As writers, we sometimes joke about playing God in the stories we create. We have the ultimate power over what happens to these characters we've created. We can cause great suffering, even death, or we can bestow upon them blissful joy. We hold the power, and they have none.
Although… anyone who's written fiction for a while knows the characters seem to have wills of their own, right? They often rebel and take the tale in a different direction from what the writer expected. It's like they've become real people, no longer two-dimensional cutouts. They say and do — or refuse to say or do — things that give the story a life of its own. Without this dimension, readers are unlikely to care about the story one way or the other.
It occurs to me that I am most like God when I write. In Genesis 1:1, He took an expanse that was formless and void, and turned it into something real, something tangible. Something with colors and textures and sounds and smells and flavours. Something He could share with others.
When I sit and stare at an empty Scrivener page, I can sympathize with that whole formless-and-void thing. And yet, typing the words Chapter One is like saying, "Let there be light!" As I continue to add words, I am setting the stage and introducing the characters who will act out my imagined story.
I am not God, nor am I a god, but I am created in the image of God. He has given me — and you, fellow writers — this unique ability to create something from nothing. Before our fingers hit the keyboard, nothing exists beyond mere wisps in our imagination. Yet, when we are done, we have fulfilled an act of creation that can be shared with others.
Something from nothing.
Isn't that an awesome way to be made in God's image?
Valerie writes where food and faith meet fiction in her Farm Fresh Romance series and Riverbend romance novellas. Visit her at ValerieComer.com.
