The main character of any fiction you are writing now

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veinglory

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I thought it might be interesting to discuss the beliefs or the protagonist of your current work in progress and see what range we have.

My current WIP is a fantasy with an elven protagonist. He uses magic as a spiritual force that is generated by the land. Thus he is a person that deals with magical energy and see people as having innate abilities to store and use this energy, which comes in two forms. However none of the characters in this book refer to God or Gods at any point. This is simply how it is designed and I dare say the average reader would not notice it. There are a number of powerful but non-god entities in the story including dragons and a kind of vampire.

The main thing I found interesting is that it took some effort to remove colloquial use of 'god', 'soul' and similar terms from the dialogue even thought they really don;t fit the cosmology at all.
 

t0neg0d

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I think that the 7 characters that my current WIP revolves around border between 3 (or at least I was hoping for 3) different belief systems:

Pagan
Agnostic
And I was hoping for an Atheist for one character in particular. This would have made for interesting views of the situations they encounter. Unfortunately, I am not seeing a way to portray an Atheist without upsetting some persons view of Atheism and I am planning on a rewrite for the character at this point. =(

Interestingly enough, the book revolves around a false religion.
 
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SPMiller

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My fantasy WIP's protagonist is essentially ISTJ. Initially, he's religious, if not exactly devout.

One major plot point is the revelation that the entities his society believes are gods are actually glorified energy beings (who were originally human) feeding off the energy generated by their believers.

By the end, as you can imagine, he no longer believes in the divinity of these beings. Whether he then accepts the concept of even higher powers is not addressed in the text--I may add brief notes on this if, in further revision, it becomes relevant to the story. But he does maintain faith of a sort: that he has the ability to right perceived wrongs.
 

Captshady

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Mine is agnostic. He's had a rough life, and thinks that "god," "God," "Allah," or "the Dark Overlord" see us as insignificants, like ants are to humans.
 

Captshady

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I'm not really planning on my MC to mention anything religious either. But while doing character development, it came up (worksheet).
 

Alpha Echo

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My newest MC is Catholic. She grew up in a Catholic school, though her parents sent her there just for show, and now she's very active in her own church. She believes in God in her heart, but from the heartache and loss she's experienced, she's not actively exercising her faith. She only is active in her church b/c it's what her rich, snotty lawyer husband expects to maintain appearances, just like what her parents expected.
 

t0neg0d

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Mine is agnostic. He's had a rough life, and thinks that "god," "God," "Allah," or "the Dark Overlord" see us as insignificants, like ants are to humans.

Not to pick nits, but Agnostic means that you have not formed an opinion. If your MC see "god/s" as considering us insignificant, he would be a Pantheist or Deist, depending largely on other facets of their outlook.

This is only said to help you better define your character accurately.
 

Captshady

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Not to pick nits, but Agnostic means that you have not formed an opinion. If your MC see "god/s" as considering us insignificant, he would be a Pantheist or Deist, depending largely on other facets of their outlook.

This is only said to help you better define your character accurately.

My bad. I've never looked up the term agnostic, I just kind of took it for what it was defined as, years ago.

Thanks for the correction!
 

Ruv Draba

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I'm in the early stages of design for a political thriller set in modern Afghanistan. Among the cultural tensions I'm trying to draw out is the tension of secular vs religious law. Whether any person in the story is atheist I'm not yet sure, but if we view societies as characters, some act as though they are.

One of my people-characters I'm designing to be an 'outsider born to the society'. So, a person who holds to the behaviours of the society - and many of the values - but who may be questioning the beliefs. I'm also considering using an 'ignorant outsider' - one who enters with what feels like superior knowledge but which is actually unquestioned ignorance.

Neither character is archetypically what their cultures would have them be. Their biggest challenge may not be to produce a common truth, but to find a common framework in which to discuss it. Hopefully they'll thrash out something between themselves.
 
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zornhau

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Ironically...

I'm writing a fantasy novel in a quasi-medieval setting. The main character, Sr Ranulph Dacre, is an authentic Medieval knight, meaning he believes in God, but subscribes to some near-heretical ideas: in his mechanistic worldview, victory is theological validation, and being an active knight is penance enough.

