Stories communicate truth in ways that facts and statistics cannot. They touch places in our souls that sermons cannot reach. When you open your Bible, the first thing you find is not the Ten Commandments but a story. In fact, you have to read the entire first book of the Bible and into the second before you get to those Ten Commandments.
The New Testament is the same way. It opens with a story, then another, and then two more copies of that story. Only after the story of the Acts of the Apostles do you get to Romans. Of course, there is instruction in the Gospels and the book of Acts, but it’s couched in a story because a story is a powerful tool for communicating truth.
God knows that.
He created in us a desire for story.
Christian authors can leverage stories to communicate truth. But sometimes, whether by mistake or on purpose, we communicate lies.
The gift of storytelling must be stewarded and taken seriously. We must treat the pen as if it’s as dangerous as a gun. You’d treat a gun with respect, and you should treat Microsoft Word the same way.
How do we glorify God through our stories?
Zackary Russell has formulated a useful rubric to help us use the art of Christian storytelling for good and for God’s glory.
He serves on the creative ministries team for Campus Crusade for Christ, and he’s the cohost of the Fantastical Truth podcast, an excellent podcast where I’ve been interviewed.
Thomas: You have these four laws of Christian storytelling. What is the first law?
Law #1: Tell stories for the glory of God.
Zack: These laws are based on the four spiritual laws Campus Crusade for Christ has used for around 70 years. Spiritual laws govern the universe and our relationship with God, and there are also laws that govern storytelling and make for effective books and stories.
Stories are powerful, but we should tell stories for God’s glory and not our own. When I joined our church media team as a volunteer, they pointed out Psalm 102:18, which says, “Let this be recorded for a generation to come so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.”
The stories you write will probably outlast you and everyone who’s alive, so it’s easy to look at a story as something that immortalizes you.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, This story is about me because my name is on the book; but therein lies the danger. The entire first chapter of Romans was written to keep us from that error. When we exchange God’s glory for our own glory, we worship a created thing; and everything starts to break down.
Thomas: Anytime somebody starts to over-spiritualize writing, I filter the argument through a grid and ask, “Would this apply to a plumber? Would this apply to someone making hamburgers?” This law of glorifying God through your writing applies to Christians in all vocations.
If you’re a plumber, you glorify God through your plumbing. If you’re making hamburgers, you glorify God through your cooking. Chick-fil-A’s mission statement is “to glorify God by serving our customers.”
Now, that doesn’t mean you need a Bible verse in your book. It’s more fundamental than that. It has to do with how you approach writing, how you treat your employees, how you treat your editor, and how you do your marketing.
You can have a great book; but if you’re deceptive in your marketing, you’re not glorifying God. By the same token, if you’re not marketing your book at all, that may not be glorifying to God. If he’s called you to get the word out, you need to get the word out.
Zack: There are so many ways we can glorify the wrong thing with the story. It can become all about us, and that’s haunted me for a long time.
Since I joined the creative media team of Cru, I have been following all these Christian artists, writers, and musicians. I noticed this really disturbing trend of many of them deconstructing, deconverting, and completely walking away from the faith or any kind of Christian morality. It’s even happened at my own church. Our worship pastor was fired after an abuse scandal, and I’ve been very troubled by this.
What is at the core of it? Is it something unique to writing or unique to artistry?
I think it comes down to the human struggle of loving the applause of men above the applause of God, and that can happen in any profession. As you said, you can be a Christian plumber plumbing houses for your own glory.
I think people fall in these traps because God’s glory is not the purpose of their art or vocation.
The funny thing is that when a story becomes all about evangelism, including Bible verses and a conversion scene, we come to realize that a story is a poor substitute for an evangelist.
A story can’t answer apologetics questions. It can’t lead you in the sinner’s prayer or follow up with you. A story can’t baptize you and lead you continually to Christ. It can only portray something about God or the gospel.
I’ve studied missions history in my role with Cru and even before I joined Cru. There is a sad history of many missionaries trying so hard to be relevant and contextualize things that they end up syncretizing and adopting the idols of their audience. Today, we use the term audience capture, where you’re trying so hard to get the audience to pay attention to your story that you just adopt all their values.
