Seeking Comments and Resources for New Story

[Cloven_Quill]

Hello, this is my first time posting in this space. Cloven Quill, nice to meet you all.

I’m a newer Christian who has written some unsavory works before coming to know Christ, and after going to church for a few years, I’m in the process of cleaning out those stories and want to write new ones with messaging that I’m sure the Lord would get behind on spreading, all while honoring Him.

Right now, I’m working on the foundations/world building for a new story that’s Sci-Fi and Post Apocalyptic, but more centered around an Interspecies Romance (HMOAF) while tackling the more difficult topics that could be seen in the Bible. Think of Planet of the Apes, but with lizardmen, taking place on an entirely new world that’s not Earth, and due to some huge mistakes by the people of that ‘2nd Earth’, their highly advanced civilization has been drastically set back by thousands of years (maybe tens of thousands), leaving the main setting in a near third-world state that’s reminiscent to what could be depicted in the Bible’s Old Testament. It isn’t until a small team of humans making contact by spacecraft that the lizardfolk’s lives begin to change as the humans help them discover the great sins of their ancestors’ pasts that brought them to where they are today.

The lizardfolk come in three different races resembling lizards, snakes, and crocodiles, each having different, exclusive supernatural powers/gifts they wield to survive, conquer, and thrive in their continent that’s closed off from the rest of the world due to the mountain landscapes surrounding most of it like an insurmountable wall.

I’m reading the OT for inspiration as I’m coming up with the world building, but with me wanting to tackle more of the tougher subjects from the Bible that would make this story fall into a ‘mature’ rating, it’s difficult to figure out how to depict it without falling back on my ‘unsavory’ writing style.

I’d like to know what you all would think about the premise of the story, and if possible, refer to me some notable Furry writers posting SFW, Christian-worthy stories, no matter the genres, so I can have a better idea of how to write out the story once I get to that point. Is it even possible to write a ‘mature’ romance story that Christians could digest, or should I perhaps start with something smaller and family-friendly? I’m also open to what you would want to see more in the Furry-Christian media that I could consider dipping my toes into. Comments, suggestions, and concerns would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward in reading from you.

[Ian (Ian McGecko)]

Welcome to FFC!

I’m fully on board for lizardfolk.

[Amberclaw]

this story sounds sick! i would definitely read this story!!

[Amberclaw]

good on you for both following Christ as your Lord and Savior, i truly wish you strength and perseverance in your walk, and on walking away from that unsavory NSFW scene

[Cloven_Quill]

Thank you!

[Cloven_Quill]

Thank you for the encouragement. It’s true my writing started out as smut, but I’m aiming to use what I learned from the experience so far to create beautiful works (anthro-related or not) with God’s help and have them reach out to people looking for something to change their lives for the better, planting seeds in the process. I just hope my efforts serve as a testimony to that.

[Amethyst]

Hiii welcome here!!

I can relate to this a lot, so this is really exciting for me!

I consider myself a writer too, and I aspire to publish a number of books in my lifetime. I haven’t struggled much with writing smut per se (I’ve been able to get past that now, thankfully haha). However, I do struggle with something else in my writing that’s made me hesitate to continue. There’s something of a novel that I’ve been working on for a handful of years now. Fairly recently, I’ve kinda stopped all progress on it This is for reasons similar to what you’re going through! It’s not exactly because I’m concerned about what’s written within it, but more so because of what isn’t.

For just a lil bit of context, I feel like God has given me a gift of communication. I’ve been passionate about words and language since I was young. Not only do I loooove to talk (lol) but I also thoroughly enjoy reading and have such a great appreciation for people expressing thoughts, emotions, ideas, experiences, etc. through written and spoken word. So naturally, I also love to write. It’s certainly one of the greatest forms of art to exist, and we have God to thank for it!