I'm not writing with an agenda, but I suppose I am reclaiming knighthood from other and later Christian traditions.

I don't think writers should worry about giving offence when we portray other world views than our own, but I do think we should strive for authenticity.

Sir Ranulph's faith is as self-consistent and robust as my own rationalist atheist world view. It doesn't break in my WIP. It very much doubt it will break further down the line, since even if his "god" were to be proved false, he would assume that this was the "real" god's will.
 

Nakhlasmoke

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There is no religion in my current fantasy. I don't know if it qualifies as atheist, as there's not anything to not believe in, it just doesn't exist.

The magic is drug based, and so no need to call on higher powers.
 

Ageless Stranger

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Funnily enough, mine lives in a world which is literally only about eight thousand years old and god is real, and yet my MC is kinda an atheist in that he keeps religion out of his life as much as possible and would prefer it it god didn't exist.
 

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I thought it might be interesting to discuss the beliefs or the protagonist of your current work in progress and see what range we have.

My current WIP is a fantasy with an elven protagonist. He uses magic as a spiritual force that is generated by the land. Thus he is a person that deals with magical energy and see people as having innate abilities to store and use this energy, which comes in two forms. However none of the characters in this book refer to God or Gods at any point. This is simply how it is designed and I dare say the average reader would not notice it. There are a number of powerful but non-god entities in the story including dragons and a kind of vampire.

The main thing I found interesting is that it took some effort to remove colloquial use of 'god', 'soul' and similar terms from the dialogue even thought they really don;t fit the cosmology at all.

I'm writing a kind of ensemble (yes, its fiction and le's just hope I'm "comfortable" with the "word" ensemble...please god and all the saints and moderators, I hope ensemble is not read as an intrusion into areas I have not done the proper research on...or on which I have not done the proper research) piece...a bunch of college kids from the mid 1990s in the Pacific NW of the Good Ole USA ( the "ole" is not "serious" and only mildly inane so you don't have to suggest to Medievalist that she insist the "ole" is pointless...after all maybe it is there for a reason such as local flavor...okay that was "inane" but this is a paranthetic remark...I'm obviously not "comfortable" with "parenthetic" but I clearly have at least heard of it if not read it extensively, the mere fact that it is here and spelled better the second time suggest some acquaintance with the word...though -- I hasten to add -- in no way up to the standards of any of the better moderators. Perhaps if I knew more about parenthetic remarks I would have ended this one sooner.)

So there they are in my "fiction"...and (god help me) they are based on real people and not archtypes. I guess if I knew anything about what I so quaintly think of (if indeed my thought processeses might be compared to the thought processes of other less "quaint" people) as fiction, I would not have so blythely (oh boy...blythely...Jesus H. Christ -- call Medievalist now) -- or quaintly -- just said "based on real people"...but in my own naive way I swear on all that is Holy...yes I honestly believe they are based on real people.

Anyway...these kids in my story all think there is "some kind of higher being"...and that something about quantum mechanics just might make them have a post-mortem (oh boy) existence.

Except...now that I think (excuse my use of that term with reference to my exceedingly ill-informed self) about it...one of them is a mathematician with visions and she might have some more elaborate system of beliefs...though in all the six to 8 drafts of the tale...her belief system seems to be roughly that she loves her home town and gets a kick out of math. But -- let's face it -- she is a very odd girl.

In conclusion. If I have offended in any way, either by inanity or a patently (oh boy) uncomfortable use of words more properly reserved to my betters, or by an imperfect understanding of basic conventions such as fiction or archtype, please feel free to ignore me. I append the method for ignoring a user and I remain...

Most sincerely yours,

Higgins



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fullbookjacket

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I'm an atheist but I don't think anyone could deduce that from the fiction I've written. My characters simply don't discuss religion. That's not to say that I'll never write about it. Heck, Dan Brown made a killing writing about it.
 

JoNightshade

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Interesting topic!