Those values become part of the story and part of your life, and it’s all because God is not the ultimate reason you’re doing it.
Thomas: And starting well is not enough.
The story of King Joash is very much a warning for us. He was brought up in the temple. His queen mother killed all his brothers and had this coup. Joash lives in the temple, learns about God, and there’s a counter-coup where the Levites and priests have his mother executed.
Joash was then installed as the king of Judah, and he made many reforms. He tore down idols and rebuilt the temple; but he died as an evil king! In his old age after his father-figure priest died, Joash started acting wickedly and even had the priest’s son killed. Joash was making pragmatic decisions without seeking the Lord. (See 2 Kings 12 and 2 Chronicles 24.)
Starting well is not enough. If Joash had died younger, he would have been one of the greatest kings in the Old Testament; and people would be naming their kids after him. But nobody names their kid Joash because he didn’t end well.
Failure is a test of our character, but so is success. Sometimes, it reveals that our character isn’t what we thought it was.
Zack: Look at the tower of Babel. It’s a great engineering feat for that period of time. They didn’t exactly have cranes or concrete factories, but they made a great tower somehow with prehistoric methods.
The problem was that they wanted to make a name for themselves. They also were going against God’s direct command to fill the earth, and instead of filling they earth they were all staying in one place. They wanted to make a name for themselves.
I like to ask myself, “Once there’s a book with my name on the bookshelf, am I okay with everyone forgetting my name? Will I be fine if they only remember it was a great story that made them fall in love with Jesus and want to spend more time with God?” If that’s what my story accomplishes while people forget my name, I consider that a success.
On the flip side, if readers only remember my name and nothing about God, I consider that a failure.
My name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life through Christ and his mercy, but mine is not the highest name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, not at the name of Zack or Thomas.
We want to make sure that the name of God is the name that’s lifted high through our stories.
Thomas: Some people will hear that and think you’re saying they must hide and write anonymously. They will think it’s wrong to put their name on the book and that they should trust God to supernaturally drop their book on a reader’s doorstep. But that’s not what you’re saying.
It’s not wrong to be famous.
Peter was super famous. People would line the streets when Peter was in town, hoping he would walk by so his shadow would fall on them and heal them. Paul was famous. Jesus was famous. Their fame was not sin because it was a means to the end of glorifying God.
Fame becomes sin when your brand-building becomes toxic and becomes an end, rather than a means.
Law #2: Tell stories as an act of love.
Zack: The greatest commandment is “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.”
Write Stories People Already Love
We want to tell stories as an act of love for people. In 1 Corinthians 13:1, Paul says, “If I speak in human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.” We see that noisy clanging in many films with huge budgets, where it’s pretty obvious that the people who made the film hate their fans. They just hate large groups of people.
Thomas: Disney, we’re looking at you!
Zack: In some of your episodes, you’ve said that we want to make the kinds of stories that people already enjoy, not try to change people into the types of people who like the stories we’ve made to glorify ourselves. We don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that the best way to serve our audience is to change what they expect or subvert what they like.
We want to exceed their expectations. It’s fun to surprise them; but we want the surprise to be better than they expected, not worse.
Thomas: The surprising twist should not be that the couple doesn’t get together at the end of a romance. That surprise leads to angry, frustrated, unloved readers. But, if they’re expecting a cozy romance, which also happens to be surprisingly and delightfully funny, that’s the kind of subverting expectations that’s good. The surprise is an act of love for the reader. They were expecting a cozy romance, but they weren’t expecting it to be this funny or fun. That delight leads to really good sales because that surprise leads to readers telling others about your book.
Pleasing a reader is good, but surprising and thrilling a reader leads to them talking to other readers about your book.
Write for a Reader
Zack: Still, there’s a balance. We can’t make stories that everyone loves. We have to narrow our focus. It’s okay that some people won’t like our stories, but we do want to please at least one person.
You’ve used the name Timothy (since Paul wrote the epistle to one person named Timothy) to generically name our target reader. As authors, we need to find that one real person for whom we’re making the story.
