In this episode of the Write Good Books Podcast, Jason and Scott discuss how to respectfully incorporate religion in the setting of your fictional world, and also how to use religion to further develop your characters.
Related Links: Holy Fudgesicles, The Exorcist, Until the End
About the hosts
Jason Bougger lives in Omaha, Nebraska with his wife and kids. He is the author of the YA novel, Holy Fudgesicles, and has published over twenty short stories. He is the owner and editor of Theme of Absence, an online magazine of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Visit his main author site at www.JasonBougger.com.
Scott Michael Childers is an author and librarian. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and cats. His writing interests span from classic historical non-fiction to far future speculative fiction. Visit his main author site at www. ScottMichaelChilders.com.
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Why respectfully incorporate religion, why would anyone, especially a writer have to be respectful of a religion. I’ve yet to find any religion that I have any respect for.
And that’s totally your prerogative. The angle we were taking in this episode was that if you do choose to make a religious believe system (or lack of one) part of a character’s background, then there better be a reason within the context of the story to portray that in a negative light.
Besides, writers (and other humans as well) should be able to be respectful toward beliefs and cultures that they are not part of, or even philosophically disagree with. To say atheists don’t have hearts, or Christians don’t have brains, for example, stereotypes a large group of people and runs the risk of appearing bigoted and chasing off potential readers.
For what it’s worth, the majority of my fiction has absolutely no religious context to it at all. And in those stories I had no reason whatsoever to incorporate it. It all depends on the type of story and who you want the characters to be.