I have received some feedback on my post from a few days ago about writing a romance novel. A literary agent who I follow on Twitter and the blogosphere offered some keen insight on her blog concerning what it means to have a Christian worldview as an author.

To me, the point is not that everything in the book must be on the up and up. Quite the contrary, literary characters – like the rest of us – are sinful human beings. I believe that there can be inner turmoil, conflict, bad decisions and even immoral behavior in a novel and yet, when the final page is turned, the book can have redeeming value in the midst of it all.

That said, I don’t believe that a novel necessarily needs gratuitous violence and raunchy sex to appeal to its readers, either. What I’m getting at is that even if a lead character makes less-than-admirable choices in the novel, can’t there be moral value to the tale?

Consider “classic” works of literature like The Scarlet Letter, The Picture of Dorian Gray and countless others. Deception, adultery and murder are important plot points in many great works of literature. Even the Bible is replete with tales of moral misdeeds and sexual misconduct, but the underlying theme is redemption. The reader can learn from others’ mistakes.