My primary MC (there are 3) isn't religious at all. He's never gone to church, etc. But when he does something horrible, and then something horrible happens to someone he loves, he eventually comes to the conclusion that nothing makes sense unless there's some kind of 'reckoning' after death - ie, innocent people go to heaven and wicked people are punished for their crimes. Mainly it's because he doesn't see any justice in this life.
 

vixey

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I honestly hadn't considered the religion of my MC, but since he's a modern 15 year old Scottish boy I suppose he's Church of Scotland (since I'm Presybeterian, I suppose I understand his religion). It's a YA fantasy where he's (sounds way over-done, I know) transported back about 500 years. There'll be druid type of elements and magic (no werewolves or vampires). Really, religion or philosphy hadn't figured into the story. But interesting question.
 

AyJay

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My MC lives in a fantasy world where ancestor worship is the religion, and he is a centuries-old descendant of the holiest of ancestors, the founding father of the kingdom. He's a 15 year old boy and not particularly interested or impressed by the staunch dogma of the clerics in his world. He's on a journey to uncover secrets about the heroes he was taught to revere.
 

AMCrenshaw

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Wrayth, one of the MCs of Courier communicates through the spirit, which is a binding energy of all the living. Living people have communicable/individual spirits and dead people's spirits are like dead people themselves. So ghosts can exist in 'spiritual pockets' (say it like Jim Gaffigan), but that's a side-point. The communication is in images, memory soups, streams of consciousness, what-have-you.

There are is one deity, called God. It has two faces, the sun and the moon. It's a little like yin/yang.



My other WIP, Kommein is about a nonviolent Catholic Worker who is also a nontheist. He gardens, tends to drug addicts, plays basketball with poor kids in a run-down neighborhood, and holds demonstrations in the face of an oppressive government. He reminds people that this way of life use to be a religion.

AMC
 

Ruv Draba

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My first draft is now complete and in revision, and the main character has changed a lot. He's a 15 year old Afghan boy for whom Islam is an unquestioned fact of life - like eating rice. A more important fact for him though, is his Pashtun culture's code of badal or vengeance. This is his ruling passion for the duration of the story, whose logline is as follows:
With his mujahadeen father dead to a Russian land-mine, fifteen year-old Tofan seeks to be the man of the family. But when his brother is raped by a local lieutenant, his Pashtun code of badal calls for mortal vengeance. Can a fifteen year-old boy navigate the treacherous waters of Pashtun tribal society, or will his naive efforts destroy what remains of his family?

Edit to append: The short is now in SYW here.
 
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Bartholomew

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My protagonist is Christian. She attends a university of applied sciences; her extremist family disowns her for it, and the people around her are trying to abuse her beliefs to get what they want.
 

Bo Sullivan

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My two main characters live in Victorian England. I am three chapters into my WIP. They are both terrible villains, one male and one female who form a relationship whilst in Newgate Prison. They are not religeous and they believe in taking from the rich and fleecing them for everything they have in order to survive and improve their own lives. They are both Cockneys from the East End of London.

Barbara
 

Zoombie

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My current MC is the long lost heir to the Empire who was raised by villagers up North. He's just been told that he's gonna have to reunite the Empire.

But along the way, he's gonna see if he can skin a few hookers alive. Yeah, he's kinda...got sever sociopathic stuff going on. He's very intelligent, though, and incredibly observant. And he's pretty much the best choice for the job of not just reuniting the Empire but also defending it from the GIANT BUGS that are going to come down and eat everyone.

So, think of it as a mix between King Arthur, Starship Troopers and Natural Born Killers.

Really, the only "religious" character is Watcher Thorbin, who is a member of the Watchers guild. They have complete freedom to do whatever they deem necessary to catch anyone who's violated the Five Precepts (think the 10 commandments, but less of them) in a manner so egregious that it requires special action. Like, say, a serial killer. Like, say, our main character. Thorbin (which is a temp name I stole from a video game...don't tell anyone) believes completely in Justice. Its kinda a God for him now. He's scarier than the bugs!

But not scarier than the main character.

God I love this job.
 

