Are Your Characters Practical Atheists?

By Michael Ehret

We're entering fully into summer and I'm thinking about Christmas. Christmas cookies, specifically. I love making sugar cookies with cookie cutters. It’s fun to slather colored powdered-sugar frosting for that extra layer of sweetness over those recognizable holiday shapes.

Even though frosted differently, those cookies all look the same. There’s not a lot of difference between my cookies and the ones my kids create. And they taste exactly the same—sweet perfection.

One of the challenges writers face is creating characters who don’t look like all the others. Characters who aren’t stamped out of the same dough everyone else is using.

God changes lives—just not mine

A sermon I once heard reminded of this. The pastor, Eric Carpenter, had just begun a series called “Practical Atheist,” focusing on Christians who believe in God, but live as if He doesn’t exist. (Based on Craig Groeschel’s book, Christian Atheist.)

At the beginning of the sermon Carpenter said, “It’s like when we say we believe in a God who forgives, but refuse to accept His forgiveness personally or refuse to forgive others. We believe in a God who changes lives, but don’t believe we can change in meaningful, deep, abiding ways.”

That’s when I thought of the characters in my current manuscript. Are they cookie-cutter Christians, cruising through life with a few bumps and scratches that are easily covered by a new layer of “holiness” frosting? Or are they authentic Christians even while living real, flawed lives?

And if they aren’t, what would my book be like if they were?

Creating misery

My characters—and yours—need to suffer, and not just a little. I need to find each one’s core weakness and exploit it. Then exploit it again and again and again.

We need to find the point in each character where they’re a practical atheist—where they don’t fully trust God even if they outwardly claim otherwise. And then we need to make them miserable in that exact area.

When we do that, we can help the character—and the reader—find their way back to God or more fully turn their weakness over to His strength.

And that’s when our characters step out of the cookie cutter and start to live and breathe. That’s when the story we’re telling becomes transformational—for the author and for the reader.

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Michael Ehret has accepted God's invitation and is a freelance editor at WritingOnTheFineLine.com. In addition, he's worked as editor-in-chief of the ACFW Journal at American Christian Fiction Writers. He pays the bills as a marketing communications writer and sharpened his writing and editing skills as a reporter for The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star.

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Flawed characters have flawed thinking

by +AneMulligan  @AneMulligan

In my debut book, Chapel Springs Revival, my main character, Claire Bennett, is sprucing up Chapel Springs and her marriage. 

Spoiler alert! She married before she became a Christian and now wonders if her hubby is God's best for her. And yes, this came from an overheard conversation. 

What Claire learns is that God always has her best in mind, and we see, rather than get told, how perfect her Joel is for her. That's her character arc.

Spoiler over. What surprised me was when someone said in a comment that she thought it was wrong of Claire to think like that, let alone look, for a new husband.

But that was the whole point. How could I show her misconception without taking her through the journey? Even as Christians, we can get the wrong idea about what God wants us to do. If we want it, then we tend to put God in a box that agrees with our desires. 

And that works well in Christian fiction. 

In Lisa Samson's book A Thing of Beauty, I love how her main character, Fiona, buys junk all the time, so she can turn the stuff into a thing of beauty...someday. Ten years later, her house is filled with junk and she's out of money. What a great character flaw. I wanted to shake her and tell her to do something with it or trash it. Samson used that flaw as the perfect metaphor for Fiona's life. Her character arc was excellent.   

If we don't have flawed thinking in flawed characters, then we have no character arc. Without a good character arc, there's no overcoming obstacles, and the result will not leave readers with a satisfying end.

Another book with fantastic character flaws is Invisible, by Ginny Yttrup. She has three main characters who all have flaws that are obvious, yet metaphoric for their internal flawed thinking. 

As Christians authors, we can't be afraid to give our protagonist a flaw they have to overcome. Katie Ganshert took on this task in A Broken Kind of Beautiful, where she takes us into he fashion industry.

Each of these novels is a great example of flawed characters. What flaw in your character's thinking have you capitalized on? 

Ane Mulligan writes Southern-fried fiction served with a tall, sweet iced tea. She's a novelist, a humor columnist, and a multi-published playwright. She resides in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband, their chef son, and two dogs of Biblical proportion. Her debut novel, Chapel Springs Revival, released Sept, 2014, to be followed by Chapel Springs Survival, Oct 2015, Home to Chapel Springs, May 2016. You can find Ane at her website, Novel Rocket, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+

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