I was reading last night, as I do every night, when I read a comment offered to Chloe, the heroine of the story, and it dawned on me that she was an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) like me. Here is the comment:

“It will be your lifelong battle to act despite all those fears. But just because you are afraid, doesn’t mean you won’t be victorious.”

The King’s Queen: Magiford Supernatural City (Gate of Myth and Power Book 3) by K. M. Shea

I was just writing about doing things in spite of being fearful in my last post Courageous . God is so good at confirming what He is saying to me.

This was not the first book in the series, but I hadn’t heard of HSPs before and as I thought back through the series I saw more and more traits I share with this character.

It excited me, thinking about it as a writer, how important it is to have good character development and storytelling. Why? Because a reader will engage in a story that has some reflection of themselves in it.

A good fictional story can help a person believe they can be better or stronger. In the book I’m reading Sensitive & Strong by Denise J. Hughes and Cheri Gregory, Cheri talks about the difference between a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. She quotes Dr. Carol Dweck’s definition of a growth mindset as “the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.”

When I took Ted Dekker’s course, The Creative Way, he called this transformational fiction. If I write about a character’s transforming journey, I can help my reader address hard issues, issues they may hesitate to hope to overcome.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

1 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭12‬ ‭NLT

I thank you, my readers, for taking time in your day to read my blog posts, and I pray that one day in the not-so-distant future you will read the fiction stories I am writing. The scripture above describes our view of ourselves as imperfect and puzzling, how apropos. God will make sense of it all in the end, but in the meantime we can spit and shine the mirror.

Grace & Peace,

Sandy

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