You don’t have to look far to find someone talking about gay rights, whether on the news, social media, or—you guessed it—in fiction. At the library where I work, pro-LGBTQ+ novels are packed so tightly onto the shelves that books keep falling off. With the advent of the Sexual Revolution, sex and gender have become focal points of society, and gay pride is a sizzling-hot topic—for everyone except Christian authors, that is.
Has your work-in-progress ever taken a dark turn? You thought you were writing about teenagers falling in love for the first time, but instead you ended up with scenes where the characters crossed physical boundaries. Or maybe your plot veered into other uncomfortable territory. A violence-ridden city. An unfaithful spouse. Gender dysphoria. Because the world is broken, you can’t portray it authentically and empathize with your audience unless you recognize the struggles around you.
Heroes change their worlds by undergoing personal transformation that impels them to risk their own safety for the sake of others. Sometimes this is encapsulated in a singular act, and other times in a recurring pattern, but both reflect the same theme. Over the past few years, however, I’ve noticed an influx of stories that define heroism differently. Instead of revolving around the principle that virtue develops inwardly before manifesting outwardly, this new version focuses on moral judgment.
Anxiety has become increasingly common with all of the turmoil in the world today, affecting a wide variety of people regardless of age, gender, or lifestyle. Since identifying the problems readers are facing is essential to creating relatable characters, anxiety needs to be represented in fiction—and Christian authors have a unique ability to provide comfort.
“Write what you know!” the experts insist—except in the case of, well, everything, because fiction is inherently composed of lives you’ve never lived. Restricting yourself to personal experiences is impossible, because that will prevent you from showcasing the diversity of humanity. Yet, what if you offend a reader for misunderstanding the challenges she faces?
Jesus didn’t shut His eyes to the suffering around Him. From hypocrisy to idolatry and worse, He confronted sin head-on with God’s love—sometimes in everyday conversation, but more often He couched His teachings in parables. Christian storytellers need to practice the same wisdom and extend the same grace. My newest release, Inside the Ten-Foot Line, provides one example of how to gently reach hurting readers. Although the novel features a lot of volleyball action (it’s sports-centric), a dash of romance (it’s YA), and humor (because I’m the author), it touches on a struggle many teens face.
As a Christian storyteller, trauma scares me. I want to touch readers and leave them with more hope than they carried in. My concern makes me hyperconscious of how they might respond to unsettling content, and I’m tempted to cushion gore and grit.
In the past, Christian publishers shied away from the topic of mental illness. And when a book did broach it, sometimes the advice dismissed the condition as unreal, perpetrated myths, or failed to provide the needed support and encouragement. Thankfully, Christian publishers have become more open to addressing gritty issues, and several releases over the last couple decades have touched on mental illness—including Sara Ella’s Coral, the center of our 2022 summer book study.
I have a confession to make that may shock anyone who beta read my first novel, which sported a gruff, pipe-smoking wizard, a quest involving a mythical object of doom, and the line “All we have to decide is what to do with the time we’re given.” Despite these uncanny resemblances, no, I’m not Tolkien. I do, however, harbor deep respect and admiration for him, and I hope my own stories will evoke the same emotions as The Hobbit and The Children of Hurin.
For the first six years of my writing life, I didn’t know how to find the exact spot where a story sinks into a bottomless pit of darkness. Nobody around me could agree on which kinds of content deserved an R rating, and I wasn’t sure what my own stance should be. Half of the Christian community claimed that any book containing foul language or violence overexposed audiences to sin. To younger me, this made sense. But the other half of the Christian community cheered over gruesome battles and roguish characters, and they defended those inclusions with the shield and sword of realism. To older me, this seemed like a more progressive approach.