In my work with Cru, we wanted to make a new video that captures the vision of our campus ministry, which is, “We want to take the gospel to the whole campus and reach the whole world.”
In the early stages of development, we asked, “Who’s the one person we want to show this video to?” Our communications director thought about it and said, “It’s a young gal named Brooklyn. Brooklyn was a student when she came to know the Lord and started walking with him. When she was a student, she was involved with Cru. Then, she became an intern at her campus, came on staff full-time, and moved to a campus in Florida.
Before long, the rest of her team left for various reasons. Brooklyn was ministering all by herself in this very challenging environment. She came to the point where she was asking, “Why am I doing this? Why am I raising support? Why am I just putting myself out there on campus, trying to meet students, share the gospel, and build a movement? What is all this for?”
We were creating the video for Brooklyn. It was such a great exercise to have a “Timothy,” to sharpen that message, although in this case, it was Brooklyn. We wanted to encourage her and not bore, manipulate, or preach at her. Instead, we wanted to empathize with her and delight her. We wanted to invoke her imagination, speak the truth, gently challenge, and trust God through this process.
Thomas: You know you’ve found your Timothy when Timothy’s name is not Timothy anymore.
A lot of people think that writing to one person is limiting, but they don’t realize it’s the only way forward.
Consider this analogy: If you want to cut down a tree but know nothing about trees, you might think, I’ll hit this with the heaviest thing I can find. So, you get the biggest, heaviest sledgehammer and start hitting the tree. However, the sledgehammer just rattles the tree.
How do you cut down the whole tree? You use an axe. An axe hits less wood with each strike. To be truly effective, you don’t just use an axe; you use a sharp axe. The sharper the axe, the smaller the part of the tree it hits; but it has a bigger impact on that part.
That’s how you cut down the whole tree. A sledgehammer will never cut it down.
Saying that you write for women ages 35-65 who are overwhelmed is far too broad. That’s almost all women between the ages of 35 and 65 because we live in an overwhelming world. You’ve got to be more specific. Once you’re more specific, you’ve sharpened your axe; and you’re letting wisdom make things easier. The marketing and writing get easier. Cutting down the tree gets easier.
Zack: Consider Jesus’ ministry: At one point, he had 120 followers; but he really focused on the 12 disciples. Among those, he particularly concentrated on John, James, and Peter. When Jesus fed the 5,000 (which was actually more than 5,000), he started preaching; and the crowd began to leave. Jesus looked at Peter and asked, “Are you also going to go?” Peter replied, “Where else am I going to go? You have the words of eternal life.”
This relationship is what we should strive to have with our readers. While we don’t have the words of eternal life, our readers should feel connected to us, knowing that we care for them through the stories we tell. Our goal is to delight them and take them on a journey.
Storytelling serves three purposes: entertainment, escape, and education. Through these different emotional experiences, we help readers make sense of their lives, understand others, and comprehend the world. By maintaining a reader-first mentality, we address the issue of seeking fame and glory. If we become famous through our storytelling because of how we love each reader, then that’s acceptable. In this way, fame becomes a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Thomas: You can’t be your own Timothy.
Authors are all pretty similar to one another. If you go to a writers conference, you’ll discover that everyone’s pretty similar to you in terms of age, gender, and socioeconomic background.
When I attended writers conferences early in my career, I stuck out. I was a 22-year-old man at a conference attended by older women. There were very few people in their 20s. Nobody there was writing for me because they were all writing for themselves.
You’ll find more commercial success when you pick a Timothy that few other authors are fighting to thrill, even if Timothy is representative of only a small group. If you’re one of only a few authors to write for that small group, they’ll be thrilled so much that they’ll talk about you.
One of the best-selling book series of my lifetime was written for 12-year-old boys: the Harry Potter books. People often say, “Boys don’t read books. Twelve-year-olds don’t read books. Who’d write for them?” Well, J.K. Rowling wrote specifically for them, and her books sold like crazy. It’s all about that narrow focus.
On my other podcast, Novel Marketing, I’ve interviewed authors like S. D. Smith and Connor Boyack, who have sold millions of copies by targeting a very specific reader. They often outsell traditionally published authors in their categories because they are willing to focus on and thrill a specific reader that others aren’t writing for.
