Writing Truths from Reality

Another short post, I’ll not procrastinate the next one and hopefully get a long juicy one out :).

First of all I want to warn that in this post I am going to address some religious aspects. I promise that I do this from a writing perspective and don’t care what religion you are or how your beliefs conflict with mine; I just want to share some ‘ah-has’ that I’ve found when examining my own beliefs that have helped me wrap my head around certain writing aspects.

I don’t know much about very many religions but hopefully this basic christian belief can be molded to fit others; God created us and has given us all great potential and purposes. Well, we as writers (yes, imagine a moment theoretically that in our current state we’re comparable to God) create all these different characters and send them into our world with their different purposes, but usually these aren’t all good purposes. Of course, we have to keep control of our story and have conflict but I think that we should create all our characters with at least a potential for greatness; then it is when ‘their own choices’ kick in that they go in all their different directions.
Another cool aspect—of at least my religion—that I have related to writing is trials. I believe God knows us better than we know ourselves and gives us trials that will try us most and either make or break us in the path to meeting our potential. He helps weave all our personal stories together perfectly so that we meet who we need to meet for the best growth and we are tried in the best ways. Same should be done by us as writers, we have to throw the worst possible thing (though God may be a little nicer and more lenient) for our characters personally at them and then guide them through it how they choose. We also have to do a fair amount of weaving of subplots and stories that will give the best overall story and relationships.

What are your writing ‘ah-has’ that relate to real life?