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Hi @steward-of-the-pen,

I do agree with much of what you’ve said but there are a few things I wonder about.

Do you think, in real life, there are well-meaning Christians that tend to, in their excitement and zeal, find themselves being rebuffed by the world when they try to evangelize them using a lot of Scriptures?  The reason I ask is that I have a character deliberately doing this.

If I was writing an authentic mirror of those individuals in story, the objective reader who is a Christian should know what the character intends.   You as a reader know it is typically ineffective, especially in evangelism.  But if you somehow knew the author was writing this character deliberately that way, so that it would cause a certain alienation between characters, how long would your patience hold with this character if you knew that he would later come to understand that relationship precedes revelation?  If the main character is also the narrator and principle point of view, how long do you think the reader will listen until they begin to resent the character’s ineffective method and forget his intention?  Ever done that yourself when you were a new Christian?

In light of that statement, what do you think the purpose was when Jesus spoke to the people in parables?  Just want your take on it.

Are there stories that can show us more than what we already believe?

Honestly, I think a good story, believable characters, and a well-constructed plot can overcome and transcend the barriers.  Let’s face it, there will be some who love your stories and some who may even hate them.  We can’t please everybody, and it is a time-waster to try.  Remember, first and foremost that you are pleasing to the One who knows you the best and gave His blood to redeem you.  Operate in the security of His pleasure, and you won’t feel the need to please anyone else.  That is a liberating concept.  When you write, write to please yourself, because you are your first audience.  Whether you know this or not, there are commonalities in people throughout the world who respond to similar things that give you joy.  Ecclesiastes 1:9 says “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”  What that means is despite what you may feel sometimes, experiences and situations are cyclical.  Meaning the struggles you face or the struggles that you explore through character because they interest you as author or you can relate to them in some way in your own life may be the same struggles a reader of your book is having or can relate to.  As you work out a story resolution through character, your reader will be able to relate to it and find your story meaningful in their own lives.  That is where stories connect and become life-changing.  Write to your own delight.  There is a reader out there who cannot help but feel their own delight when you infuse your own into a story.

Yes, craft sharpening will come, but you improve by the doing, more than by studying all of the rules and trying to implement them.  When you are first writing a draft, put your mental editor away.  I like to think of my mental editor and self-critic as a small gnome.  He’s cute, but he is annoying.  When I set down to write, if he starts criticizing me and saying you’re doing it wrong, etc. that will kill my creative flow quicker than anything.  So mentally, I pick him up by the scruff of the neck and collar and place him under an upside down tin bucket, and put a brick on top of it.  When he attempts to complain, I thump the bucket, giving it a ringing sound echo.  Eventually, he shuts up and I can get the story out on paper, or in a file or whatever media I am using to capture my tale.  After I am done, then and only then I let “Thumper” out of the bucket and let him look at my work.  If he is overly critical I point to the bucket and he changes his tone and softens his critique to a level I can converse with.

The point is don’t listen to the overly critical or the naysayers.  They often don’t accomplish much in their own lives so who are they to instruct you in yours.
Follow your specific calling.  Do that in obedience to your gifting and let God bring forth the increase.
“12 Let no one look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in your speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity.” [1 Timothy 4:12 NET]