Zack: You can’t be everyone’s friend. It’s not that you’re trying to exclude anyone, but the reality is that not everyone will like you because you don’t like everyone. However, the people that you are writing for are those for whom you can write from a heart full of love.
Law #3: Tell stories full of creativity and order.
Zack: In 1 Corinthians 14:33 we read, “God is not a God of disorder but of peace.” Sometimes creativity just takes hold of you, and you have to do whatever it tells you.
There’s the idea of the wind blowing where it pleases, and that’s how it is when we’re born of the Spirit; but God is not chaotic or random. I recently heard someone say he doesn’t know where he gets his creativity. He thinks it’s a ghost that takes hold of him.
And while there is the Holy Ghost, God’s Spirit isn’t random. In Exodus 31 Bezalel is the first person that we’re told is filled with God’s Spirit to make very specific types of artwork as God specifically directed him in building the tabernacle.
Story Structure
To tell stories with creativity and order, we have to humbly study long-standing storytelling principles: the three act structure, the set up and pay off, or the hero’s journey. There are many different storytelling frameworks, so we shouldn’t just think creativity is a chaotic force that takes over. It is something we can control and bring order to.
Thomas: When the Spirit of God hovers over the waters in Genesis, there’s chaos. God’s creative acts bring order to chaos. He speaks light into darkness. He speaks substance into that which is formless. Good Christian storytelling captures that order and beauty, not the chaos.
Much of our modern art is capturing the chaos, and it’s not beautiful or meaningful. Nobody puts it on their walls. Most of the top-selling visual art works are stored in these free trade warehouses as a way for the wealthy to store and trade value.
Nobody actually wants to display it.
It’s not fun to watch the chaos of a static TV where there’s no order to the picture. But watching an ordered narrative with a beginning, middle, and end is very interesting.
Zack: I think about the sunset. Why is the sunset or the sunrise so beautiful? Part of the reason is because it happens on a very predictable schedule.
There’s a Chinese science-fiction series called The Three-Body Problem, which has different adaptations available on Amazon and Netflix. The story revolves around a planet with three stars or suns, creating a chaotic system where the timing of sunrises is unpredictable. You never know when the sun will rise again; and sometimes, when it does, it’s terrifying because it means the planet is too close to the sun.
The world God created for us to live on is a predictable, orderly system. Christians led a lot of scientific discoveries that are so foundational to what we know about the universe.
The astrophysicist Dr. Sarah Salviander talks about how the work of mathematicians from the 16th century onward was a religious quest to understand God’s will and his creation. The scientists of that time expected to find order in the world and the laws of nature because they knew that God is a God of order.
Outlining
I’m going to meddle a little bit here by saying I think every writer should have an outline for their book. And let me qualify that. I think everyone creates an outline at some point. Some people do it before they write a word of the manuscript. Others outline while they’re writing the manuscript. Still others try to reverse-engineer it from the end.
It’s fine to revise your outline. The outline was made for the writer, not the writer for the outline. But I think everyone should have an outline and use it. Even if we use it in different ways, it’s how we keep things in order.
Focus on the Story Conflict
Zack: I think focusing on what the conflict is about will help. There are five or six types of conflict you can use in your story.
Thomas: We have a great episode with Angela Hunt on the six classic conflicts if you want to dive deeper on that.
Zack: Yes. Frame the conflict around those six classic conflicts.
Never Stop Learning
Read books, listen to podcasts like this one or Novel Marketing, and go to conferences.
I’ve met several Christian writers who don’t read writing books, don’t go to conferences, or listen to anything. And I thought, That must be exhausting. You’re trying to figure everything out that people have been figuring out for a long time. It’s a self-imposed burden to try to learn all these things.”
It can be fun to watch a movie and try to figure out why it did or didn’t work or why it was good or bad.
But you can take so many shortcuts by learning from others. I mean, the whole reason the book of Proverbs was written is so we don’t make all the mistakes of a foolish person. We can learn from wise and foolish people. Don’t be simple and naive, but learn from others.
