Okay, so this doesn’t have anything to do with raccoons but, like Robin Williams said, it works. It does, however, vaguely involve Irish accents. Specifically, it involves a commercial for a religious theme park featuring a giraffe with an Irish accent.
Well, sort of.
It’s probably better to say it involves the theme park’s choice to give the giraffe and Irish accent.
Sort of.
Okay, forget the Irish raccoons and giraffes, I want to look at creative choices in religion, and how they affect writing. In most fiction genres, you don’t have to worry too much about religion. In both contemporary and historical fiction, the religions are already out there, ready to be researched to fill out your world. A lot of science fiction is secular and when a story does look at religion, it usually builds off of existing beliefs. It’s only as stories become more fantastical that authors really begin to create new religions for their world. It’s only when you start adding aliens or magic or other planes of existence that worldbuilding begins to take over research, and even then, authors usually begin with one of three existing ideas: the one god, the pantheon, or the elements.
If you’re going the one god route, are you thinking Yahweh? Mohammed? Or maybe Gaya?
Okay, how about a pantheon? How many gods do you want? Are you trying to outdo Buddhism’s 33,000,000 gods? Maybe a trinity is enough? What about duotheism?
Elements? Again, how many? The common numbers are three (earth, water, and fire), four (add in air), or five (add æther). Or, if you’re feeling really modern, you could even go with the whole 118 elements on the periodic table.
I wasn’t too worried about religion in The Crown Jewels until I discovered that one of the characters was Blessed (yes, with a capital “B”). Then the question became one of how they were blessed, why they were blessed, who blessed them, and how did they know? How was a pretty easy question, and I’ve so far ignored the why but, like everything else in a new world, might be visited at a later date. How was even an easy part, although it did take a bit of research to figure out the details.
So what’s missing out of my answers?
Who.
I started with a single, Gaya-based god called Mother, but developing the religion was surprisingly complex and everything came out feeling, well, clumpy. And if one god was too much, a whole pantheon was out of the question. In the end, I decided to use the Elements, each one with their own followers - their own Children - and their own blessings to grant. I haven’t delved into the mythos of the elements yet, but, as Robin Williams said, it works.
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