How does God answer prayer in a Fiction story?

aguywhotypes

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I'm a newbie writer.

If you have an MC that is a Christian and prays to God to help them through a crisis of some sort.

How do you determine how God answers the prayer?

My wife told me that one author she reads and I can't think of her right now, the author lets God say yes, but it's a delayed yes after the mc has gone through more "trials and tribulations."

I'm leary because I don't want God to be a "Juke Box" or a mechanism to always give a yes or a source of "magic"
So I'm trying to do this and still show God respect and not use Him as a gimmick.

I thought of giving each mc a faith rating that would act as die roll modifier every time they "pray"
This "faith" rating would be behind the scenes, of course, the reader would never know this
again I don't want to belittle the power of prayer to the one True Living God.
I do like this method because even as the author I wouldn't know and I would just roll with it and use it to drive the plot.

Any ideas would be great.
 

Elenitsa

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In my stories, sometimes a character has a dream (or a vision during a pilgrimage) showing Virgin Mary telling him/ her something important. In other cases, they just pray and some day after xxxx pages the wish comes true.
 

Cindyt

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He speaks in that still quiet voice formatted by italics and paraphrases. As in:

"Why can't I have her, Lord?" asks Joe.
(Because I know the future, and she is not for you.)
 

Bufty

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By His actions or inactions, surely, as perceived by the POV character, who can interpret the action or inaction (or effect of such action or inaction) as they choose.

Just me, but I would avoid all two-way dialogue.
 
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Carrie in PA

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Just like in real life. My MC pulls into a parking lot and is weeping and crying out to God and... nothing. She chooses to interpret this as God ignoring her and not caring. It's not really until the end of the book that she can look back and see God's hand steering her path, and all the ways that He really did answer her prayers.
 

FlameMaster5

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I agree that your MC should experience God's answers to prayer the same way that we do in our everyday lives.
Keep in mind that 'everyday' doesn't mean you're MC is going to get an answer on the immediate - it rarely works this way.

But it also depends on what kind of MC you HAVE - what they're like, what they believe, how easily they get discouraged, how patient they are, and what trials they've ALREADY been through as opposed to what they WILL go through. Truly, God speaks to all people differently and in His own good time, and so you may even ask yourself if your MC would know this or come to know this later.

Not sure if that was helpful, but yeah. XD
 

Melody

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I know I am late to the party, I was busy revising and done now. Yahoo! Anyway, my characters have answered prayers shown by the results that happen in their lives. They are in a crisis, they pray and stay faithful to God, and He brings them out of the crisis, eventually. Sometimes they get in deeper before they are totally out of the mud and mire.
 

LeviSweeney

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I would say that you might need to rethink your approach to the issue. The idea of utilizing prayer as a plot device, as if it were similar to the ability to turn invisible or to proficiency in marksmanship, is that it in effect gives your characters a way to summon an instant deus ex machina any time they might need it. Aside from the spiritually dubious proposal of assigning each character a score and rolling dice to see if you imaginary version of the Christian God answers their prayers based on that, it's an extremely counterproductive way to write a novel.

In the end, I think it all boils down how one depicts the character of God in a work of fiction. This is more difficult than you might think, and it only gets harder the more you understand the subject as pertaining to the Christian faith.

For example, I had a similar problem in this comic book script I was writing where I wanted to adapt the Bible (from Genesis to Revelation) into comic book form. It was a very ambitious project (or so I was told), and I was doing more-or-less fine until issue four, when I was writing the story of Cain and Abel. It started when I was trying to figure out the rather odd Biblical tidbit where God accepts Abel's sacrifice but rejects Cain's for no apparent reason (commentators differ as to why, with some saying the issue is irrelevant if one takes the story allegorically, as I for the most part do). I tried to make Cain sympathetic by having him be more practical-minded in his approach to the whole offering-sacrifices-to-God thing. But when I got to the part where God speaks to Cain, I had a devil of a time (no pun intended) trying to write the scene so that God didn't come off as smug and condescending. Eventually, I walked away from the project.

The lesson I learned was that it is almost impossible to put God in a box of any kind. I heard in a lecture given by Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft that C.S. Lewis is the only author (or at least the only modern author) to successfully depict some version of Jesus Christ or God, in the form of Aslan. Again, Lewis did this allegorically, plus the guy was a genius when it came to the stuff he was writing about, so that gives him a solid foothold on the subject. But I tried to take the literal approach to writing what was quite literally a Biblical epic. It didn't work well, because, as I realized, you just can't put God in a box, especially a box as small as a serialized, 22+ page comic book.

To answer your general inquiry, I would suggest rethinking your entire concept (whatever it may be) from scratch. Don't make your story about how Christians live their Christian life, run into problems, pray and have faith, endure some kind of conflict, and then magically the day is saved thanks to God. Prayer isn't magic, and should not be treated as such, and your attempts to randomize it with the method you suggested will not make for a remotely good story.

If you're going to write a story about a Christian where the subject of the story has to do with their Christian life, don't give them an easy way out. You can have them pray, but don't turn that faucet of their religious life into a plot device, in the manner of a superpower. Have a fully-fleshed out, well-rounded character with an interesting motivation and genuine flaws struggling to accomplish a specific objective via a specific action. Work on that.

I wish you the best of luck!
 

aguywhotypes

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I believe God always answers your prayers with a no, yes or wait and we don't always no why. I suggested a die roll because sometimes I get a no and other times I get a yes. I wanted to use the die roll outcome as a means to make me work with it, just like in real life. God tells us yes or no or wait and then we have to deal with it. I wanted to be able to deal with it as far as plot. By rolling a die I precisely avoid Deus Ex Machina, because it's out of my hands. I'm not "calling it in."

It's to bad because your solution as far as I can tell is to forget the story all together or leave God out of it. That comes across as humanistic.
 

LeviSweeney

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I believe God always answers your prayers with a no, yes or wait and we don't always no why. I suggested a die roll because sometimes I get a no and other times I get a yes. I wanted to use the die roll outcome as a means to make me work with it, just like in real life. God tells us yes or no or wait and then we have to deal with it. I wanted to be able to deal with it as far as plot. By rolling a die I precisely avoid Deus Ex Machina, because it's out of my hands. I'm not "calling it in."

It's to bad because your solution as far as I can tell is to forget the story all together or leave God out of it. That comes across as humanistic.

I understand where you're coming from, but if my solution sounds humanistic, then yours, quite frankly, sounds superstitious. It's like you're equating prayer to a randomized, unpredictable, uncaring, chaotic game of chance which sometimes helps you win and sometimes doesn't. If you don't mind me saying so, the fact that prayer is none of these things (which I'm sure we can agree on) makes your solution more ridiculous, not less.

I'm not saying to "leave God out of it." Not at all. I'm just saying that it's extremely difficult to depict an infinite being in a finite format. Depending on what your story is about (I'd love it if you could let me know in a reply), incorporating God as a character or as a plot device simply is not a great way to start.

I'd be glad to give further advice, but I'd need more info on what your story is about. May I ask what you have in mind?