Thomas: Read books in your genre, read books on writing craft, and make friends with other authors. Those are the three legs of the stool for becoming a successful writer. If you’re not successful and you’re not doing one of these things, figure out which leg of the stool is missing and fix it. Fixing what’s missing can make everything much easier and can be truly transformational. This issue is particularly common in Christian science-fiction and fantasy, where authors try to write in the genre without reading it themselves.
If you find yourself in that situation, you really should start listening to Zack’s podcast because that podcast is nothing but interviews with Christian fantasy and science fiction authors; but it applies to all genres. If you’re writing Christian romance and you don’t read Christian romance, you need to stop writing Christian romance and start reading it and understand what makes a Christian romance popular.
Zack: I’ll never forget a movie I saw—it was a Brad Pitt film, a big-budget sci-fi with incredible visuals and a great visionary director. About five minutes into it, I thought, Have they consulted any scientists for this movie? The scientific inaccuracies were so basic that you could easily find the correct information on Wikipedia.
It felt like the movie was written by someone who had never seen a sci-fi film or read a science textbook. It was painful to watch. I wanted so badly to like the movie, but it was clear that the creators didn’t understand the genre.
Thomas: As Christians, we want to honor God by capturing his order in our art, rather than capturing the chaos of the world. Capturing the chaos of the world isn’t Christian, and it’s not art.
Zack: That’s a very counter-cultural thing to say.
Many people claim that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. After all, don’t we all have different tastes? Well, sure. But there is such a thing as objective beauty created by God. In Genesis 3, when Eve is tempted, it says she saw that the tree was good for fruit and pleasing to the eye. God created these objective standards of beauty from the beginning.
Consider Bezalel. God directed him in all his artistic designs, encompassing both the engineering (left brain) and the artistic (right brain) aspects that made it a beautiful place. God’s Spirit would then inhabit that place. We shouldn’t be afraid to say that there is such a thing as objective beauty. It’s an irreducible value, not just a means to convey truth or something we can discard.
There’s sometimes an attitude that “as long as it preaches the gospel, it will cover a multitude of storytelling sins,” but I don’t think that works. People can tell when a story is ugly, and nothing can replace beauty except beauty.
Thomas: How can you create something beautiful if you don’t know what beauty is or even believe it exists? This is a fundamental issue. Some people, particularly those with a postmodern view, think that beauty is just an expression of power—that powerful people dictate what’s beautiful as a means of exploiting the vulnerable. But that is false.
Beauty is real and objective. We have the ability to create works that align with divine beauty, as well as works that are ugly. It’s true that we can create ugly works; but if we work on our craft and character, perhaps with God’s help, we can create something truly beautiful.
Law #4: Tell stories with honesty and courage.
Zack: In 2 Corinthians 3:12 we read, “Since then we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.” When we are making things for the glory of God, out of love for others, using God’s orderliness, we don’t need to worry about the world’s reception to that. We just need to be faithful to tell the truth.
A storyteller is someone who sees the truth and doesn’t look away, doesn’t try to mask it or obscure it, but wants to tell the truth. Now, there are loving and unloving ways to tell the truth. There can be unfiltered, abrasive, and “authentic” ways that people tell the truth.
Thomas: In the Gospels, the demons say nothing but true things about Jesus. They’re proclaiming that he is the Son of God, but they’re doing it with malice. It’s an evil expression of the truth because it’s not the truth spoken in love. It’s the truth spoken with malice.
Often, Jesus is binding the mouths of these demons before he’s even exorcising them because the people aren’t ready to hear the truth the demons are speaking, which is fascinating. Truth alone is not enough. It has to be the truth spoken in love. By the same token, love alone is also not enough because love without truth is death.
You have to speak the truth with love, and that takes courage. Most of us lean toward truth or love. But to speak with both, we need courage, which means doing it even though we’re afraid we might hurt someone’s feelings. We may be afraid we’ll be criticized, but we still have to do it.
Zack: Pontius Pilate is a good anti-example of this because he posted a sign that says “Jesus, the King of the Jews.” He didn’t believe it, and he certainly didn’t love Jesus or the Jewish people, but he spoke the truth ironically.
