: 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

@Hamaas631

Vote Up Vote Down

My opinion is that if you want to express the view point of a "eccentric" character, and not just present it, the only way to achieve it is to think in a "subjective" way. It's hard to express a subjective element in a objective light IMO, so just ignore your feelings and find that sweet spot between truth and lies that makes it stick but not stink. Then when writing, pretend that's absolute truth. You don't have to show miracles in a story to somehow make some imaginary gods semi-believable in a work of fiction. If you can't, then I'd have to guess the beliefs of your character are too shallow, or your setting and background for your character needs more work.

The cases I faced were not (directly) religious characters, so take it with a grain of salt, but it may still work for you. My advice though is that when in doubt on how to write, the solution is usually: write until you get it right. You can only theorycraft these things so much… and even then it's only useful if you can make the theory work.

(0)

Login to post a comment!