: Re: Writing in a Christian voice I'm Jewish. My middle-grade fantasy novel is very Jewish. Most of my characters are either Jews or converts/future converts or people with at least one Jewish

@Bryan361

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Every social group has its own dialect: that's called a sociolect. As dialects, it is hard to pick a sociolect for an outsider. Think how many writers handle teenager language in a horrible way.

There are two main ways to improve your understanding and fluency in a sociolect:

Read, read, and read litterature by "native" speaker of the sociolect. Or watch movies they make. Better, if possible, spend time with Christian people.
Have a Christian proofread your text, in the same way that movie makers use scientists to validate the scientific part of their work. Be sure that he understood the ideas you want to convey in that scene, and be ready to accept their criticism. That's great that you already started this process by asking relatives, but you need more detailed feedback on what is "way off".

A remark to conclude: When learning a sociolect, learn also when people use it and when they don't. Most people speak different dialects: their geographic dialects, their social dialects, the technological dialects of their workplace, their sport, their online community,... Christian people are not in "Christian mode" all day long or they become caricatures. I found Eugene from The Walking Dead extremely upsetting as he never breaks from his "scientist" role and speaks in casual conversation like no real-life scientist would speak. This either means that Eugene is "special" (is he doing this to look smart and keep his position in the community?) or that the writers don't understand anything about the scientific community.

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