Writing Real Characters in Christian Fiction  

The market for Christian fiction is huge, there’s no doubt about that. Perhaps this demand for Christian fiction is coming in response to a world of pain and heartache where readers are hungry for stories with a redeeming message, a message that can come from the pages of your book.

But on a practical level, how do you as an author communicate that positive, redemptive message, but still be real with your characters and the situations they are dealing with? How do you make characters real and relatable? Think about yourself as a reader for a moment – do you enjoy reading a book with unrelatable, boring or too perfect characters? No, probably not.

Therefore, we come to the conclusion that for characters to be relatable they must struggle with real issues because real people reading your book struggle with real issues. Even taboo issues – divorce, abuse, alcoholism, etc. can and perhaps should be addressed to make your characters relatable.

However, for your book to maintain that positive message, there is a key to keep your book and your readers from falling into a hopeless place. The key is how you as a Christian writer choose to handle those issues in your book through your characters. As a writer you have a choice to write how your characters will respond to pain in their lives.

Let’s say for example you write a story involving a woman who has suffered some kind of abuse as a child. How will she choose to handle that abuse as an adult? In secular fiction perhaps she would allow that experience to make her bitter and destroy her. But as a Christian, how could you handle that situation differently? Could you acknowledge the pain she has experienced, but help her move on to forgiveness toward her abuser? Certainly that would be a painful process the character would have to walk through, but it’s not impossible. She would grow and learn from that and come out on the other side as a better person, not a bitter person. That experience and its outcome would make her relatable to readers. Perhaps some would even feel encouraged to grow from their own painful situations and move on with their lives.

We’ve all lived on this earth long enough to know that life is not always roses and sunshine. There are hard times. There is pain and sin that destroys. As a Christian writer you have an incredible opportunity to write realistic characters that deal with the pain life throws at them, but still hold onto a deeper hope and come through it stronger. That’s the ultimate message your readers want to hear – that there is hope they can come through their own pain.

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