Now, this novel that I’ve had in the works for quite some time. During its first few days of existence, I made a point to remember to avoid mentioning religion in any way that I could throughout the whole story so that it could appeal and be relatable to as large an audience as possible. And so far, I’ve done just that—almost to a fault.

Any story would need to have some sort of conflict, right? The greater or more dramatic the conflict, the more interesting/entertaining the story has the potential to be. I feel like that’s pretty typically the case, at least. But in recent days, I’ve been realizing that something that’s really important to me is involving God in every aspect of my life. This means that, in any conflict that occurs in my real life, I make an effort to come to God about it first and foremost before doing literally anything. I believe we’re all called to have Christ as our firm foundation and to build our life around Him rather than on anything else, because otherwise we risk committing idolatry. We’re supposed to store our treasures in Heaven and not in the things of this Earth, no?

So anyway, when it comes to my lil novel, there is (obviously) a conflict that is the basis of the whole story lol. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’ve written anything that is sinful or that glorifies sin. That isn’t quite my concern with this particular work of mine. My problem is something that I’ll split into two chunks:

1)How can I utilize this gift God has given me to glorify His kingdom? This isn’t a huge deal, but I don’t really want to waste my time writing about random things that might be cool but, at their core, hold no real substance. Although they might not be sinful, they ultimately don’t matter. They’re not changing anyone’s life for the better or bringing anybody closer to God. They’re silly stories that are just for funsies. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think God has made me so passionate about writing for a reason more significant than that. Why waste my talent on meaningless stories when I could write something that brings glory our Lord and Savior?

And finally, 2) As I mentioned before, I’ve started approaching real-life conflicts in a different way than I used to. I realize that, without putting God first in my thoughts and in my life, I start to idolize other things really easily. So, I’ve been trying to make my relationship with God the thing of most value in my life, because that’s what it is! One of the only downsides to this is that now, in my writing, I have a hard time separating what I do in real life from what I portray my characters to do. In almost every conflict that can happen in real life, making important choices without factoring in the Bible or consulting with God would most likely result in a sinful decision being made (or a decision that God wouldn’t have advised you to make/taking a step in a direction that God isn’t pushing you in, even if it isn’t directly sinful).

With this being the case, I’ve been trying to figure out how my characters would navigate the conflict in their story. I had some ideas before of what to do, but lately I’m second-guessing myself. I’m very near to the end of the book, but I’m considering scrapping the whole thing (keeping it around for memory’s sake, but never attempting to publish it). For the entirety of the story so far, I’ve managed to avoid mentioning anything related to any religion at all. My characters have simply been living their lives and reacting without bias (to the best of my ability lol) to the events happening to and around them.

But is that really all I want for this novel?

I’ve dedicated a lot of time and thought and energy into what this story is. It pains me to think that it could all be for naught and that it may never be finished or see a life on the bookshelves. However, I’m not sure how salvageable it is in its current state. Honestly, I can’t see a way to turn it around and make it into a tool to help glorify Christ without needing to change some pretty fundamental aspects of the plot, unfortunately. It’s gotten to the point where I’m wondering if the whole plot itself is even capable of being changed into something God-glorifying at all, just because of how completely random it is. Although I know that just because I don’t presently see a way to turn it around for the better doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. But that’s something I’ll have to figure out in its due time.

Back to YOUR situation!

I just wanted to express how much I know what you’re going through. My advice would be to, like you said, maybe practice writing short stories or one-offs from a more family-friendly standpoint before beginning practice with romance stories that Christians are still in the clear to read. But I do certainly think it’s possible and that you can achieve it! Just look at Song of Solomon, the 22nd book of the Bible. If you haven’t read it already, I really suggest you do! I see it as perhaps the most biblical version of the romance genre that’s out there, come to think of it. So in my eyes, that’s a decent place to start and maybe break the stigma a little bit to help you feel more like romance is something that even Christians can read/write about and appreciate.

