G for Gods – #atozchallenge
photo by Charlie Phillips
Just stop and think for a moment on this question – how many popular entertainment icons can you think of, right off the bat, that involve mythological gods?
I can think of at least ten, personally.
Gods, religion, faith, and morals will always be present (whether by their existence or non-existence) in a fantasy story – it’s another one of those things that is required to give depth to characters and plot, no matter what the views about those things are.
Even if you don’t have a God, gods, or a spiritual force of any kind in your stories, it will still be present in some way. People will have beliefs about life, the after-life, why bad things happen, etc. Since this is so ingrained in our readers, we absolutely must deal with this in our characters.
If you’ve never done it, creating gods is so much fun!
In my Gyti story, I have a few different dynamics going on. There’s the Creator, who’s become a very abstract idea instead of an actual god, except by a few. There’s Talxz, the goddess of Dusk, and she’s vicious and cruel. There’s the Eswad, who have a name for their goddess, but more embrace the concept of her as water, because they live in the desert. Everyone is a little different, though you can see how they all came from the same place originally.
Fantasy Faction posted an excellent series of articles back in February about Creating God: Religion in Fantasy. It is a resource that I’ll look at time and time again, and if this is a topic you’re interested in, I highly recommend these.
What have your experiences been with creating gods in your stories?
Well said! It is true, even if you don’t mention them in a fantasy story, they still affect the characters and how they act/live.
Very insightful, Rebekah. 😀
I can’t say I’ve ever tried to create my own god before, but it does sound like a fun challenge!
J.C. Martin
A to Z Blogger
So many of our fantasy stories have their basis in various mythologies. It seems more the norm than not. I’ve had some fun creating belief systems, especially interesting when character belief systems have something to do with one’s ability to have, wield or use magic.
By the way, have a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend 🙂
I’ve created gods before and some fun with them. In my Trysts of the Hearts series, I used the ancient Egyptian gods since that world is a possible future where they decided they didn’t like what humanity was doing and changed things after a huge war they participated in. Now, I’m writing them out and replacing them with similar but more original beings to take their places; the first one was Bast, whose child took her place and became Aum in Test of Ascension.
Have a Happy Easter!
That’s a pretty good link. Thanks. It’s interesting how religion and life can interact, especially in fantasy. I don’t use religion too much in the WiP but I did have to create a religion for the characters.
Sonia Lal, A to Z challenge
God and characters with god-complexes are always present in my stories in some way or another, but I’ve yet to write a story with mythical gods. Hmmmm.
Great G post!