In a post on CrimeReads, Cary Groner offers advice for incorporating spirituality into your fiction. “When the terms ‘spiritual’ and ‘narrative’ keep close company, they suggest uncomfortable traveling companions: a vaguely ethereal story line, an absence of significant conflict, or characters who seem more symbolic than human,” Groner says. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Groner cites the examples of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as classics that examine spirituality, as well as his own novel, told from his perspective as a Buddhist. “As in any story, it’s important that those characters be strongly motivated, meet powerful obstacles to their objectives, and strive to surmount those obstacles as best they can despite their own blind spots, weaknesses, and fears,” he writes.
When characters with human flaws such as angst, jealousy, and ambition are so beloved, why not incorporate spiritual leanings and experiences? “Spirituality is at the heart of the human condition, as it raises important questions about who we are, how we got here, and what exactly is going on in a vast universe that contains unimaginable amounts of energy yet arose from an infinitely small singularity in a huge explosion 14 billion years ago,” Groner writes.
Groner relies on varying levels of conflict to bring his spiritual story questions alive. “The first of these conflicts exists within individual characters’ minds, as they try to reconcile warring parts of their own desires—e.g., love vs. duty, action vs. inaction, rationality vs. emotion, survival vs. death,” he explains. Another level is the conflict between the protagonist and their close friends and family, who may not share their beliefs or who embrace them in a different way. The third level is between character and society, which may reject the protagonist’s beliefs or make them difficult to practice.
“The level of conflict that most interests me, and is most relevant to this discussion, is the one between the individual and the universe,” Groner says. This brings the conflict back into the mind of the protagonist. “I find this last level of conflict the most compelling, partly because it necessarily includes a reckoning with our mortality and the arresting brevity of our lives.”
The challenge here is that characters cannot be too enlightened, or they being to lack this internal conflict. “I like having at least one example of a person like that in my books, but I always try to make sure my protagonists are more like me—wracked by fears and insecurities, unsure of what to do next, trying their best against terrible odds, and doubting their own wisdom,” Groner writes. “Those are the characters readers can relate to most fully, for all the obvious reasons, so those are the ones I want driving my narratives.”
