Will my first post of 2020 be about my new novel? No. I want to talk about something that has been nagging at me regarding Christian characters.
I watched Jamestown over the holidays. If you ever want a “don’t do this” lesson in screenwriting, watch it. The dialogue is gorgeous, pure poetry in motion… but the character motivations are inconsistent, no one’s choices make any sense, and it establishes a villain it does nothing with at the end. He dies. Off-screen. I think. I’m not really sure. It wasn’t clear. If we must watch a man be a total pig for three seasons, ranging from abusing his wife to branding a slave girl’s face, to cutting off a man’s head at his dinner table, we deserve to see his proper downfall. If you spend a lot of time building a villain, you have to pay the viewer back with his defeat. It is only fair.
I’m also not happy about writers taking historical figures and turning them into psychopaths, with no documented evidence to support it. Jamestown isn’t the only show that does this; Turn: Washington’s Spies took a famous Canadian abolitionist and turned him into a sociopath. The Canadians are not amused. If you want to make someone a villain, please just invent a fictional character, that way their descendants aren’t furious.
But what bothers me more is a general lack of understanding Christianity. I can’t expect most secular writers to know anything about it, since their understanding of the motivational drive of their Christian characters is speculative. To put it simply, Christians are trying to shape their sinful will toward an ideal against their nature. Christians often beat themselves up for not being more loving, selfless, forgiving, and generous, because they want so desperately to be like Jesus. They take their beliefs seriously.
People who aren’t “doing this,” don’t “get it” on a deeper level. Just like I “don’t get” what it’s like to be a devout Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim. All I can do is assume their “devout” is similar to mine, in that “I do this because it’s what my faith asks of me.” I do these things, because I have chosen them and want to be other than I am. I am striving for an ideal.

Historically, most of the people at Jamestown were Puritans who came to America to escape religious persecution. Not all of them were decent, moral human beings, because not all people who profess to be Christians act like Christ tells them to. In Jamestown, the Christians, in a stereotypical manner, are backward-thinking hypocrites. Governor Yeardley uses Christianity to justify slavery, as some did. Which is fine with me, because the governor in no other way appears to be a Christian. He uses the Bible as a weapon to get what he wants; it’s not a life-changing influence in his life. That has been true of many “Christians” over the years.
But I can tell the writer doesn’t really “get” what it means to be a Christian, in his mishandling of Temperance, the governor’s wife. She is devout. She carries around and reads her Bible. She defers with wifely obedience to her husband, even though it goes against her nature. She spends time in prayer. But disturbed by her husband’s immoral actions, she seeks the assistance of a local witch in tormenting her husband through nightmares. Temperance hopes this will “turn him against his baser nature,” but it’s inconsistent with her beliefs. A woman as devout as she is does not turn to “witchcraft.” She would never consider it, because her Bible tells her to avoid such things.
I know, because I have been “devout” in my life. I clung hard to my strict Baptist upbringing. It never crossed my mind as a teenager to drink, engage in premarital sex, or tolerate bad behavior. When Christian friends asked me if they should date people from other religious backgrounds, I dutifully told them, “Do not be unequally yoked.” I still believe that, though I have grown more tolerant over the years. I still have never drank, engaged in premarital sex, or dated someone outside my beliefs. These beliefs are ingrained in me. I have, as an adult, evaluated and chosen them anew, but they influence every decision I make, and many of the opinions I hold. They saturate every aspect of my life.
I get Temperance in that way, because I know what it is to be devout.
The only show on television to handle Christianity with any kind of deeper understanding is Call the Midwife. A believer writes it, and you can tell, because she understands the struggles of a godly woman. She gets the bending of one’s will to a higher power. The frustration, the occasional anger at God, even the resentment at having to be different from “the world.” Yet, she also understands the compassion. The love. The boundless joy. Until I saw her characterization of Sister Julienne, I never understood what “show others unconditional love”actually looks like. Julienne is unapologetically, beautifully, authentically a Christian. It is powerful, because it’s real to the woman who wrote it.
They say write what you know. “What you know” is love, loss, heartache, happiness, friendship, family, betrayal and trust. The things that unite us, that all humans have in common regardless of region, culture, or time. They play out well in sci-fi, fantasy, modern drama, and costume dramas, because they are universal truths. Beyond that, becomes more personal and much harder to fake. If you “don’t know,” maybe you ought not “to write,” because it won’t be convincing. It comes out contrived. That goes for writing a Christian as an unbeliever, or an atheist as a believer. Some of the latter’s characterizations of atheists, as someone with atheist friends, makes me cringe. Whenever as a writer, you do not understand something on a deep personal level, get a person who lives it to help you. Otherwise, you are chasing after ghosts… and your writing will show it.
Good post and good advice! I’m working on my first book, but sometimes I wonder if I know enough to get stuff right. Congratulations on the release of your new book! I just got the first three for Christmas…. now I want the new one for my birthday in a few weeks. Happy New Year!
