An issue I have with Christian authors is their tendency to create unrealistic characters to depict their Christian values and ideals. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. In reality, most readers won’t buy it—though there is always someone out there that will like any particular piece of writing. Remember, the goal is to make an impact on your readers, to take them on a journey that they can relate to.

Your main characters need to be dynamic. They need to have faults. They need to have idiosyncrasies. They need to have prejudices and a bias. In short, they need personalities. If all your “good” characters sound alike, then there is no dynamic to your story. It is static. Good characters need to have bad habits and evil characters should not be wholly evil.

I’m always amazed at how perfect some author’s characters are, how patient, how kind, how thoughtful, how godly. But no one can relate to characters like that.

Every character in your story needs to be unique, and all your main characters must grow and change in the story. Minor characters need not be dynamic; they can be static, unchanging. But not your main characters. If your main character is the same person at the end of your story as he or she was at the beginning, you did something wrong.

Letting your characters live the Christian values you are trying to share is important. Let them wrestle with the values, find fault with them, debate them, and even experiment with them in failure—not everything we try to do good will work out like we hope or for our benefit. However, it is the end result and where the journey takes them that gives weight and benefit to those values. Let your characters discover this for themselves and then so will your readers.

Again, all main characters need to be dynamic. Your minor characters can remain static.

Happy writing, folks!