As for Christian-furry media, I recommend Chronicles of Narnia! I’m not sure how much of a romance aspect there is in that story as I’ve never read the books and it’s been a hot minute since I saw any of the movies But I think it could be helpful for getting exposed to literature that has managed to become mainstream despite being Christian-oriented and furry-esque.

I’d love to read maybe an excerpt or something from what you’ve already got. It seems like such a fascinating story that I’d really enjoy once it (no doubt) becomes a full-fledged book!

[Cloven_Quill]

Thank you for your in depth response. Seeing how someone approaches and perceives their work differently from myself gives me an insight that I couldn’t think about on my own.

To share some of my side, I had difficulty with language, speech, and reading comprehension growing up due to my asperger’s/autism, and I honestly didn’t like reading books for a while. Through my interests in anime and cartoons early-life, I learned about manga before I really got into books, and it wasn’t until I polished those language subjects up to college, along with exploring creative outlets in music and drawing, and some stressors in life that I really got into writing not just as a hobby, but as a means of escapism from harsher times in reality.

It started off as fan fictions before I really wrote stories of settings in my own making, most of them being fantasy-isekai romances with anime, manga, and light novels of those genres that I’ve seen as my foundation. If you’ve seen at least one of those three Japanese-centered mediums for as long as I have, you know how much ecchi and erotic content is normalized there, which I’ve also included in my old works. Since I got serious following Christ, though, I’ve filtered ecchi, suggestive, and other similar tags from manga-reading sites, as well as closed accounts, and blocked/muted content creator pages from x/twitter where I’ve viewed most NSFW artwork, and still do as I’m searching for SFW-only artists to follow (which can be like finding needles in haystacks more often than I like, or more like the reverse of it ).

Putting aside my struggles of writing content that makes the story more suggestive than I’d like, as well as what’s constituted/discerned as ‘suggestive’ (I might put up a new thread about this topic later), I’m also struggling how I should create stories that honor and glorify God. The main reason I’m working on a Sci-Fi story (which I actually haven’t written or read a lot of in the past), is because it’s perhaps the closest I could get to an isekai or fantasy where my character tries to follow Christ’s teachings in a foreign world where either deities and false gods are worshiped, or no god is known at all. While it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched Chronicles of Narnia, I do think it’s one of the best, notable depictions of ‘isekai’ in western media, and I’d certainly like to write fantasies of that degree in the future, whether God is introduced in a foreign land (like how Paul introduced Him to the people of Malta in Acts 28), or He is known under a different name or entity in that land (I think I’ve read commentary somewhere that Aslan the Lion is literally the Christ in Chronicles of Narnia, I’d have to read the books or watch the movie again to see the connection, myself).

I can understand where you’re coming from trying to appeal to large audiences by not including religion, or more specifically, avoiding preaching certain topics in religions (I think this is what you’re talking about here, but please correct me if I’m wrong). Most readers want to read action, romance, mystery, or horror, and not a sermon or civil rights speech disguised as a story. When it comes to the characters in our stories, though, if we want to avoid the topic of religion while still honoring/glorifying God in our works, I find it’s either very difficult to find the balance, or maybe we’re not doing something right by trying not to include religion at all, because where else can our characters find inspiration to do good?

It’s actually very easy for characters, as do people in reality, to find reasons to do evil and justify doing them. Sometimes they don’t need a reason at all, yet despite how awful it is, they will get a kick out of it as a form of entertainment, whether they’re the perpetrator of the sin, or even the witness/audience of the sin taken place. It’s been like that from gladiator coliseum matches in the past to the porn industry in the present, and anywhere in between and beyond the two. The real challenge is for the characters, as sinners, to do good despite the circumstances giving them all the reason to do the opposite under the guise of good and justice. I believe this is a core in a character’s development when it comes to resolving conflicts, whether inside or outside itself. There are role models in the characters’ lives to give them inspiration for the direction in their journey, certainly, but there are as much bad role models as there are good ones, and sometimes the latter case just couldn’t be as good as they are now without knowing how bad they were as individuals in the past. Would they even know what is good or evil without religion, God, or someone there to show them how to distinguish between them? Would they figure out how to navigate through conflicts without that guidance? I don’t know how much this would help you with your novel, but I figured I’d put my 2 cents here.

