Are you thinking about letting out your inner writing ninja and becoming a writer – a Christian writer, to be more specific? If the answer is yes, you must have loads of questions in your mind, especially regarding what your writing duties will be as a Christian writer.
Well, lucky for you – we have you all covered! Welcome to the ultimate guide that will tell you everything you need to know about getting started as a Christian writer.
Christian Writing – An Overview
As a Christian writer, you will be writing for a Christian audience – specifically, the message that God has given to you.
Perhaps God has placed a book on your heart, or maybe there is a topic that you are passionate about, and you want to put words on a piece of paper so that people all around the globe can be blessed by the message that you have to share with them.
As a Christian writer, especially as an aspiring Christian author, you might have certain doubts in your mind about getting the story published, in which case you can immensely benefit from hiring one of the best Christian ghostwriters who can speed up the process of getting your story branded and published.
As Christian writers do, you will want God to be honored in everything that you do, and in your stories, you will want to ensure that your readers find God, and in order for your readers to find God, you will need to place God at the center of your story.
There are a few straightforward ways you can do this. Here is what you can do:
Make God the Heart of Your Story
To make any character look real, they must be in the book. So, as a newbie Christian writer, you might want to think of God not just as a casual part of the story but as the heart of your story.
You might want to portray God as one of the main characters in your story – but not in a way that He is just a character. You will want to present God in your story in a way that he is real in the story by portraying Him right there with the characters.
Also, don’t hesitate to use God’s name in the story. The Bible clearly states that we are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus; therefore, don’t be afraid of using God’s name in your book.
Portray Strong Christian Characters
While writing a Christian story, you must ensure that you have at least one strong Christian character.
Understandably, you can have Christian characters in your story that aren’t strong – but if your protagonist isn’t a strong Christian or not a Christian at all – and they also have bad theology, and ultimately, there is no correction to that throughout the end of the story – it will pose a serious problem.
Perhaps some of your readers won’t even know that whatever you have portrayed in the story is not what the Bible says. This point is specifically important when you have a younger target audience, such as children, teens, and young adults.
It is important to mention here that you don’t necessarily have to make the main character a strong Christian character – but this is an ideal approach since God is at the heart of the story. Now, how your readers will see God in the story will usually be through the eyes of your characters.
This is just like in real life – we don’t see God physically right in front of us – but we see him in the lives of people he has changed, protected, resurrected, etc.
The same approach goes for your Christian story, where you will see God and portray God working through the lives of people, and your characters will meet God through their meetings with Godly characters.
As a newbie Christian writer, you might want to think about your own relationship with God and think about how that would reflect on other people – just think about this whenever you are writing your stories using your characters as your mouthpiece.
So, you get the point – include strong Christian characters as this is how they will find God and also the truth.
Include the Gospel
The gospel is amazing – it is the heart of the Christian life – it has the power to change people inside out. You shouldn’t be afraid to harness the power of the gospel in your story.
It is important to understand that you don’t have to portray a preacher up the podium – you can certainly avoid this kind of really awkward preachy presentation of the gospel.
You can portray a very normal person with some sort of struggles going on, such as self-image or loneliness, but at some point, they come across the gospel or even just some aspect of it.
Integrate Scripture in Your Story
Have you ever read a book or novel that starts with a quote at the top of the beginning of the chapter? This might be one of the ideal points to put scripture that applies to the book chapter. This is such a brilliant way to draw the attention of your potential readers.
Once you start searching on it, you will be surprised how many scripture verses you can find that will perfectly correlate to the chapters, themes, and situations of your story.
And it is always encouraging to find Bible verses that go along with your story, as the readers can also testify that this perfectly correlates with what certain characters might be doing.
Another place to integrate scripture is in the lives of your characters – especially the strong characters who might know the Bible so well that they know loads of Bible verses from the top of their heads.
That said, your strong Christian characters can simply share those verses with other people in the story whenever an opportunity arises – not in a preachy way but in a kind and casual way.
Remember that integrating scripture is very powerful, and it wouldn’t be wrong to state that it is one of the most powerful things to have in your story.