John Edgell - Author

Distinctive fantasy fiction stories that delight the mind and stir the soul.

  • Home
  • Books
  • The Place of Faith
  • About

Writing Compelling Fiction

February 1, 2019 By Author John Leave a Comment

Writing Compelling Fiction

Compelling Fiction You’ll Love to Read

Writing Christian Fiction

Writing FictionWriting Christian fiction is different from being a Christian writer writing fiction. Writing compelling fiction is about story, about entertaining the reader, and yet about much more. Many Christian fiction writers write what I would classify as pseudo-Christian fiction, fiction with values of decency, but not necessarily with a Christian takeaway, because their desire is to appeal to a crossover market. As I have commented in other blog posts I have had a Christian writer tell me that a story should not have a message. But a story without a takeaway robs the reader.

Writing Compelling Fiction Informed by Biblical Truth

In another blog post, quite some time back, I mentioned a story of mine being critiqued by the members of the writer’s group I was a part of and being told it was a quaint story, but there was no takeaway, i.e. not worth reading. I had to rewrite the story to give it value. My stories focus on being engaging stories with underlying and/or somewhat overt messaging, but messaging that is natural to the story, not contrived or superimposed. They are in one way or another grounded in biblical truth. Rather than simply being written from a Christian worldview, they are written from a biblical worldview.

Writing FictionA biblical worldview does not gloss over the realities and ugly details of our sin-sick world, because the Bible does not gloss over such things: David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, Judah and his daughter-in-law, and on and on. A biblical worldview is simply the foundation on which a story is built, as opposed to a secular godless worldview. Evil is evil and good is good. Wrong is wrong and right is right. However characters struggles with understanding and living out those realities is itself still a reality, even as it is with this writer and each reader.

Some of my stories are moral tales; some are allegorical while others simply integrate symbolism; and then there are those that illustrate some major biblical truth, such as: Choices have consequences, Baruch—God figure—can be trusted to keep his word in spite of catastrophic consequences that result in the advances of evil forces (Seed of the Defiled); or a simple truth like, people’s lives have value (The Myth).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Author Blog Tagged With: biblical worldview, Christian fiction, Christian worldview, Christian writer, compelling fiction, crossover market

Place of Christ in Fantasy Fiction

August 22, 2018 By Author John Leave a Comment

Place of Christ

Centrality of Christ in Fantasy Fiction

The Perspective of a Christian Writer

I presume it to be obvious that this article is written from the perspective of a Christian author. Well, not “just” a Christian author but a Christ-centered Christian author whose writing is rooted in a biblical worldview.

Christ in Fantasy fictionIt does not matter who the writer is, their worldview will thread through the tapestry of their story. And in truth, someone can say they are a Christian and yet hold to a secular worldview. It is rather like the person who loudly proclaims they are for non-violence, and yet when someone crosses them their fist flies. “Christian” is a descriptive term that can have a vast array of meanings. “Biblical Christian” describes a worldview that the word Christian simply does not.

The Centrality of Christ

For my part, I am a Christ-follower first and a writer second. Christ said that the most important thing in the world is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Nothing supersedes that. Right doctrine is rooted in love for the Lord—because I love God I want to know the truth about God. Right living is a love response to the Lord. And to love God is to love Christ. And if I truly love Christ above all else it cannot help but impact my writing. Its threads will be found in the fabric of my stories. If I am truly living a Christ-centered life I cannot bifurcate my biblical worldview into separate compartments when it comes to life and story writing. In fact, my stories by nature grow out of the roots of my worldview.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Author Blog Tagged With: biblical worldview, Christ-follower, Christian author, Christian fantasy, Christian writer, fantasy fiction

Writing a Story for the Love of Story

July 25, 2018 By Author John Leave a Comment

For Love of Story

Writing for the Love of Story

A Developing Love of Story

God blessed me with the gift of an active imagination, and as a result, my mind has been filled with stories since as far back as I can remember. I was acting out stories on a home-built rickety raft down at the creek or laying out rocks in the shape of a boat…no a pirate ship! And I would stick a tree branch in the ground with an old sheet or blanket stretched out as a sail, take up my wooden sword and bandana wrapped around my head I would rule the seven seas! But what gave me the impetus to write a story?

Writing a StoryI was one of five kids—the only boy dropped right in the middle point of four girls—and we loved games. Along with Monopoly and Old Maids we often played a card game called Authors. Robert Lewis Stevenson—Treasure Island—got me wondering if I could write a story like that. In high school I put my pen to paper to write story. I did not get far before I realized that writing a story was beyond my present abilities. I wrote some short stuff, but it wasn’t very good. I wrote simply for the love of story.

For the love of story I also read many of the books whose titles were from the Author cards. Along with Treasure Island I read Kidnapped, Ivanhoe, Last of the Mohicans, The Deer Slayer and many others-all classics. I read for the love of story, and because of my love of story writing a story was in my blood. As a result I enjoyed many frustrated efforts and many failures. Such is the reality of story writing. But all of those failures were steps toward future accomplishment—and many more failures.

I write for the Love of Story

Accidental HeroesIt must have been around 1980, when I was thirty-four and had two young boys that I got serious about writing stories. I reasoned that my love of story would provide a good means of teaching the boys godly life principles. As I wrote The Helot (helot means servant) I would read it to them instilling truth and engendering discussion. As the boys grew I continued to write stories and read them to them. Those stories later developed into my Accidental Heroes series: The Helot; Dark Danger, Terminus, Primal Blade and Labyrinth (they had other names back then).

Once my boys grew up and left home I continued to write. Why? Because God had given me a love of story. So my next effort was classic fairytale, Wanzalara’s Cottage. It was also the first of my books to be published. It was accepted by a Canadian publishing house that promised to market it in the U.S. as well as Canada. They never followed through on the marketing and less than a thousand books were sold. But I was published! I was not writing to make money. I was writing for the love of story and I simply wanted to have people reading my stories.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Author Blog Tagged With: author cards, biblical worldview, classics, Quick Read Books, Robert Lewis Stevenson, writing stories

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Get a Free Story

* indicates required

John Edgell, Author

John has experience as a school teacher, a pastor, and has been a writer of stories since his two sons were knee high to a gnome.

Read more about John.

Through a Looking Glass

The God Question

Asking the God Question

Introducing the God Question Proof for the Existence of God My book, The God Question, has gotten … [Read More...]

More Posts from this Category

Bestsellers

  • Acceptable Fruit
  • The Princess and the Orc
  • Tales of a Church Mouse
  • Phantom Island Chronicles: A Pirate Fantasy
  • The Helot
  • Son of Cain

Introducing Quick Read Books

https://youtu.be/14QU9CuANIQ

Search the Site

Share Your Favorites

Copyright © 2021 John Edgell · Books