What do you dislike about Christian fiction stories?

Now don't get me wrong. I am a christian storyteller so 'I am not asking what you dislike about christianity itself/the bible please don't talk about that as that belongs to the "on topic forum".I ask maturity please not religion bashing.

Rather I would like to ask you: what do you dislike about christian fictional stories?. (narnia, left behind, ben hur etc). In order to avoid this mistakes and create something everyone can enjoy

The reason I ask is because is I have noticed that usually fictional stories that use other religion's influence is much more liked than christian stories.Even non christians use christian themes much better than christians (ex evangelion)

I will be the first to admit that removing some honorable mentions (ex Narnia) most are pretty bad.

What tropes do you think are the worst and what makes you outright dislike them?. Sure you might think it is the fact it is religious but I don't think that's the reason:Take for example "avatar the legend of aang". It has heavy buddism and other oriental religions influence and many people (including me) love it despite not believing in Buddhism.

Personally among the problems I have noticed is they usually are too preachy to the point even I feel some times too much. Another problem is the lack of originality a week ago I read a christian comic that featured a Tula young justice expy/ripoff?.

Thank you for your feedback :)

edited 24th Mar '14 6:55:15 PM by fallenlegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Smugness is a part of it. A lot of low-grade Christian writers take it for granted that not being a Christian is an utter and absolute moral failing, and seem to take a sick pleasure in the thought of unbelievers burning forever in hellfire. Of course — and not as an author, but as a Christian — you'll have to face the infamous question of the fate of the unlearned before you can confidently dodge that bullet. It's... not an easy one.

I completely agree on the smugness part... it's something I really want to avoid. Regarding the fate of the unlearned... I rather not talk about philosophy or religion on this thread. I am more curious about storytelling

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Of course. You don't have to do so here — it's hardly the place or time. It's just an example of the sort of thing you'll have to deal with eventually. And let's be honest, a strong general grounding in Christian theology will grant your work far more depth and texture.

So I suppose the next real question is... why? Taking a niche like that won't get you rich, after all, unless you're willing to pander to the sorts that inspire cries of Stop Being Stereotypical from Christians like my sister. And it sounds like that isn't your plan. Know why you've chosen the hard road, then, and the way on it may yet be clearer.

nevermind.

edited 24th Mar '14 8:21:36 PM by RPGLegend

Forgiveness is beyond justice, faith is superior than hope, redemption is better than perfection and love is greater than them all.

Black and white morality is rampant in these kind of stories, not to mention that they're made of anvil. Narnia succeeded in being a good Christian tale because of its subtlety; Lewis wanted to tell a story first and foremost. Try to take that last point in mind.

Thanks Personally I want something that can appeal and inspire anyone like "avatar the legend of aang" regardless of personal, help believes to give an example I specially love the fact it is shamelessly "spiritual" yet it doesn't force anyone to be abuddist. After all I don't think stories are the best places (if there is any) to be preachy.

never considered that one (black and white morality) but I agree on both points you made thanks!.

edited 24th Mar '14 8:30:08 PM by fallenlegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Most of the examples of overtly Christian Fiction I've read have left me cold largely because it seems that the author is more concerned with making it clearly Christian, at the expense of making it good fiction. Narnia and Father Brown escaped that trap because Lewis and Chesterton were both more concerned with telling the story than making it clearly Christian, but to me, Lewis stumbled a bit with the Silent Planet trilogy. Veggie Tales does too, it's overtly Christian, but the writers are concerned with entertaining storytelling.

So, yeah, kind of the same thing as Killer Clowns said: too much of it is heavy-handed or preaching (or worst of all, heavy-handed preaching) rather than good storytelling.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

As said, many Christian writers write Christian fiction with Christianity more important than the fiction, rather than letting Christianity as an element influence the writing. Two distinct processes.

That and these days no one knows what subtlety is.

You are a lovely human being.

• If you're trying to make an allegory, do your best to not make it extremely obvious
• Avoid double standards
• Try to avoid things that would get it labelled as yet another "story by a Christian bigot."

If your branch of Christianity has a particuarly negative view about LGBT people/atheists/people who aren't Christian do your best to A. Not let it influence your work B. don't include any of it at all. Try your best not to be sexist.

I'm not making any assumptions about you (I was raised Catholic and still practice as a Christian) this is just most of the stuff I've seen in Christian fiction that grinds my gears.

It depends on what you mean by Christian fiction, is it fiction inspired/informed by Christian values? something with Christian elements? outright preaching?. Also it all comes to what denomination of Christianism you subscribe to.

I would say you rather focus on good Christian values (starting for the basic I've seen many forget "be nice and kind, turn the other cheek"), don't be judgmental, don't stereotype and don't preach, don't try to convert the reader, don't get involved in idle polemic (I hope you aren't an evolution denier, but if you do, avoid being too vocal about it) and when in doubt remember love and forgiveness win the day.

Forgive me for not being a walking stereotype. Saint Ryouga

I am pretty a-religious, and the way I expect to see religion is in-universe, but expect it to not be objectively real.

One time, for example, I saw a movie about two kids who found a sack full of a million dollars. And the younger kid is worried, so starts casually talking to angels about how they're going to solve the problem. Angels who have actors, and lines, and are casually talking back. I turned off the movie soon after that.

For me, it's because it just seems bizarre and out of place. BSG reimagined also made me equally confused, at least initially, because of the way religion was handled.

Basically, unless it's vague, or very hard (in a "this is a fantasy world with fantasy gods and whatnot" way) it just seems to jar with everything.

