Fantasy Fiction

For those of you who don't know, I occasionally embark on the obscure hobby of writing fiction.

Its predominately a dormant hobby- because at various phases of my life I move in and out of it due to time and motivation. I've been doing bits and pieces since I was a kid, got a bit more serious when I was in Uni and at early stages of work, lost interest when Tim came along (he can be very distracting you know ;)- then rekindled it again over this summer. When I write, life is generally more exciting, I am happier- and strangely I become easier to live with. And for some reason, despite 23 years of time passing and passions changing, the literary dreams that started when I was five (with my first short story- "The Day the Sun turned Pink") I still can't bare to put to rest. So I find myself once again attempting to write a novel.

At the moment I am embarking into the world of fantasy fiction- with somewhat hilarious results. I'm out of the habit of writing, so much of my efforts so far come out as cliche and over the top- I'd show you some but I'm much too embarrassed of it. Plus I'd never realised just how much planning goes into a fantasy story. Every time I start writing I realise there is a whole lot of background thinking that I still have to do before my story comes together. What is my world, what is its history- these thoughts occupy my time much more than actually time typing out actually words on a computer.

But it has raised for me an interesting question of how as a Christian I should go about writing fantasy. I dealt with some of these issues in my mind during the start of the Harry Potter craze (of which I was and am very much swept up in)- but I've realised that its another ball game when you are actually doing the writing. In a fantasy world- unless you are in the calibre of brilliance of CS Lewis- it doesn't seem possible to have a God figure without somehow being heretical or down-playing the glory of the one true God. Yet how do you make a world which makes sense without him- given that this world and all that is in it is held together and has its meaning in Christ?

Then you have the question of magic. Given the way the Bible talks about magic- how do you use it within fantasy? My current thinking is to include it- but keep it very clearly in the realm of the unreal. But is that just a cop-out because it is such a useful literary device?

I would love to use my story as an evangelistic tool- but again I feel that a clear gospel presentation within it is very much beyond me. But pre-evangelism? Can it be a place to raise issues to do with morality, sin and judgement? The failing of the human race?

When I studied Creative writing at Uni I feel very much into the trap of writing to sound smart and to impress my classmates- not at all thinking what it meant to write as a Christian. But at the same time I don't want to produce something that is wooden and false because I'm trying to turn my art into theological prose.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts, which I'm hopefully going to add to by doing a bit of reading on the topic. If anyone has any thoughts on these issues I'd appreciate hearing them.
B