Writing Excuses 10.28: Polytheism In Fiction, with Marie Brennan

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Writing Excuses 10.28:  Polytheism In Fiction, with Marie Brennan

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/07/12/writing-excuses-10-28-polytheism-in-fiction-with-marie-brennan/

Key points: Are your gods numinous or just petty people? How much are they involved in daily life? Do they manifest or intervene? Beware the perfectly organized religion -- that's not realistic! Think about how people in this culture experience their religion. How do people speak about their religion? What about athiests or other religions? Give your characters a range of devoutness and interpretations. How do people swear in this religion? What is sacred and profane? Blasphemy, profanity, obscenity? Make your gods numinous, and make the religion part of the characters' lives. Are your gods characters with goals, or are they the goals themselves?
( Libations, salt, and other offerings? )

[Mary] So these are all things that are fun to play with, which brings us to your homework for this week. So what we have for you is a toy. This is something that one of my students built. Kate Hamilton built a belief system generator, which is fantastic. It will give you divine myths and origins, major deities, all of these things. It will give it to you for multiple religions existing in the same world, which is great. What I want you to do is I want you to go to this, and the link is going to be in the liner notes, and just generate a religion. You can generate more, because it's actually kind of fun, but the first one, because this is a random prompt. The first one, what I want you to do is, I want you to write a prayer that fits with this religion. The prayer can be for anything you want. But write a prayer that fits in this religion, and think about how that infuses the rest of the world.
[Howard] Outstanding. You are out of excuses. Now go write.