But that is from someone who basically never thinks about religion.

The "faith" part of christian fiction stories, without the inclusion of magic/god/angels/whatever I can usually tolerate a bit better...sorta. I'm not Christian. I am culturally muslim. And I have a lot of friends who are of different religions. So the way it treats Christianity as the only religion in the world can be a bit...silly?

Basically, at the end of the day, I get a very "...this is not my religion." vibe, same reason I tend to be uncomfortable with christmas specials that focus on the magical aspects of it, as opposed to "folks celebrating a holiday"

edited 25th Mar '14 7:56:55 AM by MrAHR

Read my stories!

I hate those specials too, and for many of the same reasons.

Forgive me for not being a walking stereotype. Saint Ryouga

Being Christian myself, what I dislike about fiction that tries to undertake this heavy task, which is also what I dislike about the state of my fellow believers today, is the prejudicial, holier-than-thou attitude. Loving thy neighbour as yourself is underplayed in favour of more hellfire stuff. That's not to say the issue should be avoided, but going at it this way only serves to shun your readers, and even fellow Christians can find this stuff hard to swallow.

I think part of the reason of making works like this if you're a Christian may not be to evangelise people, per se, but to at least let them understand your beliefs and to immerse themselves. Narnia I think worked really well because allegory is very effective. You can have something or someone that is literally in all essence represent what you're implying, but simply by referring to the subject by a different name people can find it much easier to connect to. Part of fantasy and fiction is escapism, so I guess mentioning a familiar name kinda just literally plummets the reader back to the real world, and thus, their real world views and beliefs.

I don't think treating Christianity as higher than the story is the core issue, just that often the storytelling is executed poorly or shut out entirely in favour of strawmen, preachiness that is written out instead of woven into the story and such (which probably is making it higher than the story, I guess). I think you just have to know that you are writing a story. Maybe it's just that many authors who choose to write Christian fiction either aren't very good at it, or just intend it to be read by just Christians.

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

Of course, the problem with Narnia is by the last book, Lewis HAD fallen really deep into the Christian part of that world and got increasingly preachy. By the time it gets to the Dawn Treader, I was like, "I don't like the way this is going", and I was like 8 when I read that book.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

Doesn't Christian fiction's strict adherence to biblical themes necessarily restrict what kinds of stories you can tell? If you're using Narnia as an example, considering the subtext it's hardly surprising what happens to Aslan.

yey

This applies to any value system, not just Christianity. It's equally hard to tell a "Feminist Story" or a "Communist Story" or anything else where the premise inherently limits the potential range of actions available to the protagonist.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I don't think that's quite analogous. Christianity has a very specific and established corpus of writings that define the value set of it's adherents. I can't name a single work in either Feminist or Communist movements that holds an equivalent position to the Christian bible. Also, the nature of social and intellectual movements like Feminism or Communism are qualitatively different to religious dogma of any kind.

yey

Thank you everyone for you valuable feedback. I am reading everything and I am in fact taking notes and I will share this with fellow christian authors :

For the sake of this thread I am not limiting "christian" to just allegory works but in a more board sense as any work that has christian values and themes regardless if it's allegory or not.

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Bad Christian fiction is to good Christian fiction like Socialist Realism is to fiction with socialist themes. That should do for a comparison between Christianity and communism in context of fiction.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

One thing I especially hate is when a Christian author uses "Christian" as shorthand for "morally upright and admirable" (without bothering to demonstrate that the Christian characters are in fact like that) and takes for granted that their entire readership shares this perspective.

Stuff what I do.

@Gault: As a dedicated atheist, I really don't think you can prove that last sentence. Any belief system is capable of being all-consuming or barely relevant.

And having read plenty of bad Feminist message fantasy I really don't think your argument holds water in general.

edited 27th Mar '14 1:07:57 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

Gault: Well yes, what I meant was less in the kind of Christian-y things you can fit in, but more like... well let me put them in points.

• Weaving into the story. What I meant by treating it like a story is that you don't show your Christian MC and Gary Stu him up about how upright he is. If you're trying to instil Christian values into your work, there are way better ways to do it than to make the character your microphone. You might as well be writing an essay. If you're writing a story, write a character, not a mouthpiece.

• Values and themes. This is more about subtlety. I think (and I may be wrong) some Christian fiction may be too... let's say, "conscious" of what they're trying to convey. So much so that it gets too hung up on delivering the messages right. Though, yes, the messages have to be delivered right, just making the themes and core values of the story happen to be Christian values could take pressure off your back.

maxwellelvis: I haven't read the series, mind you, so I can't take you up on that. But I may be inclined to agree. Everyone has their acceptance level, but I know I might feel something if I wasn't a Christian.

edited 27th Mar '14 6:11:04 PM by Nadir

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!

On the other hand, a story where Christian values were placed in contrast or in competition with another set of values in a non-judgmental way might be very interesting.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Ah, exactly. Juxtaposing it with another set of beliefs I think can really help. In fact one of my projects is going this path, where each of the fantasy races have their own set of beliefs, and exploring how it can cause conflict. You can side with one from a thematic perspective, but all in all you're presenting the other options and their perspective, while keeping their believers human (there are elves too, but you get what I mean). The nice thing about fantasy is that you can have parallels to religions (or just Christianity in my case) without having to step on too many toes concerning its portrayal. Kinda like a Crystal Dragon Jesus situation, but with a bit more Shown Their Work I guess.

Working on a manga. With pictures! All feedback welcome!