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God's love, and yet: pain and suffering
Nov. 8th, 2009 01:51 pmToday being Sunday and me feeling more virtuous than usual, I actually contemplated religious issues today. It occurred to me that if God is this incomprehensible creature with vast powers, I have a god-like role to the characters in my stories. So I considered this comparison for a bit.
I love my characters. A few in particular are my favorites, of course, but for the most part, if I don't enjoy a character at least a little then I don't write them at all, and that's that. I love the good guys and I love the bad guys, and I love the conflicts they get themselves into.
And I am not kind to my characters. When I love them, I love showing them off. I push them to their limits, finding outrageous scenarios that would show off a particular reaction from them. My characters do not get to skip happily along singing happy little songs because, good grief, it would be boring and I don't like boring characters. In fact, the type of character who is beautiful, wonderful, capable, happy, and who skips along singing happy songs while being beloved by everyone has a name. This name is Mary Sue, and she is not well thought off by all the other god-like creators out there. Occasionally, other fic-writers go out of their way to beat down a Mary Sue for being too irritating.
My characters even have free will to the extent that if I write them as wildly out of character, it's just poor writing and I try to avoid that.
I do want my characters to be happy... at the end of the story. Or maybe not happy, precisely, but better off than they were. Or, well, more impressive than they were? Or at least have survived to have a really cool story to tell. And if they die a horrible death, at least it's for a good cause and other people will be impressed. If they ever find out about it since it's really made to be visible from a god-like perspective rather than to the other characters. But well, the other characters just aren't my audience, now are they?
Anyway, those are my thoughts as I sat in holy silence contemplating the wonders of the world and the love of god. People who say, "God loves us, he wants us to be happy" are probably not fiction writers, or at least haven't thought it through.
Have I horribly offended anyone by this bit of philosophical rambling? I did refrain from saying any of this out loud until I could get back to my computer.
I love my characters. A few in particular are my favorites, of course, but for the most part, if I don't enjoy a character at least a little then I don't write them at all, and that's that. I love the good guys and I love the bad guys, and I love the conflicts they get themselves into.
And I am not kind to my characters. When I love them, I love showing them off. I push them to their limits, finding outrageous scenarios that would show off a particular reaction from them. My characters do not get to skip happily along singing happy little songs because, good grief, it would be boring and I don't like boring characters. In fact, the type of character who is beautiful, wonderful, capable, happy, and who skips along singing happy songs while being beloved by everyone has a name. This name is Mary Sue, and she is not well thought off by all the other god-like creators out there. Occasionally, other fic-writers go out of their way to beat down a Mary Sue for being too irritating.
My characters even have free will to the extent that if I write them as wildly out of character, it's just poor writing and I try to avoid that.
I do want my characters to be happy... at the end of the story. Or maybe not happy, precisely, but better off than they were. Or, well, more impressive than they were? Or at least have survived to have a really cool story to tell. And if they die a horrible death, at least it's for a good cause and other people will be impressed. If they ever find out about it since it's really made to be visible from a god-like perspective rather than to the other characters. But well, the other characters just aren't my audience, now are they?
Anyway, those are my thoughts as I sat in holy silence contemplating the wonders of the world and the love of god. People who say, "God loves us, he wants us to be happy" are probably not fiction writers, or at least haven't thought it through.
Have I horribly offended anyone by this bit of philosophical rambling? I did refrain from saying any of this out loud until I could get back to my computer.
