1. Sometimes I like stories BECAUSE they’re bleak, so Coco doesn’t really bother me from that standpoint. I didn’t really love or hate the movie, though there were some interesting concepts in it.

    I kind of have a hard time with getting myself to write specific images of heaven or hell in my stories. There’s a lot of ambiguity and mystery in mine partly just because I can’t quite decide how I want to depict those things just yet, and partly because I don’t want people to interpret those things as the actual Christian perceptions of heaven and hell. But, I indicate a lot of varying opinions and interpretations amongst different characters. I have a few chars that believe in their version of Purgatory, for one, and they end up going to a world they interpret as Purgatory. Yet…as the story continues, the readers see that that world/realm is only one of many, so who knows if it’s actually Purgatory, or if Purgatory exists at all in that universe.

    Sometimes I don’t like it when people do detailed scenes taking place in heaven or hell because they almost seem cartoony or like wishful thinking, so it just ends up making Christianity look silly.

  2. Travis Perry says:

    I have a story idea that I have yet to put into writing in which black holes are hell–each black hole containing a totally isolated soul in eternal punishment. I’m reminded of my idea by your reference to The Great Divorce, which is one of the few works by C.S. Lewis I haven’t read (yet), and it’s description of hell as an isolated sprawl.

    I don’t mind portrayals of the afterlife in general and I think if makes sense that Christian authors would “go there” at least at times. But it’s true that a highly simplistic view of life after death, which leaves no sense of mystery, I find pretty uninteresting…

What do you think?