I think if you know human nature in any way, you can write something realistic. I never let the setting stop me — what do I know about Tudor England? Well, a lot of book knowledge, though I never lived in that period. But what I do know is that human feelings have not changed. We still live, love, lose, die, triumph, fail, make mistakes, and are wise in turn. Use whatever you “know.”
Aww. I’m flattered you chose to read my books. I hope you enjoy them. 🙂 And Happy Birthday in advance!
Thank you for the advice. I enjoy your writing, so I will enjoy your books.
Thank you!
Good post, good post.
Do you remember that Lizzie Bennet gif from “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries”–“I HAVE DONE THE RESEARCH!!!!” These writers clearly have not done their research. Because basic historical knowledge of Christianity as practiced in the 17th and 18th centuries would tell you what a STRONG taboo these people placed on witchcraft. Therefore, anybody who’s characterized as even a little bit devout, should not, for the sake of consistency, touch witchcraft with a ten-foot pole. It simply wasn’t DONE.
Plus there was the whole deterrent of “you might get burned at the stake if your neighbors can prove you’re messing with this stuff . . .” so #yay.
I’m torn. I want to believe that a non-Christian writer who does proper research and has basic respect for Christians as people, could write convincing Christian characters, buuuuuuuuuuut . . . I haven’t really seen it done so maybe I’m just being overly optimistic. 😛
This extends to denominations within Christianity, too. You are the only (ONLY) non-Catholic writer I can name who writes Catholic characters properly. Because you do your research, and you respect our mentality even though you don’t 100% share it. You should be proud of that. ❤
Way too many others are just "lemme write about Catholics and never even MENTION the Virgin Mary, this should be fun!"
It feels like the writer throws in little “actual” historical reactions once in awhile just to remind the audience how #NotWoke they all were… but then does whatever he wants. Legit, everyone in this series was pretty much all right with a hermaphrodite, and I suspect they would have killed the person as “devil spawn” in real life.
I think if a non-Christian actually had no anti-Christian attitude (not a militant atheist, in other words) and had positive experiences with Christians, they might write a convincing believer. But as you point out, if you haven’t seen it done yet…
Oh, well thank you. I think I skim the edges of it, a bit, since I don’t really go deep into what they are praying / what their beliefs are beyond the basic things we share, but I have enough “good” Catholic characters around for fairness sake. (That’s what bothers me the most about Protestant fiction. Show me a Catholic in them, and there’s the — villain, pedophile, monk stealing out of the till, abusive twit, etc. Jerks.)
Yeahhhhhhhhhhh. That’s the thing with writing about the past and having diversity / representation ESPECIALLY in the area of sexual identity. It’s like: in the past, storytellers would completely ignore those people who were ‘different,’ right? And now the tendency is more like, we’re going to show them, we need to show diversity [which is GOOD], but then they pretend that all the other characters are pretty much . . . fine . . . with these nonconforming sexual identities, when we know historically they WOULD NOT BE?? It’s like they’re showing diversity but erasing discrimination. Which doesn’t help your audience actually understand history.
I definitely appreciate the fairness ❤ (Because yeah, I'm sooooo tired of the single Catholic being the bad guy 😛 ) But you're also not afraid to mention your characters actually having a devotion to the Virgin Mary, or stuff like that–which you'd be surprised how many non-Catholic authors have huge hang ups about that. "WE CAN'T MENTION MARY" ummm, then stop writing about Roman Catholics??
Yup. It’s like in Anne with an E, they made Aunt Josephine gay. Anne was delighted and had a very woke “love looks different for everyone, and it must be all okay, and the laws against it are wrong” 🙂 response … and the show shamed Diana for having the period-accurate belief that it was sinful / wrong. She fortunately got Woke enough later to profusely apologize to her aunt for being so “small minded.”
Sigh.
But if they didn’t write about Roman Catholics, they would have no villains!! and we can’t have that! 😛
Right. Of course I agree with Anne, myself; but it’s just not realistic to have everyone in that time period come around to accepting it.
A more period-accurate resolution would have everybody just agree to keep silent about it, since that’s how in fact homosexuality and other non-straight identities were handled Back In The Day. Like “oh yes, Aunt Josephine, a most respectable spinster lady” *waggles eyebrows*
NO, WE CAN’T HAVE THAT 😛
Nobody except homosexuals themselves would have accepted it, since most people were oblivious to it and those who were aware of it, looked the other way.
Queer-coding every “spinster” in literature has gotten old. Fast. Not everyone wanted to get married. Not everyone had sexual desires. Not everyone wanted their husband to own them / their children / take over their inheritance. But making everyone a lesbian in hindsight is “cool” now. Sigh.
Exactly. “Looked the other way,” which could be the same as tacit acceptance if you loved the person and wanted to see them happy–but you would NOT openly be like “oh yes, this is morally fine.” That mindset would make zero sense to somebody of the 19th century.
For sure. SOMETIMES “spinster” was code for “lesbian” (cue all the “OMG they were roommates” jokes . . . 😉 ) but certainly not all the time. And ace representation is important too.
Or we could focus on the actual PLOT and stop making everything about sex. 😛
… we could also do this thing, yes 😛