Playing God Isn’t Always All It’s Cracked Up to Be

I love a good series.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (fantasy fiction), Kate Quinn’s tale of Rome (historical fiction), Lauren Willig’s bouquet of flowery spies (historical fiction meets chicklit), Kyra Davis’  Sophie Katz (straight-up chicklit), Dee Henderson’s O’Malleys (Christian fiction), Seanan McGuire’s October Daye (fantasy fiction)…

My shelves are filled with them. There’s something about following a made-up character from book to book, seeing them grow, journeying with them as they struggle and cheering for them when they win that mimics real-life friendships. And friendship is a beautiful thing.

Yet reading a series and writing one are two very different experiences. At least, that’s how I felt while constructing the Dirty Politics trilogy. I was so happy I wrote them all before publishing them, seeing as how all the details I changed in The Politician’s Pawn while writing Moves and Countermoves, and Moves and Countermoves while writing Amateurs Play Elsewhere.

To me, it seemed unbelievable that an author could keep plot points and character development and themes running from novel to novel without taking some serious time to first map them out.

And who knows. Maybe that’s how Butcher and Quinn and Henderson do it. I don’t know.

But in writing Faerietales Book #4 after publishing the first three, this little pantser is learning that it might not be so intimidating after all. It can be a giant, intriguing puzzle that makes your brain swell and your eyes sparkle as you rise to the challenge.

Really, it’s a lot more like living life instead of playing God.

You see, someone who writes a single book is the deity of her created world. Her final word is law. End of story.

Until she publishes it and writes a sequel. Then, all of a sudden, she’s bound by the same rules as her characters.

I’m not gonna lie. It’s kinda scary letting that control go!

Yet it’s also totally doable. I’ve managed to turn minor characters from the original trilogy into much bigger players, develop details I’d intentionally left fuzzy, and revive old plots I thought I was done with.

Sure, I’ve also had to take different roads when my original brilliant ideas clashed with my canon. But overall, I have to say I’m enjoying this new journey with Sabrina instead of above her.

I guess that makes her one of my fictional friends.

Why Is God Such a Four-Letter Word in Modern Fantasy Fiction?

Earlier this month, I read a fascinating modern fantasy book by an author I already knew I enjoyed. I’m not going to mention this author’s name or the book’s title, because the purpose of this blog post isn’t to insult anyone. It’s just to wonder…

I’m a Christian and a writer. I’ve written Christian fiction, and I’ve written historical fiction with a heavy Christian focus (I didn’t set off to make “Maiden America” like that; my research led me to conclude that was the way to go). But the majority of my published or publishable stories fall into some other category, four being thrillers and three being modern fantasy.

In my Faerietales series, of which I just published the second one: “To Err Is Faerie,” I maybe mention God offhandedly a total of three times. It’s not Christian fiction, and so I saw no reason to pretend that it was.

But I also see no reason to write fantasy fiction and purposely leave God out of it or insult him or pull a Nietzsche and say that he’s dead, which is exactly what so many other modern fantasy fiction authors seem to do for some reason.

For example, this ghost story I finished went out of its way to kick God out of the picture, dismissing him as a vague possibility at best and a stupid myth at worst. Which kinda makes me go, “Huh?”

So it’s okay to believe in ghosts and faeries and other supernatural entities, but God is off limits? I guess I just don’t get that.  Not to mention that it’s depressing as anything when anyone – fictional character or real life human being – says stuff like, “Yeah, it’d be nice if there was a God, but tough luck, cookie. You’re on your own.”

I don’t read fiction to be depressed. I read it to be entertained, and maybe even to grow a little… because you always learn something when you’re reading, even if it’s just someone’s perspective.

And the perspective I’m getting this time around is that maybe these authors don’t want God to exist. Maybe he’s inconvenient or maybe he’s too scary or maybe they think they’ll somehow sound stupid writing about him in the middle of supernatural settings.

I don’t know the answer. Like I said, this blog post is just me wondering “out loud” on a page.

All I know is that it's odd.