Writing stories

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It is one of my hobbies to write stories, specifically sci-fi and fantasy. I was just wondering, do you believe I have any moral obligation to restrict myself as to the content of my stories? Is it a sin to create a story where people sin? Or am I pretty much free to do whatever (as long as I don’t write something like porn, which I don’t intend to)?
 
Just don’t glorify the sin when you write about it. Consider what C.S. Lewis did in The Screwtape Letters.

If no one ever sinned in your fiction, well, there wouldn’t be much conflict for the makings of a good story. 🙂
 
broconsul said:
Just don’t glorify the sin when you write about it. Consider what C.S. Lewis did in The Screwtape Letters.

If no one ever sinned in your fiction, well, there wouldn’t be much conflict for the makings of a good story. 🙂
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While I agree with this on the whole, I must wonder what a story would be like where everyone made correct moral decisions. Certainly could make for an interesting project.

However, since most stories are, in effect, morality plays where good combats evil, the main thing to keep your morality squarely in view. What “moral lesson” do you seek to convey by your writing.

Peace
James
 
kbwall said:
It is one of my hobbies to write stories, specifically sci-fi and fantasy. I was just wondering, do you believe I have any moral obligation to restrict myself as to the content of my stories? Is it a sin to create a story where people sin? Or am I pretty much free to do whatever (as long as I don’t write something like porn, which I don’t intend to)?
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if you eliminated sin you would eliminate the plot lines of 90% of world literature
what you cannot do is glamorize sin and evil, deny the truth of natural law in which sin has consequences, or deliberately misstate moral teaching of the Church as your underlying message. Note your characters can do all these things, but it is their conversion and learning through their experience that creates great literature
 
Even in the works of CS Lewis, Charles Williams, Shakespeare (crypto-Catholic), etc, there is sin. There has to be. Human Beings are involved.

You could write about persons in an afterlife, where sin has passed. But these dead persons would still be dead ex-sinners.

As long as fictional sin is not made “glamorous” and desirable, there should be no moral problem in writing about it.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA
 
I agree with what other people said here.

I think the bigger question here is detachment from worldly things. I don’t really understand exactly how this comes into play here.
 
McatholicN said:
I agree with what other people said here.

I think the bigger question here is detachment from worldly things. I don’t really understand exactly how this comes into play here.
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Indeed, I don’t see how OP could write about that, unless they limit themself to biographies of St. Francis, etc 🙂

ICXC NIKA
 
I’m also a (professional) writer – here are my thoughts…

The main elements of every good story are conflict, part or full resolution of the conflict, and the change the protagonist(s) and/or antagonist(s) undergo throughout the story. The conflict may certainly be sinful in origin, and sin can complicate both characters and plot, but it doesn’t have to be.

Life is full of conflict of all sorts, only some of which are sinful. If you think of all the elements that make up serious conflict, even in our daily lives, there are a great number that have nothing to do with sinful behavior.

In describing (or having your characters live out) interpersonal conflict, there’s certainly opportunity for sin – but the resolution of that conflict can be shown to be uplifting without being preachy or dogmatic. Keep in mind that we ALL sin, and showing characters overcoming personal sin and, in particular, showing forgiveness, can be very powerful – again, without being preachy.

Good luck with your stories!
 
At the least… If you write anything that would lead an average person towards sin, you will be held accountable for it.

There’s a difference between historically relating information about sin (for virtuous reasons) and putting it in such a way that it would cause the average reader to lean towards sympathy/empathizing/committing it.

And of course some things that are proximate to sin, that nevertheless are very dangerous, and getting people to feel comfortable with that is a problem too. The more worldly you are the more blind you will be to the flaws in your writings that you find acceptable but could in fact (and do in fact) hold grave flaws.

Generally… creating many forms of entertainment media, unless you’ve reached a certain level of very prudent reserve and appreciation of holiness, is quite dangerous from an accountability before God perspective.

Because you’re creating something lasting that can affect more than a few people.

