{"id":2372123,"date":"2017-11-20T11:14:20","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T17:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearwaterpress.com\/oneyearnovel\/?p=2372123"},"modified":"2023-01-06T22:23:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T04:23:41","slug":"spirituality-forgotten-key-character-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearwaterpress.com\/oneyearnovel\/blog\/spirituality-forgotten-key-character-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirituality: A Forgotten Key to Character Development"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oyan-blog-spirituality-pinterest\"<\/a>By Hannah Tacci, Student Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just reading the title of this post, you may be internally screaming, \u201cPREACHY TOPIC!” However, this isn\u2019t a post about religion in story<\/strong>. If you want that, I highly recommend Rachel\u2019s \u201cTelling a Religious Story Without Being Preachy<\/a>\u201d blog series.<\/p>\n

This post is about how your characters are more than the things that happen to them<\/strong>. They have an inner life\u2014a spirit\u2014and so their character development needs to reflect that. If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ve managed to complete a second draft of your One Year Adventure Novel<\/em> project, write about character weakness, and only then remember that Mr. S. talks about giving the hero a weakness. Ha! But writing out this piece is how it clicked for me.<\/p>\n

Before I share what I\u2019ve learned about the connection between spirituality and character weakness, I want to mention that I\u2019m going to be talking about Christian spirituality in this post. I realize that not all students who use The One Year Adventure Novel<\/em> are Christians, but being one myself has shaped my worldview and opinions<\/strong> for this post, as well as caused my writing and observations to heavily reflect my beliefs. If that doesn\u2019t sound helpful to you, feel free to stop reading!<\/p>\n

Okay, on to character weakness and spirituality.<\/p>\n

I believe people are spirit-beings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That sounds creepy, but as my friend puts it: \u201cWe don\u2019t live in a physical world with spiritual elements. We live in a spiritual world with physical elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

People are always searching for worth and value<\/strong>\u2014sometimes in the right place and more often than not, in the wrong place. We are created by God in His image, yet born with an emptiness that can only be filled by God, but so often we look to fill that elsewhere. All the searching that we do can be tied back to unawareness of\u2014or a lack of belief in\u2014what God says about Himself and about us.<\/p>\n

People are weak. We struggle, even with small things.<\/p>\n

At Summer Workshop<\/a> 2017, Steve Laube gave a talk called \u201cLosing Wait the Write Way.\u201d He really focused on the weaknesses of people, showing us how we all have struggles, and that we aren\u2019t the only ones in the world with problems. He had us write a few of our most pressing life issues on a scrap of paper<\/strong>, and they were placed in a container and brought on stage. Mr. Laube picked up the first paper from the overflowing container and read it aloud. You know what? No one wrote down their most pressing problem as, \u201cKill the Black Pirate of Doom and find the treasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

We wrote things like, \u201cdon\u2019t know what to do with my life,\u201d \u201canxiety,\u201d and \u201cdepression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some were pretty intense.<\/p>\n

Your characters must have something of the same problems. Sure, they\u2019ll have the main goal of finding the Black Pirate of Doom, but what inner struggles do they have? Your character\u2019s emptiness needs to be exposed<\/strong>, and they need to look to fill that hole with something. Some characters will fill it with God, and some won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

What is your character\u2019s emptiness? Is he lonely? Afraid? Self-conscious? People turn to addictions and\/or run from their problem in several ways.<\/strong> Not all addictions come in the form of drugs and alcohol. Some people fill their life with their job, some are addicted to the gym. Some people oversleep. Some overeat. Watch TV. Gamble. Write blog posts instead of working on their Work-In- Progress. *coughs*<\/p>\n

What is your character\u2019s subtle addiction? What does he turn towards to try to fill his emptiness? How does he run from his problem? How do these coping mechanisms help for a little while? How do they fail? How do they reinforce the problem?<\/p>\n

One of the most important realizations I\u2019ve come to, in learning to write, is that characters need to struggle aside from the overarching story goal<\/strong>. Again, the fact that nobody in Steve Laube\u2019s session wrote down \u201cDefeat the Black Pirate of Doom\u201d is telling. The problem shouldn\u2019t be completely disjointed from the story, but it still needs to be an everyday problem. What is your character\u2019s most pressing difficulty, apart from the main story goal?<\/p>\n

Digging even deeper:<\/p>\n