I do agree that being able to create art through the written word, as well as the other mediums and the existence of language altogether, are incredible gifts from God that a lot of us take for granted. Even after the assistance of special ed. classes growing up, as someone in my 30s, I still have difficulty with speech, comprehension, and non-verbal communication at times. Despite my setbacks, I want to believe that being able to express myself through the arts I’ve explored up to now is not just a gift, but a form of God’s grace that I want to showcase and dedicate to His honor and glory. I wouldn’t be able to express myself up to this point, otherwise.

That said, in regards to short stories or one-offs I could write as practice, any ideas or suggestions you may have I could go off of? Would fan fictions from popular shows be fine? I had something that came up in my head recently involving Pokemon, but most of them have anthro bodies that can speak and coexist with humans in this setting, and the human MC here has a romance with a Salazzle. Going to make it wholesome while trying to put God into it, of course (can Arceus even be a placeholder for God/Christ in this setting?), but what do you think? Too big of a stretch?

Along with this, I’d be more than happy to send you the first few chapters to the lizardfolk Sci-Fi story I’m working on when I have them put together.

[Amethyst]

Hey there! No problem It’s my pleasure to be able to find someone who knows what this is like! Hahaha

I appreciate you sharing some more about your situation. This does help me to understand more of where you’re coming from and how it’s shaped your circumstances today!

Lol finding hay in a needle stack, that’s funny I completely understand where you’re coming from. Truthfully, that’s a big part of the reason why I’ve now distanced myself from the furry fandom altogether. It just became too hard for me to find enough clean media and people who were in the fandom for more innocent reasons. Not to say that it doesn’t exist, but I was just constantly surrounded by folks who were in the fandom for unhealthy reasons and I did not wish to be in that sort of environment any longer. I’m so grateful for the people that can maintain a non-sinful relationship with the furry fandom itself and their friends within it, though! More power to y’all!

Anyway, yes, I think your idea is great! It has so much potential for so many different reasons. It’s versatile as well, in the sense that the same idea of an isekai-style fantasy/sci-fi story in which the protagonist could be able to introduce God to communities that don’t know Him in an alternate or foreign land/world can be applied to so many different scenarios and plot lines to be written.

I think my only reservation with this would be that, to me, it seems a bit hard to pull off effectively in general, but especially when it comes to certain plot ideas Now, I think it’s totally doable. However, one would just need to be extra careful. I’m thinking specifically of your idea of the Pokemon-themed romance story. I don’t see an issue with the romance aspect of it as long as, like you said, you manage to keep things PG and wholesome and whatnot lol. In fact, I think that’d be a great way to practice that! However, my concern lies more within the God component of the story. I think attempting to portray Arceus as a God placeholder would be risky, but not impossible! In Chronicles of Narnia, I remember the majority of the story being heavily metaphorical for many different things. However, I believe Aslan the Lion was either meant to be literally God in the universe of Narnia (a sort of physical manifestation of Him, anyway) or was meant to be a purely metaphorical representation of Him. Similarly, for your story, the only way I can see the idea for Arceus’ character to bless your story rather than compromise it would be if you made the whole story, in its entirety, clearly metaphorical (almost as a sort of disclaimer like: hey, just wanna let everybody know that I believe God is obviously not actually Arceus you silly geese! Something along those lines lol).Otherwise, you might potentially downplay the power that God has by lowering His title to that of a being that is worldly (or fictitiously powerful lol) and kind of limiting Him. That’s just my personal take on things, though. If you can think of other ways to pull off what you’re talking about without minimizing God in any way, then perfect! Creativity is endless!

