Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hello, guild, this topic is likely to be controversial, and rightfully so. Faith, or lack of, is a strong topic, and one universally important to individuals. But unlike my normal habit, this isn't a discussion of religions and comparison and contrasting, but a simple discussion of how we, those of the creative bend, are affecting by our faith, or lack there of.

Simply put: Have you ever noticed themes running deep in your stories that whisper of your faith? For those without a faith or belief, do you think it affects your writing? Would you be open to discussing this faith and how you think it's affected you?

For me, I absolutely believe my faith affects my writing. Very little of my work has something that wouldn't be deemed 'supernatural' in some way or another. Many of my main characters also hold beliefs I hold myself, including universal human freedom. My villains often embody the things I personally revile.

I think it really reflects in one of the stories I'm still in the idea stage of. I'm agnostic, so I'm open to all beliefs and try not to judge. I have so many characters of different religions. The main character, Angel, is an atheist. Her guardian was into New Age and Neopagan beliefs, and so is Angel's daughter. Angel's biological parents are from a planet that has prophecies and stuff like that.

The antagonistic is an atheist, like Angel. He's depicted as the typical media atheist, who lost faith in God when he lost faith in man. His parent's had been killed, his home world destroyed, ect. Angel, on the other hand, is a much better icon for atheist. She just doesn't believe. Nothing horrible happened to make her come to this conclusion. She just sees religion as foolish and sees better things for her time. After her guardian dies she changes a bit. She tries to appreciate life, because it's the only one we'll ever get.

I've also got two Christians. Brody is a coworker of Angel. He's an all around decent guy. His wife is a shrew though. So we've got our good Christian and our bad Christian, like how we had a good Atheist and our bad Atheist.

I also had religion a topic of my first novel. It was a romance where the heroine was already married to a Duke. He was an awful man that was having an affair with her sister. Well the heroine, Anastasia, was very religions. She freaked out when she had a sex dream about the knight, Sir Maxwell. Maxwell was an agnostic, questioning God throughout the whole book. Anyway, the problem with Anastasia was she was so religious that she would never commit adultery, like she was suppose to. It took her husband sentencing her to death to get her to admit her love for Maxwell and break her vows. But in the end she decides God would rather her be with Maxwell, a kind angel sent from the Heavens to rescue her.

So yes, I use religion. I see my characters as real people, and real people have these crazy beliefs that tells them to do crazy things. Wars are caused over religion. How can you leave something so powerful out of your story? But I try to use all religions and attempt to stay true to them, out of respect.

I'm not sure. My writing speaks a lot of life, youth, aging, and sometimes death. I'm Catholic, so I don't know how that influences things...

I quite enjoy religious characters, especially passively religious characters (lazy-a** Catholicism is what I know best) -- probably what I write the most if only because they default to religious but then it hardly ever comes up. At times, there are also really devout ones who are having problems reconciling what they must do with what they believe they cannot ever do. And then there are the ones who have focused themselves so fully on one aspect of their faith (say, honor thy mother and thy father) that they'll completely gloss over other things (thou shalt not kill).

I have a bias toward Catholics in historical fiction. In anything modern or fantasy, it varies. With modern, religious themes tend not to come up. In fantasy, I think I generally tend to model religions as either Catholic-like, nature-based, or both. And I actually really like the combination of them.

Either way, though, none of it is as a soapbox for my personal beliefs or opinions on religions, though I can see how some might think otherwise ... but if they read enough of what I write, I would seem to contradict myself enough that I think that would be covered. I try to treat everything fairly, though the historical Catholic characters sometimes have nothing but awful, awful things to say about those upstart Protestants.

One thing I do particularly enjoy is addressing the fact that there are always ulterior motives to things like religious wars.

For some people maybe, but for me when I write I don't really think about religion. I think why I don't think about it is I don't want it to affect how my stories come out, but a the same time I try to set a bit of my personality into the charcters as well. I don't want my stories to be about what my religion is, but about the characters on the inside, since I want them to be themselves and not me.

But on the other hand it depends on what you're writing about also when your religion affects how you write. It probably doens't affect me as much since I like to write alot of fiction and fantasy in my writing.

It does affect you. That you can't actually see it is another matter. Fantasy doesn't mean you just magically avoid things like this. I write fantasy, too, and these things always come up. You can have intentionally work on avoiding it, and I don't honestly think anyone really succeeds in that. Not fully.

I'm not religious, but a lot of my characters are. Religion and culture interest me a lot, so I would have probably researched other faiths on my own time anyway, but especially because of my writing projects, I've been researching a lot of Islam lately in particular.

Personally, though, I was raised Jewish, but now I'm an atheistic-spiritualist. I don't believe in a "God" so to speak, but I do think there are unconscious forces out there that we don't yet fully understand. In general, I like Eastern ideas like Karma and Reincarnation. I'm a cynic of Western views as a whole, and I think that shows in my writing. At the same time, I have a respect for all peaceful cultures, but still, my inner cynic wheedles its way into a lot of what I write.