Make him upright in all areas of his life.

A fantasy story focusing on a religious ceremony which is purely ceremonial, and yet is also truly, genuinely important to the character.

I'm not sure what a purely ceremonial ceremony is as opposed to a regular religious ceremony. Still, let's take an example of Passover. Passover represents G-d's rescue of the children of Israel from Egypt long, long ago. Dig into what it means to the Jewish people and you should be able to make it matter to your readers, as long as you can see why it would matter to a character. Or what about the example of Christian baptism of an adult convert to the faith? Dunking in water or being sprinkled by it doesn't really seem like much on the surface. You have to understand what's behind baptism - the symbolism of dying to self and doing wrong and coming up into new life in Christ where one strives to serve God because he is great and worthy of honor and do right to other people because it's what we ought to do. Baptism represents a very serious milepost in the life of Christians and understanding it will help you significantly.

TL;DR - first you have to be sympathetic with the characters and see both the value of their faith to them and the ways that it motivates them in the world, then you can write them in a sympathetic way.

Example books to read:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

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