When we honestly tell the truth, we are ascribing truth to the world. As Scripture says in Ephesians 4:25, “Put away lying and speak the truth, each one to his neighbor.” In storytelling, speaking the truth means having characters who are honest and portray a truth about human nature.
They should be people with an outer life and a hidden, inner life. They’ll have dreams, fears, shortcomings, and temptations. That can be hard sometimes.
As Christian storytellers, we don’t want to tempt our audience; but by not showing how someone has overcome a temptation, we’re sort of robbing them of that experience. We want to tell stories that tell the truth about God and not just “my truth.”
You and I didn’t learn all the truth that we currently have about God all at once. Learning truth takes time. We are being conformed to God’s likeness. Hebrews says we are made perfect forever by one sacrifice, but we are being perfected. There is a process to it, so it’s okay to show characters that learn a little bit of truth, chapter by chapter. They might learn the truth about themselves or others, either directly or indirectly.
If you’re writing an overtly Christian book and your characters are learning biblical truth, it wouldn’t be honest to portray that they would learn all of that by chapter three or even by the end of the book. Like any person, they’re going to take their time on that journey.
Thomas: And you can also show the truth by having your characters not learn the truth. Sometimes tragedies make the truth even more clear. You might create a character who knows the truth but doesn’t follow it and then experiences the repercussions and ramifications of their own poor decisions.
That is a powerful story. It’s one most Christians don’t have the courage to write. We all want to write a comedy, but the moral message is often clearer in a tragedy. That doesn’t mean your whole story has to be tragic; but incorporating some tragic elements, incorporating some sowing and reaping of consequences can make for a much stronger and more believable story.
Zack: I love reading the Gospel writer Luke because of all the realistic and gritty details he includes in Luke and Acts. We learn about John Mark who deserts Paul and Barnabas. It causes a fight between Paul and Barnabas and they split ways. Barnabas goes after John Mark to restore him, which he eventually does; but Paul takes on Silas.
Luke didn’t have to tell us that middle part. It’s messy and embarrassing. He could have just told us the happy ending. In Paul’s letters, he talks about people who desert him, like Demas, who “loved this world.”
He talks about Alexander the silversmith, who whipped up the riot in Ephesus when Paul was directly challenging their idol-making business. This is where speaking the truth takes guts because if you are telling the truth in your story, it’s going to confront a cultural idol or a common lie people believe.
So pray for the battle that’s going to hit you at some point; but just keep in mind that if you love people and they love you in return, they’re going to think the best of you and forgive your flaws.
People who hate you won’t even acknowledge your best efforts, but you can’t control others’ reactions; so don’t worry about that.
Again, your book won’t be for everyone; but you still have to be willing to take the hit.
How does fear affect our writing?
Thomas: Fear also affects our writing and our craft. Often, poor writing is a result of the fear of being understood. For example, some writers think, I could make this clearer, but I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. They obfuscate the truth, speak indirectly, or purposefully write in an unclear way.
All those things make your writing worse. If you have the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say, the writing itself is better, regardless of whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.
In fact, I can predict when a memoir is going to fail within about 30 seconds of talking with an author. If they’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, or if they’re still trying to protect the villains of the story by changing the names, that memoir is not going to go anywhere. The author lacks the courage to write the kind of story that people want to read. They often defend themselves by saying they’re afraid of getting sued; but if you’re telling the truth, that is your defense. If someone did a bad thing to you, and you’re telling the truth about it and warning the world about that person, that is your defense.
If you don’t have the courage to name names and give facts, then you don’t have the courage to write the book. You’re not ready. You may need to do some more work. Perhaps God doesn’t want you to publish that book. Many people write memoirs because God wants to do a work in their hearts, not because God wants that book to be published.
If you don’t have the courage to put your words out there and take a stand, then don’t publish. But if you have the courage, that’s an admirable thing.
Zack: We’re naturally afraid of bad reviews. We get instant feedback on all the social-media platforms and book-review websites. I have an author friend whose wife just summarizes the reviews for him. “Here’s what you did. Here’s what you could improve. I’m not going to tell you the rest because it will go to your head, crush you, or infuriate you.”