Dawnstorm

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Here's the background to my current fantasy:

Magic is something like a life force, something like a psychoreactive shapeshifting creature that inhabits all the world. It could be sentient, or it could just be echoes of millenia of casting, praying, telling campfire stories etc. Magic is dying. It doesn't want to.

Social groupings reliant on practical magic for their legitimisation are in a bit of a jam: no more utility spells for the mages; lottery healing for the priests. So how do we heal our sick if the priests can't do it anymore? Well, there's this group of physicians who look promising (relying on various traditions - herbalists [pagans!], torturors [sadists!], and veterinarians [anti-humanists!]), but they do icky things like cutting up bodies to look inside. Yuk.

Then a series of disasters jumps up obliterating living things into an evenly spread goo. Magical disasters? Rumours spread "the Aimless One" has returned (if he was ever real in the first place, and you can't really trust rumour).

Then the Aimless One strikes in Feyshore, a free merchant's city at the southern tip of the continent, where a delicate balance of the three main factions (mages, priests, physicians) is in place. Envoys are sent to investigate.

The mages send an elderly battlemage who's been humiliated into teaching history of magic, and his assistant the fat female mage (and everyone knows women can't be mages). No, they don't take that seriously at all. Decadent academics the lot of them, they're just sending who they think is expendable. The "Aimless One's" dangerous after all. The elderly battle mage wants nothing so much as "feel the power again". His assistant needs money to keep survive, and a bit of reputation couldn't hurt either, to advertise her artifact identification workshop.

The Order of the Writ send a Knight Investigator, whose triple function is to investigate the Aimless One, "vanquish" him should it be necessary (i.e. if others - say the mages - could tap into that power), and also keep a check on the Feyshore chapter of the Writ, who on the whole support the heretical view that the Aimless One represents "the Wrath of God" (they don't believe in Gods, but for this thread the term should do) and it's directed at the Order. Bloody reformers. Knight Investigators can do as they like: lie, steal, murder... and get away with it, as long as it's for a good cause. Problem: the Knight Investigator in question doesn't quite buy that and brings his student to show him that it's really a crappy job. The student, though, must uphold a family tradition...

The physicians send a healer who's dying from a chronic blood disease. She's volunteered in a desire to be useful again (apart from documenting the progress of her disease, that is). There's a chance she could be healed by a priest (hey, it still happens; just not often), but she's too embarrassed to go for that. She's accompanied by her assistant from across the sea, who has special knowledge in anatomy; from where he won't tell.

So these folk meet in Feyshore, just at the time when the Roving Village arrives, out of schedule. The Roving Village is home to merchants, gamblers, circus folk, and other madmen and -women. They are said to have a sinister plan, but what they really have is a sinister guest:

The schizophrenic undead psychic the Order of the Writ has - in a moment of folly - called the miracle child and attempted to educate, all because she was born dead and resurrected shortly there-after. The voices in her head want her to be a goddess, but she doesn't want to do as she is told. Wayward child! Ungrateful child! Why do you hate us so! She wouldn't hate them half as much if they'd shut up once in a while. But they haven't - for about sixty years now.

The Aimless One's attack has left two survivors; a beekeeper who babbles about trolls and bees - people pay polite attention - and - poor darling - a girl around 12/13, everyone dotes on. But she's odd. For starters, why don't insects bite her? Could she be the... No, no way, impossible.

Quite possible, though. So sayeth a gambler who has taken a liking to her, as she reminds him of his own troubled past. Life would be so much easier if there weren't that nagging feeling that killing is "wrong". But a good gambler knows that imagination leads you astray. The only way to arrive at the surprise, though, is to play the game and indulge in your preconceptions.

So does everyone else, after all.

So what's the name of the game again?

(about 2/3 into 1st draft)
 
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Buffysquirrel

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If you asked my MC, he'd say he was a Christian, but he doesn't really think about it that much. He doesn't go to church (because of things that happened in his childhood, he got out of the habit). Gradually, he gets involved with a sect that are sort-of like Quakers in outlook, except without the pacifism. It's a change for him because he's always believed in/been part of a hierarchy, and these people just don't have one.
 
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