It reminds me of a story about a painter in purgatory, who was required to remain there as long as one of his bad paintings existed. He only created a single bad one, and later repented it, or we are informed he would have gone to Hell. But he was required to stay in purgatory as long as it existed to pay the penalty for the harm it did, and a number of souls came to the painter’s judgement before God after his death and testified against him because of the ill effects it had produced.
 
Shin said:
It reminds me of a story about a painter in purgatory, who was required to remain there as long as one of his bad paintings existed. He only created a single bad one, and later repented it, or we are informed he would have gone to Hell. But he was required to stay in purgatory as long as it existed to pay the penalty for the harm it did, and a number of souls came to the painter’s judgement before God after his death and testified against him because of the ill effects it had produced.
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Tell me more about this story.
 
You can read it in Fr. F.X. Schouppe, S.J.'s collection of such histories. Great book. Full of saints and their experiences.

Gives a person a far greater sense of how we are held accountable before God.

'But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.

For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.’

Matthew 12:36-37
 
One of your best defenses is a properly formed conscience. It should tell you when you are going in the wrong direction. As a writer myself, I will be held accountable by God for what I write.

That said, most of the stories I write involve heroes - not anti-heroes, not sometimes lawbreakers - battling the forces of evil. Most fiction involves conflict of some kind. It could be man versus man, like hero against villain, man versus nature, like surviving a natural disaster, or man versus himself where the character is dealing with a personal problem, and overcomes it in some way.

Science fiction, at one time, explicitly mentioned God. See the movie Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and Forbidden Planet. The aliens in SF stories are usually human beings in alien bodies. In order for the reader to relate to the alien, it must have some behaviors that we would recognize.

Hope this helps,
Ed
 
(While I was composing this lengthy reply, and timing out and having to re-login, ed west got in ahead of me, LOL!😃 but I like what you have to say, ed!)

This is certainly a question that I have grappled with from the time I started writing in my teen years. I majored in Creative Writing in a mostly-secular English department, at a secular state university.

Many of my English professors (and other professors) were people who were raised Catholic and considered themselves to have “outgrown” Catholicism. This was less than two decades after the Vietnam War and social upheavals in other areas (radical feminism, contraception and “free love,” etc.). Although these problems certainly weren’t new at that time, as I have since realized. :nope:

Anyhow, I have written sci-fi, general fiction and poetry, and here lately started working on Catholic non-fiction and Catholic romance. Someday I’d like to write “cozy” murder mysteries if I can figure out how to plot them. 😉 I have read books across a wide range and when I was younger in my own stumbling attempts to write, I was probably more liberal in the name of “realism” than I would be now . . .

But there is a certain level of believability that you have to attain, and there’s where you have to walk a fine line. You don’t want to glamourize sin. We live in a world where “extreme” and “irreverent” are compliments. So how do you manage not to glamourize sin and jaded attitudes?:confused:

I would say by avoiding graphic descriptions of violence or sex, and profanity in dialogue as much as possible. Or condoning adultery in the name of romance, or cheating in the name of creating an “antihero” figure. Reading great literature from times when not all the stuff that’s allowed in bestsellers these days would be one way. Maybe even reading a few of the bestsellers - with discernment - to see what’s “too much information” or “over the top.”:eek:

And when you have a sense of which direction you want to take your writing - what genre you want to write in, and what your themes are and how you’ll make your writing illustrate those, then you have to try and figure out how to be subtle. Have the lessons the characters learn, the realizations they discover, grow out of who they are and what happens - in a natural-seeming way. If you are too blatant about the “morality tale” the reader will feel hit over the head, but if you engage the reader and carry them along with the characters on a journey of discovery, they will be like “Yesss!” :newidea:.

I extend to you my best wishes for success, along with this invitation 🙂 - come join Catholics Who Write Lounge social group - would really enjoy having your perspective and thought-provoking questions for all of us to share and discuss and help each other out with dilemmas.
:grouphug:
forums.catholic-questions.org/group.php?groupid=747
 
This is my guideline:

artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

When I write, I (A) try to avoid presenting scenes that I’ve seen before, especially in movies or on TV, (B) I imagine myself as the lead character, and picture the scenes, and (C) if I can’t figure out how to resolve a situation, I let it sit for a few days and the answer usually comes to me regarding how to present a scene or situation.