Besides, this is the whole point of practice writing! It’s going through a bit of trial and error to hone your skills and seeing what works vs what doesn’t, where you need to improve vs where you excel, etc. Don’t be like me where I feel like all of my writing needs to be flawless, or else I’ll be tempted to give up on it! Sometimes I can be such a perfectionist that I feel pressure to have flawless writing even in my little practice exercises (which, in my opinion, is where perfection matters the least) to the point where I’ll abandon my work because it doesn’t reach whatever standard I’ve set for it. But that’s a lose-lose situation, because all it means is that I’m not getting good practice in AND I’m not resolving whatever the problem was that caused it to fall short of my standard

Anyway, all that yap is just to say that you shouldn’t feel too much pressure to get everything in your practice one-offs and short stories perfect (this applies to measurable standards like grammar, spelling, etc. as well as more abstract things like capturing emotion, accuracy of metaphorical representation, etc). If anything, you should expect imperfection, because that’s exactly what it is: PRACTICE writing! Honestly, there are no rules when it comes to that sort of thing.

Also haha I appreciate your 2 cents! It is helpful, and it’s refreshing to hear what other people have to say on the matter, like you mentioned.

Please do keep me posted about that story when it comes together and share! I’m so invested in it now

Edit: Also, I think creating fan fictions is a wonderful way to get some good writing practice in! One of my favorite works to this day is a fanfic that I started writing when I was, like, 12. It was based off of a furry anime that I was obsessed with lol. It’s not something I think I’ll ever want to share with the rest of the world hahaha, but it’s nostalgic and honestly helped me improve my writing in a lot of different ways. Practices like that are great exercise for stepping out of your comfort zone and trying new things out before fully committing to starting a whole novel or something else that you would plan to eventually get published.

[Cloven_Quill]

Yes, it can be quite difficult finding modest, beautiful artwork in the furry fandom, and even when you do find something, you see those same creators who made them also partake in ‘dirty’ media, whether on the same page or post them on separate accounts and platforms. I could just stick with the SFW content and not look into the other one entirely, that is an option, but I think just doing that much knowing they do NSFW is like giving silent permission for them to continue creating sinful works, and I wouldn’t want them to do such things if they asked my thoughts. I may be heavily restricting my scope limiting what I consume like this, not finding as much as I want to enjoy, but I definitely don’t want to make compromises on obeying the Lord for my own selfish reasons, if I could help it. Certainly doesn’t make finding like-minded creators easy, though.

Trying to avoid depicting God limiting Himself in a worldly form is an interesting take, though, because isn’t that what He did through Christ Jesus? To overcome temptation, remain pure, even when surrounded by sin and the people who indulge in it, all so He could guide them back to Him through proclaiming the Gospel, as well as paying our debts through His blood when put on the cross? He even went as far as lowering himself to wash his followers’ feet while healing many people of their illnesses and ailments, make bread from nothing, and resurrecting the dead like Lazarus, all very tremendous powers to wield, and that’s just scratching the surface of His capabilities. Not trying to get into a debate here, I can understand Aslan the Lion and Arceus being metaphorical representations of God in the stories while trying not to lower the standing of our true creator, but it was something I had to point out. Obviously, they’d be copycats compared to Jesus, who had proclaimed to be God plenty of times, but it’s definitely worth considering when writing.

Anyway, yes, no matter one’s experience in their specialty, there’s always room for practice and refining in a craft to make better. Trying to make a work of art perfect is impossible unless you’re God, yourself, and none of us are Him. Doesn’t make the process any less fun, though, and that, along with bringing glory to God, is what really makes creating art of any kind worthwhile.

Glad to see that fan fictions can be used for this practice, but I’m quite curious about the furry anime you based your own from. I try to make time to catch up on anime and manga when I can, but there aren’t a lot furry-centric ones that I’m aware of. Could you DM me the title so I could look into it later?

And yes, you can bet I’ll keep you posted on those stories when I got something good cooking up.