Sometimes you need to challenge a major belief in your writing. Something you hold dear or sacred. This is as much for your personal exploration as to move your story along. These challenges are best framed in your first draft. Later, when re-reading and editing, you can either flesh them out or take what you learned from the exploration and cut them out. I strongly suggest you save them in your snippets directory because you will want to visit them again much later. At some point some interviewer will ask you why you said what you said. Unless you remember the journey vividly, you will need to revisit the prose which set you on your path.
I have things scattered about where I explored beliefs. Perhaps I’m just at an age where exploring them makes sense, but, I believe exploring such things makes sense throughout life. Once such topic I began exploring when I started writing a script for a new installment of “The Prophecy” franchise. No, I haven’t been hired as a screen writer. I simply liked the early installments of that series which had Christopher Walken in them. He adds a certain magic to dark cheesy movies.
Since I lack script writing software and have never deeply studied the correct format of a script, the screen play is largely undone. Oh, the story arc is in my head and some of the major scenes have been fleshed out, but it is just another text document at this point. I would only consider finishing it if I read somewhere Christopher Walken was considering returning to his role in that franchise. If you are serious about exploring challenging long held beliefs I strongly suggest you watch the first 4. Be warned, the third one is kind of bad, but no where near as bad as the 5th.
The dialogue for one of the critical scenes is worth discussing here though:
Did you ever wonder why every religion has some tenant in it along the lines of “the meek shall inherit the earth” Father? I’ll tell you the answer. Because the wicked will die off defending it for them from evil.
Too bad you were never meek.
While such wording may shock or offend you, it should be noted that this particular exploration happens time and time again. It seems most every culture has some set of stories about wicked individuals traveling the country or world able to do ghastly things for those who cannot defend themselves. Clint Eastwood has played many such roles in his career. I even heard some movie industry people talking on camera about how “Jack Reacher” was one of the more recent installments of stories with this arc. You can find hundreds, if not thousands of examples in both book and film. Denzel Washington has played quite a few of these roles as well.
Still other writers explore this notion from a completely different angle. If you haven’t had a chance to watch a few episodes of Lucifer on Fox, you really should plan a day to binge watch. Here they explore what happens when the devil decides to retire to Los Angeles. They challenge so many topics on that show your writer’s mind will just go crazy.