ScriptSuperhero.com

Writing for pay is the dream of nearly every writer. But actually doing it is a completely different reality than dreaming about it. Rarely does the reality measure up to aspirations - unless, perhaps, you’re Stephen King or James Patterson.

For most of us, though, real-world writing jobs feel more like jobs than they do dreams-come-true. While real-world writing jobs don’t exactly require First Aid kits, you sometimes may feel like they do.

I’ve been blessed to have many jobs that involve writing. Not all of them have been creatively satisfying, though. Case in point? Need an example? Okay.

I once worked a writing job for a fellow in the industrial weights and measures biz. I created both a product catalog in print, and a Web site for him. Plenty of “writing” involved. Zero creativity. Put it paid the bills for a while. I appreciated the experience. But not exactly the same as writing a screenplay or a novel, eh?

I’ve done a lot of time in journalism, as well. There’s a bit of room for creativity in feature writing and sports, but news is fairly straightforward if you do it right. There is some great satisfaction to be had in working 35 of out 48 hours to compose 15-20 stories and put a weekly issue to bed, but it’s not so much a creative rush as it is the sort of high a game-coder gets from finally debugging his last bit of code and creating a final build. It’s a post-adrenaline rush high, with a huge crash after.

I’m not putting down any of these writing jobs, but I am saying they’re not exactly what one envisions when they’re in high school dreaming of being a writer. Fair warning, kids: being a writer IS work.

I was recently asked by a younger writer friend whether it was OK for a writer who is a believer to feature characters in their stories who do not reflect their own belief system. It was an interesting question, even though at first blush it seems so simple that with all the time left after providing a response, I could go visit an Orlando vacation rental place.

But it’s not that simple when you consider the context of her question. She said that for her fiction to be accepted in a religious market, she feels compelled to include faith-based content and faith-based characters. And yet, when she has read such fiction, she feels the writing is awkward and subpar, at best.

So really, it becomes a question of audience. She wants to write to people of faith, so the question becomes, what will they read? Must main characters always be blatantly people of faith and must the story always include lengthy passages of preaching that takes a person out of the narrative flow in order to succeed in the religious fiction market?

I don’t believe so. The Left Behind series of books has done quite well and was less blatant in its religious content than most of what came before it, though the first three books were better at this trick than the final nine.

Also, Ted Dekker has pulled off some wonderfully subtle novels within the religious market that almost never sermonize but operate on an allegorical level instead, to get the religious message across while still delivering pulse-pounding suspense stories.

Besides, as my wife observed, “If everyone in a story acted consistently with Torah principles, who would the villains be?”