I’ve also seen an author reply to bad reviews, and that was really awkward. It makes me less willing to even leave a review or read that book.
People are going to be a lot more bluntly honest with you, so just remember that. Thomas, this is where it gets tricky for Christians writing in general-market genres. If it’s not a Christian sci-fi, fantasy, or romance, readers may not expect to encounter Christian themes, characters, or lingo.
In a general-audience genre, you have to love your readers and not give them things they’re not expecting. However, you don’t want to bait and switch them either. You don’t want reviews saying, “Oh, I didn’t know this author was a Christian. If I did, I wouldn’t have read that book.” We need to be honest about who we are. In every way we present ourselves, we should be clear that we are followers of Christ. We shouldn’t hide it and hope people never find out because they will. It’s not hard to discover these things.
You can say, “Look, I’m a Christian, and I write cozy romances,” or “I’m a Christian, and I write cozy mysteries,” or even “I’m a Christian, and I write finance books.” Be honest about who you are so that you’re not surprising anyone. This honesty protects you and helps build trust with your audience.
Thomas: In 2 Corinthians 2:16, Paul says, “To those who are not being saved, we seem a fearful smell of death and doom, while to those who know Christ, we are a life-giving perfume. But who is adequate for such a task as this?”
Some authors believe, “I can just hide my Christianity,” but you can’t. You’re either the smell of death or the smell of life, and how you smell is not determined by you. It’s determined by what’s going on in the other person’s heart. Using a bait-and-switch strategy won’t protect you from criticism or hatred. In fact, throwing your pearls before swine just causes the swine to trample the pearls and devour you.
So, giving into fear by watering down the truth in hopes it will advance the Kingdom doesn’t work. What does work is planting your flag, taking a stand, and being true to your God.
Zack: First John 4:18 tells us that “perfect love casts out fear.” If we love God and we’re focused on meeting the needs of our Timothy and giving him or her a great story, it doesn’t matter if others hate it or say horrible things about you.
I think you’ve said before, Thomas, that the most common word in Amazon reviews is the word “I.” “I felt this way,” or “This wasn’t what I wanted.” People will give their subjective opinions and that’s all it is.
But if we are focused on loving our Timothy and delivering a great story, then it’s okay. You can take that hatred and rejection. As our Timothy reads our stories and says, “Hey, tell me more about yourself,” that’s exactly what we want.
Whenever I find an author I like, I grab all their books one by one. I want to find everything they’ve written, listen to interviews with them, and tune into podcasts where they appear. I may not agree with everything they think—their politics, theology, or personality—but if it’s someone I really like whom I can tell has put love into their work, it makes up for all these differences.
Do you have any final tips or encouragement?
Zack: On my website, ZackaryRussell.com, I have been blogging about science fiction through a theological lens. If you sign up for my email list, I’ve got a great free download called How to Rebuild a Reading Habit. Maybe you were a reader once upon a time, and you’ve gotten away from that because a monster gobbled up your reading time. That monster is the Internet!
We’ve all experienced the frustration of knowing that our phones take more from us than we want. For example, last year I only read eight books. I was so sick about it that I decided to do something different this year.
I started experimenting with different life hacks, and I’ve already read about twice as many books as I did last year, and the year is only half done.
How to Rebuild a Reading Habit has 52 tips, so you can try one per week. You’ll get that in the confirmation email when you sign up to receive my email newsletter.
Thomas: Reading is the best hack for becoming a better writer. Read more books. We all know we need to read more books, but most of us have given our time to our phones instead of reading deep, substantive books. We’re scrolling TikTok or watching Instagram reels.
You’ll be a happier, more whole person if you spend less time doom scrolling and more time reading books.
For more deep theological discussions with authors, check out Zack’s podcast.
- Fantastical Truth Podcast
- Should Stories Minimize Morality to Advance Personal Liberation? | with Thomas Umstattd Jr.
- Should Christian Creators Abandon Secular Fiction Markets? | with Thomas Umstattd Jr.
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