Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33862
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

"I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader - not sharing the characters' beliefs - will have trouble accepting the characters' non-rational beliefs and obligations."

Well there's your problem right there. If you think of the character's beliefs as "non-rational", there's no way you'll be able to paint him believably. I often hear atheists say that religious people believe things blindly on "faith" with no evidence, or despite the evidence, and that religious people reject the very idea of reason. This is nonsense. I have never, ever heard a Jew or Christian or Muslim says anything remotely like this. Our beliefs are based on historical and scientific evidence, reason, and logic. You may not find our arguments convincing. I'm not going to get into cataloging or debating the evidence here -- the point is to discuss writing believable characters and not converting you to my beliefs or you converting me to yours. But believers believe based on evidence. I take it for granted that even for beliefs that I consider absolutely crazy, if I asked the person why they believe this, they would give some rational-sounding reason. Maybe it's, "But the psychic knew all about my dead grandfather -- how could he know that?", the sort of evidence that I would poke a million holes in. But to the believer, he was right there and heard it with his own ears. It's totally rational and convincing.

If you are trying to write about someone whose beliefs you disagree with, whether those beliefs are religious, political, social, whatever, if you're going to make the character believable, you have to get inside that person's head and understand WHY he believes this way. "He believes this because he's irrational and just blindly follows whatever he's told" is not going to cut it. Your character will be a caricature.

I'll use Christianity as the example because as a Christian, I think I understand Christians pretty well. :-) You mention following a bunch of rules. A sincere Christian does not see following God's laws as a burden and obligation. We believe that we were created by God. As our creator, God knows more about us than we know about ourselves. Therefore it makes sense that his rules are smarter than any rules we would make up ourselves. When I buy a new electronic gadget, I read the instruction manual because I take it for granted that the people who built the thing know how to use it properly. If they say to install the ink cartridges with the arrow pointing up, I don't say, "Who are you to tell me how to install ink cartridges in MY printer! I think it makes more sense to put them in with the arrow pointing down. You're probably telling me not to do that just because you want to take away my fun." No, I assume that the manufacturer has a reason for any instructions they give and that I will get the best use out of gadget by following those instructions.

Etc. For anything religious people do that you find irrational, the religious person probably has a good reason for it. Or at least, a reason that sounds good to him and to all the millions of other people who share his beliefs. To write the character, find out what that reason is. You don't have to find it convincing, but you have to find it comprehensible.

Part 2

As John Smithers said in the comment, to make an interesting story you have to have conflict. I agree that an atheist converting to Christianity or a Christian converting to atheism can make a good story. But that's not the only possibility. You could also have someone struggling with his own beliefs.

For example, you mentioned a person giving up a romantic relationship because they don't want to marry outside their faith. There's a very obvious conflict there. On the one hand they have a strong emotional attachment to this person. On the other hand, their religion has a rule against marrying outside the faith. Perhaps the person sees the logic in this rule, and then it is a struggle between emotion and reason. Or perhaps they don't see any logic to it, and so they struggle to understand why there should be such a rule and why they should obey it. I've known Christians who have had this very struggle.

Or you could have conflict between people of two different religions, where each says why they believe what they do and they argue back and forth. I have a hard time seeing how you could do that without the book either being a tract to convert people to one religion or the other, or ending with nothing resolved, just people debating and then ending up saying, "So I guess we disagree." But I'm sure a creative person could come up with a good story.

More interesting, I think, would be if religious differences where just a background in the story. Like it's basically a story about soldiers in World War 2 but along the way there are some discussions of religion.

But I don't know where you're trying to go so, whatever.

Original score: 2