I don’t know anyone who starts at the beginning and just keeps going. I write down scenes and bits of dialogue and use them later. Sometimes, after working something out, I decide I don’t like it, so it gets cut. Then I imagine an alternative idea or ideas. Sometimes, as I’m writing, a new idea suggests itself and I decide it’s better than what I had in mind and work it in.

Tips: Do not sit at the keyboard for 8 to 12 hours straight. You will be tired and frustrated and that will put you in a bad frame of mind. Stand up and move around a little. Clearing your head helps to keep you positive or can help to clear a temporary block on an idea or section. If you type up some dialogue and it doesn’t sound right, say it out loud. Imagine you’re saying it to someone else. Then you can rearrange it to make it sound more natural.

Hope this helps,
Ed
 
I assume such Catholics as JRR Tolkein (though I haven’t read his books) had sinful content in them. Never write anything that glorifies sin.
 
I write Transformers fanfiction, and boy howdy is it violent.

As others have said, avoid glorifying sin, if I write in something sinful, like an abortion, I write of the guilt and horror it causes to the woman and those around here. So I wouldn’t write about someone having an abortion and being like “yay, greatest choice I ever make, cake, whiskey and premartial sex all round!”

However, the absolute rule I live by with my works, is I don’t even let any of my characters take teh Lord’s name in vain. I also keep general cussing to a minimum.
 
edwest2 said:
This is my guideline:

artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

When I write, I (A) try to avoid presenting scenes that I’ve seen before, especially in movies or on TV, (B) I imagine myself as the lead character, and picture the scenes, and (C) if I can’t figure out how to resolve a situation, I let it sit for a few days and the answer usually comes to me regarding how to present a scene or situation.

I don’t know anyone who starts at the beginning and just keeps going. I write down scenes and bits of dialogue and use them later. Sometimes, after working something out, I decide I don’t like it, so it gets cut. Then I imagine an alternative idea or ideas. Sometimes, as I’m writing, a new idea suggests itself and I decide it’s better than what I had in mind and work it in.

Tips: Do not sit at the keyboard for 8 to 12 hours straight. You will be tired and frustrated and that will put you in a bad frame of mind. Stand up and move around a little. Clearing your head helps to keep you positive or can help to clear a temporary block on an idea or section. If you type up some dialogue and it doesn’t sound right, say it out loud. Imagine you’re saying it to someone else. Then you can rearrange it to make it sound more natural.

Hope this helps,
Ed
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I like that, Ed! I bookmarked it. I’d heard about the older standards for movies, but didn’t know what they were called. It provides a good framework.

I like to do my writing like a frog 😃 - I hop around from one scene to another, forwards and backwards and all over. I remember how when I first started writing, with a typewriter, it was so messy to do revision. And I wrote more linearly - I don’t even know if I could write in a linear way these days. It’s like word processing was invented for folks like us!😉
 
One more thing that occurred to me when writing. Whether one writes fiction, or poetry or drama or memoir, one draws on one’s own experiences and oftentimes creates characters more or less based on people one knows.

So I would say there is a moral issue in writing anything that is in some way “autobiographical” and that is to avoid gossip or other sins against the 8th Commandment especially if the people you write about are still living and know you and know that you are writing about them, or it could be called to their attention by a third party.:coffeeread:

This can be tricky because much of the richness of story can be in real, everyday life. Also some people write about things like their troubled childhoods or marriages, addictions, etc. and this can be therapeutic. The decision to share or publish should be made with the greatest discernment. A pen name might even be a possibility.:compcoff:
 
I’m not sure what you mean by glorifying sin.

Could I, in good conscience, write action scenes about war heroes? I know other famous Christian writers, such as CS Lewis & JRR Tolkein did, but I just want a second opinion. What about a homosexual character?
 
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