Write a love story that highlights Christian values
Romance is one of the most popular genres in literature, domestically and around the world. The romance genre dates back thousands of years to ancient civilizations — the spiritual importance of finding love was always clear. Love stories come in all shapes and sizes, blending genres and themes to tell a larger story.
Writing a Christian romantic story is no different than writing any other. Where non-faith-based novels may emphasize racy content, your Christian work can highlight a strong relationship with God and a powerful emotional connections with one’s partner.
Writing to Christian Audiences of Different Ages
Faith-based romance books can target audiences of every age. From picture books for the youngest children to powerful religious adult love stories, you can write a romantic story for anyone. As long as you know who your audience is, you can tailor your book to them. This way, you will not catch anyone off guard. The Christian themes in your book can be as overt or subtle as you want, so long as the overall message is faithful.
Adults and Young Adults
Adults are the most natural fit for a romantic story, and when the book is Christian, teenagers and other young adults can also read it without fear. Whereas secular books may feature characters that engage in risqué or unseemly behavior, characters in your Christian romance can proudly practice the values of their religion.
Books for adults and young adults can feature grown-up love stories that expressly promote Christian values. Writing characters that are devoted to their faith and showcase a strong moral center can set a strong example to your community of readers. These books can be perfect for instigating interesting book club conversations, sharing with community organizations and centers, or just entertaining individual readers.
It is important to remember that even though you are writing a Christian romance, the topics can still be mature and sophisticated, even defying genre expectations, without alienating the faithful audience you are hoping to reach. It is okay to challenge your readers, as long as the overall impact is that which supplements the reader’s faith.
Young adults and teenagers are at an especially impressionable age. Writing romance that caters to them can teach them valuable lessons and set a good example for their future relationships.
Children
You can also write love stories for children, but this love may be different than what you write about for older readers. Children’s books in this genre can be charmingly illustrated tales about Valentine’s Day, maybe even St. Valentine himself. Many schools and families celebrate Valentine’s Day with hearts and candy, but children can learn about the saint behind the holiday. Alternatively, a faith-based children’s story about love can focus on non-romantic love, such as within the family, with friends, for their pets, or for God.
Building Your Characters
Readers enjoy books for their engaging characters. People tend to know the basic tropes that many romances follow. But, writing fully developed characters is crucial to keeping your audience invested in their love story. Further, the relationships between the characters are of the highest importance in romances because that is the crux of the story.
Generally, strong protagonists are those in which the audience can relate to or understand. This can be a literal similarity (same morals, similar lifestyle or background, etc.) or just something that the reader knows in their personal life (similar to a friend or family member, like the reader at a different point in their life, etc.). Main characters can start off as imperfect people who learn lessons that change them over the course of the story. Or they can be the strong guiding force in others’ lives throughout. Either way, it is important to add complexity to each and every character.
Specifically when writing Christian characters in a romance novel, you want to emphasize the faith-based elements of the characters. For antagonists, that can be the lack of morality. For the protagonists, this can be overt (they are devoted to church, have an ongoing relationship with God, etc.) or implied (they act with a strong moral compass, have strong values, etc.).
It is most important, however, that the characters portrayed in a positive light adhere to basic Christian standards and are not crude or crass, set good examples for readers, and highlight the importance of a strong relationship with God. While secular romances often indulge in the physical components of love, Christian romance focuses more on the emotional love between partners without resorting to explicit sexual content.
Writing Dialogue for Faith-Based Romance
Every Christian has their own relationship with God, so no two people will speak about God in the same way. You want this reflected in your dialogue, both about faith and not. Readers want your dialogue to transport them into the love story you are telling, but it is crucial that each character has their own unique identity and voice. It would be boring to read a conversation in which two characters are repeating the same information to each other with little plot or character development. Romances rely on characters falling in love, which often involves speaking to each other.
A good rule of thumb for making sure dialogue sounds natural is to speak it out loud. Listening to your written dialogue spoken can guide you in tweaking anything to sound more realistic. Characters should have a different identity, but if you listen to your dialogue and it sounds completely unlike what a reasonable person would say in a given situation, you might want to rewrite. Additionally, if you are planning on converting your print book into an audiobook, the listener will only hear the dialogue — it has to sound completely natural.
Structuring Your Plot
All stories must follow a dramatic trajectory to keep the momentum of the story moving forward. For romances, this often means that we watch the characters meet, fall in love, have conflict that will potentially tear them apart, then overcome all obstacles to find their way to one another. This is by no means a requirement, but it is a common structure that audiences are used to.
The details of these basic plot beats are completely up to your imagination, especially at which points you incorporate Christian tenets. At the end of the day, it is just important to infuse your love story with conflict that keeps the reader coming back for me to see how it gets resolved because they are rooting for the couple to triumph over the forces that separate them. However, with faith-based novels, remember to never let your main characters become unredeemable. You do not want the audience to have to completely suspend their disbelief at an undeserved redemption arc.
Highlighting God
In any Christian book, it is of paramount importance to make sure God and Christian values are front and center. With romance, in particular, keep these virtues imbued throughout to keep readers on a morally sound ground to read and enjoy your story. Use your own relationship with God to inform your writing, and let Him guide your journey.
