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It’s good to see you @selah!

The short version of that is “don’t be a jerk to people when talking about their emotions” and “be sensitive to what other people are feeling”. Don’t just focus on what people are thinking, focus on what they are feeling too.

The long version is more of an observation that biblical truth tends to cause negative emotional reactions in unbelievers. In short, what I’ve noticed is kind of a rule: for unbelievers, the more truth they believe, the worse they feel, because their “life success” in the sin nature is based on how many lies they can believe, how many other people they can get to believe the same lies they do, and how well they can act against God in order to make their lies into a functioning reality for them. Now in all of these things the unbelievers will fail disastrously, but they delude themselves even more to make it seem to themselves that they have succeeded. Thus, believing the truth comes at an emotional cost.

In contrast, Christians (people who have accepted Christ as their Lord and personal Savior) live the opposite emotional reality – every lie that that they believe and act upon costs them emotionally – for every lie they believe, the worse they feel. However, for Christians because of the Holy Spirit the lies they believe can be replaced with the truth using Scripture – thus their “life success” is how much truth they believe and act upon. The problem is Christians who aren’t aware of the unbelieving emotional reality going on a cheesy emotional gush about how awesome God is without realizing that turning reverses the flow.

For evangelism purposes, I have met a number of unbelievers who are depressed, and all of them have seemed to have believed more truth than unbelievers who seemed to be happy. That’s because: the more truth they understand, the more inadequate they feel. And you as a Christian are walking into the scene with…yet more truth! Now that doesn’t mean we should compromise on the truth – far from it! But you should never attack these people for being sad or angry when you tell them more. Emphasize God’s love for them and how much you care about them instead, and try to empathize with what they are going through. Part of my goal, as ridiculously ambitious as it is, is to put [i]that[/i] in a writing piece. I actively struggle with this as we speak, and I have found a catastrophic lack of resources on how to accomplish this: to empathize with an unbeliever and guide them through the emotional obstacles they may have to believing the truth, and to emphasize God’s love for them. But I intend to work with the problem until I solve it or it is shown to be impossible, even if it is just one unbeliever at a time.

As for beta reading, I will read anything, but I do warn you that I have no experience writing historical fiction whatsoever. My areas of expertise are poetry, poetic stories of sorts, and comedic tales and memoir. I grew up writing fantasy and science fiction – a good zeitgeist for my area is things like Bionicle (sci-fi with comedic epic one-liners), Across the Wall by Garth Nix (I love Garth Nix, but Across the Wall is his best book), and Autagtrophe Alpaca Untitled (which I wrote for the Aetherlight). I also love well-done realistic fiction pieces and memoirs, heh. And Empryon 1 and 2. 😛 And the Land of Elyon. I could go on all day. So basically I like reading and writing sci-fi, fantasy, and realistic fiction with a good sense of humor as a huge plus, and I love poetry analysis. And I’m rambling.

I read a lot of historical fiction as little girl, so I might be able to take a look, but I’m not the best expert. Probably better to have someone with a better background in writing that take a look at it.

I will take beta reading requests, but I warn you that I’m in college currently so it might take me several weeks to read a lengthy work, and it will take me even longer right now because I am currently sans functioning computer. But do send them along, and I will set up a queue.