Writing a fantasy book, need help.
Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 8:03 pm
Oh wow, I haven't posted here in forever. Don't worry, though; it's somewhat relevant to the board purposes. I think.
I'm writing a book of which the main themes are redemption, evils of humans, how life isn't so good, and why death isn't so bad. Things that are in the Bible rather commonly, but here's my biggest issue. The "world/cosmos" in which the story takes is not ours, nor is it connected in anyway- but in order for it to work, it has to actually mention God a few times so that the theme of "Going to heaven is better than living on Earth." works coherently.(Well, the world this takes place on, at least) What I need to know is what sort of problems there are in giving(some of) the characters beliefs near identical to Christianity without actually making them Christians. You can see my dilemma now.
Honestly, this is something I didn't think would get into the way of the story until I actually got to writing. I just finished the first chapter, but there's this little issue of how I'm supposed to depict the beliefs of some of the characters without them being in "CRAZY CULT, MAN". The whole basis of this world having a bible like that of ours is just far fetched beyond imagination for the limits I've set. In order for it to work, they'd had to have had an ancient world identical to ours as well as history and historical figures.
As none of these exist in the fiction, and I'd much rather my characters not be pagans or atheists(not to speak terribly of either), would it be too far of a stretch to have the basis of these pseudo-christian beliefs be contained within a fictional document that equates the Bible for this fantasy setting? Granted, it wouldn't be called the Bible; it'd be called something fancy but still connectible to Christianity, like... I guess Codex Tetragrammaton(just to throw an idea out- Which actually does match the prevalence of the number four in the story, but I digress.)
So do any of you have any advice for how to write God in a story that doesn't feature our world? Also if it's been done before, do you have any references for which to get an idea on just how to do it? This is going to be really, really difficult to write around if I can't incorporate such a thing.
I'm writing a book of which the main themes are redemption, evils of humans, how life isn't so good, and why death isn't so bad. Things that are in the Bible rather commonly, but here's my biggest issue. The "world/cosmos" in which the story takes is not ours, nor is it connected in anyway- but in order for it to work, it has to actually mention God a few times so that the theme of "Going to heaven is better than living on Earth." works coherently.(Well, the world this takes place on, at least) What I need to know is what sort of problems there are in giving(some of) the characters beliefs near identical to Christianity without actually making them Christians. You can see my dilemma now.
Honestly, this is something I didn't think would get into the way of the story until I actually got to writing. I just finished the first chapter, but there's this little issue of how I'm supposed to depict the beliefs of some of the characters without them being in "CRAZY CULT, MAN". The whole basis of this world having a bible like that of ours is just far fetched beyond imagination for the limits I've set. In order for it to work, they'd had to have had an ancient world identical to ours as well as history and historical figures.
As none of these exist in the fiction, and I'd much rather my characters not be pagans or atheists(not to speak terribly of either), would it be too far of a stretch to have the basis of these pseudo-christian beliefs be contained within a fictional document that equates the Bible for this fantasy setting? Granted, it wouldn't be called the Bible; it'd be called something fancy but still connectible to Christianity, like... I guess Codex Tetragrammaton(just to throw an idea out- Which actually does match the prevalence of the number four in the story, but I digress.)
So do any of you have any advice for how to write God in a story that doesn't feature our world? Also if it's been done before, do you have any references for which to get an idea on just how to do it? This is going to be really, really difficult to write around if I can't incorporate such a thing.
Maybe I'll come up with something to say later..